The possibility of using public sector housing to disperse black people across our cities in the interest of racial integration is again attracting attention. Based on an analysis of housing department records, this article examines the effects on Birmingham's black settlers of the operation of one particular policy of racial dispersal. Having described the events leading to the introduction and ultimately the termination of the policy, the article proceeds to investigate the locations in which Asian, West Indian and native white tenants were housed, their area preferences, and the housing categories from which their allocations were made, as well as their ‘points’ levels on allocation. The article concludes by arguing that, on these dimensions, the consequences of the policy for black people were almost entirely negative.

This article attempts to demonstrate how the community subsidizes a married couple in which the wife stays at home, through the combined effect of tax and social security privileges. Contrary to what might be thought, this system is not even really designed to protect ‘the family’: it operates irrespective of whether there are any children or not. It is in fact intended to reward the couple in which the wife devotes herself to looking after her husband. It is quite likely that women who go out to work (and who also do their housework) bear more than their share of the cost of this, because of the ‘overpayments’ that they are obliged to make in taxation and social security contributions. I propose that the system be abolished, as it corresponds to an out-of-date concept of marriage and has no justification from either the economic or the social standpoint. A housewife receives an income from her marriage and, if she actually does the housework, she improves the couple's standard of living. A number of working hypotheses are put forward in an attempt to see how the housewife could assume the normal responsibilities of a taxpayer and social security contributor.

It is impossible (a) to assess the value of the services provided by the housewife in her sheltered environment and (b) even to know for certain what she really does there (many housewives employ charwomen or au pair girls or even full-time servants). However, when it is a question of granting to a widow an income related to what she had when her husband was alive, she is entitled to a specified fraction – usually half – of what her husband received or would have received. If this principle is valid with respect to benefits, it ought also to be valid with respect to obligations. Thus, the main proposal made here is that the housewife should pay income tax and social security contributions on a fictitious amount equivalent to half of her husband's earnings; this amount would be treated as ‘earned income’, which is the most favourable assumption from her standpoint. At the same time, the husband would pay income tax and his own social security contributions on the whole of his own earned income, as he would if he employed a housekeeper. The above-mentioned fictitious amount would also serve as the basis of calculation of the housewife's entitlement to social security benefits, subject to redistribution so as to assure a minimum subsistence in case of need. Reforms along these lines could only be put into effect gradually, since it would be unjust to penalize people from one day to the next for irresponsible behaviour which they have been deliberately encouraged to adopt up to the present.

The practice of social administration is founded on the human response to problems of industrialization and urbanization. Motivation and effort towards ‘social service’ were once taken for granted, but this seems no longer justified in the light of changes in the material and intellectual contexts in which service to the community is undertaken. These changes include the politicization of the service ideal; the emergence of radical social work; the managerialism of service reorganization; new interpretations of professional accountability; and new fashions in sociology and psychology. Although hitherto stable assumptions have been questioned, the dogmatic basis for recent developments and the reactions to them justify a fresh evaluation of the human factor in social administration. The human factor remains the basic resource in identifying and meeting social needs.

Britain, like other advanced urban industrial countries, is passing through economic changes more fundamental than the recession and inflation which take so much of the headlines. These changes in industrial structure have political implications which influence the distribution of power and the allocation of opportunities and rewards, both through the market and through the social wage furnished by governments. They call for a critical reappraisal of old ideas about the practice, the study and the teaching of social policy, and an attempt to formulate new approaches to this field – or to reformulate the old approaches.

Action research has emerged as a particular form of applied social science investigation in attempts to develop useful ways of trying out and evaluating social policy innovations. Despite a variety of contributions to the debate about its methodology, action research remains a term that is employed very vaguely to describe all kinds of design that include some combination of the two elements of action and research. This paper outlines the methods that were adopted in the National Children's Bureau series of action research studies, where the research team attempted to evaluate experiments in which they also actively intervened. The three elements of the field-work setting – programme, process and product – were all important aspects of the research. The inevitable tensions between the demands of evaluation and those of close involvement raise difficult questions of research design. A model of action research is presented as a constructive way of reconciling the search for objectivity and reliability with the advantages of involvement in the definition of objectives and methods.

