Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of photographs and sources
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Owning not othering our welfare
- Part One The legacy of the past
- Part Two The way to the future
- Afterword The future: a different way forward?
- Appendix One The family
- Appendix Two Research projects and related publications
- References
- Index
Fourteen - Supporting each other in the future
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of photographs and sources
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Owning not othering our welfare
- Part One The legacy of the past
- Part Two The way to the future
- Afterword The future: a different way forward?
- Appendix One The family
- Appendix Two Research projects and related publications
- References
- Index
Summary
One thing is certain – service users have asserted themselves. They have made it known that they are, like Eliot’s Magi, ‘no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation’, where they were expected to take what was offered. Concepts of citizenship and rights have replaced old ideas of benevolence and good intentions.
(Foreword, A challenge to change: Practical experiences of building user led services, Beresford and Harding, 1993)Patient-controlled services: a real alternative to the institutions that destroy the confident independence of so many.
(Judi Chamberlin, 1988)Social policy has to be directed not only to maximising GNP [gross national product] but to securing the wellbeing of individuals in a secure society.
(A.H. Halsey, sociologist, Guardian obituary, 17 October 2014)Rethinking public services
When we look at public services in the UK, despite the massive technological and other changes that have taken place in modern times, it is difficult to see any matching pattern of improvement over the years. If anything, essential services, such as street cleaning, road repairs and rubbish collection, seem to have deteriorated in quality, with less well maintained roads and pavements, fewer collections and more demands made on householders. Utilities are still subject to failure and breakdown and massively increased in cost. Public transport, such as local bus, coach and train services, while sometimes more truly public services in the sense of being more accessible to disabled people, are much reduced in scale, reach and flexibility. They are generally much more expensive than their European counterparts, particularly rail, in spite of continuing large-scale public subsidy. These shortcomings continue despite massive improvements in transport reliability, efficiency, speed and environmental impact. In rural areas, for example, many older people are under enormous pressure to drive, despite increasing frailty, for rear of having their mobility and lives drastically restricted.
The one service where people can point to dramatic improvements (despite all its other organisational and funding difficulties) is the National Health Service. Here radically improved treatments, interventions, drugs and procedures, have played a revolutionary part in improving all our lives, particularly those of people with chronic conditions, reducing mortality and morbidity rates, as well as making possible survival from previously life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses and conditions.
- Type
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- Information
- All our WelfareTowards Participatory Social Policy, pp. 299 - 332Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2016