Since the birth of the National Health Service in 1948 there have been periodic discussions of the potential role of pricing and insurance in the United Kingdom health care system. This article is concerned with discussing the problems inherent in these mechanisms and it advocates more careful articulation of the cost and benefits of such policies. The first section gives a description of some quite recent proposals to extend the role of the pricing and insurance mechanisms which have been made by the British Medical Association and the McKinsey consultancy company. The second section uses economic analysis to show that both the pricing and the insurance mechanisms have inherent problems which may vitiate their efficiency in many western health care markets. The third section is concerned with the mechanisms by which the efficiency of the health care system can be improved, and radical experimentation is advocated. Without radical experimentation and the implementation of suitable incentive systems, inefficiency and inequality will continue in the National Health Service.

The recent debate about the establishment of a ‘British Brookings’ involved a number of fundamental issues which were not brought out. In fact the idea that the British policy-making process should be made more ‘rational’ through the development of what are sometimes called policy studies is not new. It has roots in the Heyworth Report on social studies, which recommended greater use of social research in policy-making, and in the Fulton Report on the civil service, which argued for more policy-planning. These two approaches may now be seen as basically the same, and the problem as one of changing the relationship between social science and (social) policy. However, past analyses of this relationship attribute difficulties to quite different causes and hence yield a variety of prescriptions for reform. It is argued here that the policy studies which are needed must avoid the disciplinary fragmentation of the social sciences as well as that of the current administrative structure, that they must encompass research both for policy and on policy, and that they must seek their own conceptual structure, and in addition that certain organizational requirements follow from this.

The statutory function of local health councils in Scotland (and of community health councils in England and Wales) is to represent the interests of the public in the health service. This article, based on data from a fouryear research project financed by the Scottish Office, examines official and participants' assumptions and claims about the legitimacy of health councils, as at present constituted, to carry out this function. Clarification of the basis of their legitimacy would assist, it is argued, in the resolution of a central dilemma: How are councils to represent the interests of the public? The conclusion is reached that inadequate thought was given to developing theoretically sustainable arrangements. Several interpretations of representation are admixed in the rationale for the present system and they cannot be aggregated to produce a coherent defence of it.

While pioneering has long been assumed to be the unique function of voluntary agencies, the flow of private invention to public adoption has rarely been studied empirically. Drawing on an exploratory study of twenty national agencies serving the physically and mentally handicapped, this article re-evaluates the vanguard role of the voluntary agency. Much of what has been regarded as ‘innovative’ consisted of small-scale, non-controversial, incremental improvements or extensions of programs with few original features to under-served clienteles. A series of external and internal organizational constraints to the statutory adoption of new programs is identified, which suggests that the conventional notion of voluntary pioneering is no longer appropriate. A new model of program change is proposed based on multiple outcomes and a redefinition of the concept of innovation. Some hypotheses are offered regarding conditions conducive to the initiation of new programs.

Elementary textbooks in a subject may well influence students more than their subsequent reading, and they show the basic assumptions of teachers. This article is based on a study of introductory reading recommended to social administration students in British universities and polytechnics in 1976. It argues that many textbooks incorporate to some extent an ideal-typical interpretation of social policy which is called ‘the social conscience thesis’. The first part of the article sets out to establish that this approach, which was one of the dominant ones in social administration, remains influential. It is still the most common interpretation of social policy at the elementary level. The article is not concerned with advanced and specialized texts, where, although the social conscience thesis is still strong, different approaches are more commonly found. The second part then attempts to explain why this approach was once so powerful and why it is still with us.

The concept of Sozialpolitik (social policy) has rarely been considered in the English-language literature thus far. The present article surveys the pertinent English, American and German literature which led to the initiation of the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Social Policy Association) in 1873. All these efforts culminated in Otto von Zwiedineck's classic book, Sozialpolitik (1911). A chapter of this book, now printed in Zwiedineck's collected essays, Mensch und Wirtschaft, is offered in English translation for the first time. The article presents and clarifies the concept of Sozialpolitik in terms of social action directed toward problems affecting society as a whole and the continued attainment of society's goals. However, the definition of these goals remains subject to change. A theoretical foundation for the integration of scientific and normative perspectives in the social sciences is thereby provided.

The BMA (British Medical Association)–TUC (Trades Union Congress) Joint Committee on Medical Questions, established in 1936, was an experiment in consensus. It was the first attempt to cross the barriers in medical politics. In the 1930s the strategy of ‘administration rather than advocacy’ prompted the co-operation of the TUC with the BMA on medical questions of mutual interest. The operation of the partnership is explored here in the formulation of a scheme for a national maternity service acceptable to both parties. However, the reality of co-operation at the level of specific proposals was an insistence by the BMA on its own point of view. The TUC had to decide whether a joint scheme was worth the price. Although a scheme was eventually produced, as an experiment in consensus the committee had failed. To some extent the war obscured this failure, but the consensus itself was wrecked by the intransigence of the BMA and the hostility of the Labour movement, which was angry at the extent of the concessions which the TUC had made for a national maternity scheme.

All social services are rationed, yet the effects of such rationing on the client are rarely fully explored. This article reviews the evidence on the existence of informal rationing devices in general practice. It examines the effects on patients of a wide range of informal rationing devices now used by individual general practitioners. Various suggestions for reforming the present rationing of primary medical care are evaluated and the likelihood of any reform being carried out is assessed. Although this article concentrates solely on rationing in the primary care sector of the National Health Service, the issues discussed are relevant to most welfare agencies as they are presently organized.

The authors suggest that the importance of the dissemination of research findings in social policy has been greatly underestimated. The nature of the different agencies involved and the relationship between those who sponsor and those who ‘receive’ research are examined. This shows that the problems of dissemination are of two classes – those of principle and those of practice. Having discussed the principles, the authors suggest changes needed to improve practice so that more effective use may be made of research findings. Most of the examples are chosen from the field of housing but, where relevant, other fields of social policy are compared and contrasted.

This article discusses the particular characteristics of men with schizophrenia or personality disorder and it compares these two categories with one another and with the destitute population as a whole. On a number of variables, no significant differences are discerned, the category as a whole sharing a background of considerable material and social deprivation. However, with reference to place of birth, loss of mother, and father's occupation, significant differences do appear. The two categories also show distinctly different patterns in the process of becoming destitute and they use existing agencies differently. Finally, the type of service most suitable for these men is discussed together with other issues raised by the question, ‘How can we improve the lot of the homeless single person?’

This article suggests a Gateway Effects theory of discrimination in employment which attempts to link discrimination at the entry port into a job with its effects on later employment experiences and behaviour. A longitudinal sample of black and white 1971 school-leavers from Bradford and Sheffield was used to propose this theory. An attempt is made to generate a theory about discrimination which explains the position of black British school-leavers and which also incorporates the concerns of existing alternative American-based labour market theories about discrimination. Several implications for policies about discrimination are deduced.

News about social security and income maintenance opened with a special insertion on pensions in The Times of 11 May. This consisted of articles on various aspects of the new earnings-related pension scheme which came into force on 6 April. The accounts included funded schemes; private pension schemes; employers' and employees' participation; age flexibility in retirement; insurance funds; the property market and investment; the problem of size; the position of widows; trade unions and pensions; the exclusion of the self-employed and the position after the 1980s. The opening article said that the important achievement of getting the scheme into operation was diminished by the sheer weight of ignorance about it – ‘All the evidence to date indicates that the vast majority of people cannot or will not understand the new State pension scheme.’ This may be regrettable but it is not surprising in view of the scheme's complexity. How far the govermnent's efforts to overcome widespread ignorance will be successful remains to be seen (28 – 7/4 – 1.7). women was raised once again in a discussion document on the role of the elderly in society published on 27 June, A Happier Old Age. The numbers and circumstances of elderly people and public expenditure on services to help them were presented in the document which was concerned not only with pensions but with family life, recreation, mobility and other aspects of later life. Comments were invited by the Secretary of State for the Social Services by the end of October. The publication of a White Paper on the elderly in 1979 was foreshadowed. The problems of retirement age and the difference between men and women were presented and discussed in August 1976 (22 – 6/z – 1.8) and in February 1977 (24 – 6/4 – 1.10).

This article sets out to explore the ways in which social policy is catered for, at university level, in various European countries. It starts with a review of the ‘Sigriswil (1972 and 1973) Colloquia’ papers on ‘The Study of Social Policy: Teaching and Research’. Having weighed up the evidence – or lack of evidence – emanating from these get-togethers, the article then goes on to explore university social policy teaching – and the extent to which this may or may not constitute a coherent specialist programme – in selected West German, French, Swedish and Swiss (Geneva) university arrangements. Concluding comments on this evidence highlight several key aspects of debate so far as present and probable trends in social policy and administration education at university level in Britain are concerned.