POLICY

A policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent, and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by the Board of or senior governance body within an organization whereas procedures or protocols would be developed and adopted by senior executive officers. Policies can assist in both subjective and objective decision making. Policies to assist in subjective decision making would usually assist senior management with decisions that must consider the relative merits of a number of factors before making decisions and as a result are often hard to objectively test e.g. work-life balance policy. In contrast policies to assist in objective decision making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested e.g. password policy.

The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, as well as individuals. Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy. Policy differs from rules or law. While law can compel or prohibit behaviors (e.g. a law requiring the payment of taxes on income), policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome.

Policy or policy study may also refer to the process of making important organizational decisions, including the identification of different alternatives such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals. In public corporate finance, a critical accounting policy is a policy for a firm/company or an industry which is considered to have a notably high subjective element, and that has a material impact on the financial statements.

SOCIAL POLICY

1. A “social policy” is defined as a deliberate intervention by the state to redistribute resources among its citizens so as to achieve a welfare objective.

2. A welfare system is defined as the range of institution that together determine the welfare of citizens. Among these are the family and the community networks in which the family exists, the market, the charitable and voluntary sections, the social services and benefits provided by the states and increasingly international organisations and agreements.

SOCIAL POLICIES

The classic examples of social policies are the activities of the governments in providing money and services to their citizens in mainly five areas:

• Social protection benefits (social security)

• Health services

• Education services

• Housing provision and subsidies

• Personal social services

ANALYSING SOCIAL POLICIES

Social policies can be explained in terms of :

• The intentions and objectives that lie behind individual policies and whole groups of them.

• The administrative and financial arrangements that are used to deliver policies.

• The outcomes of policies, particularly in terms of who gains and who loses.

SOCIAL WELFARE

Social welfare is again that gain a little from being defined very tightly. Writers use it in a slightly different ways depending on the issues they like to cover. Sometimes it refers to very material aspects of well-being such as assess to economic resources. At other times it is used to mean less tangible conditions such as contentment, happiness, an absence of threat, and confidence in the future.

SOCIAL POLICY IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD

At its most basic globalization is the term that has been given to a range of economic, technological, cultural, political and social forces and process that are said to have collectively produced the characteristic conditions of complementary life. Foremost among these characteristics is a dense, extensive network of interconnections and interdependencies that routinely transcends national borders.

THE WELFARE STATE

Defining the welfare state:

Societies in which a substantial part of the production of welfare is paid for provided by the government have been called “welfare states”. Within the academic subject of social policy there are continuing debates about what is necessary to qualify as a welfare state. Thus the United States, for example, provide, through its federal, state, and local welfare provisions, sufficient help to its citizens to be labeled a welfare state? Or should the term be reserved for the Scandinavian countries such as Sweden or Denmark, in which state welfare services constitute a much larger proportion of the economy?

In a speech to the annual conference of the Labour Party in 1950, Sam Watson, leader of the Durham coal miners, listed the achievement of the welfare state. Poverty has been

abolished. Hunger is unknown. The seek are tended. The old folks are cherished, our children are growing up in a land of opportunity(Hennessy 1992:423). It was a conception of its function as setting minimum standards in income, health, housing, and education below which citizens will not be allowed to fall: the idea of the welfare state as a social safety net.

COMPARING TYPES OF WELFARE STATE

Alongside discussion about what counts as a welfare state has been a parallel debate about how welfare states or welfare systems differ from one another. The best known typology of welfare states is that suggested by Gosta Esping-Andersen in his important book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism(1990). This divides welfare states into three main types: the neo-liberal(for example the United States), the social democratic(Sweden) and the corporatists(Germany).

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Alongside the approaches outlined above, ‘social capital’ exerts a powerful new influence on thinking in this field. This idea is not only concerned with delivering welfare services, but also with more general ties, habits and relationships and the interactions in the communities: these functions better, it is claimed, when involving trust, reciprocity, stability, and respect. So it is also clearly relates closely to the ‘functions’ of ‘community building’ or ‘community development’.

VOLUNTEERISM AND VOLUNTARY WELFARE

Various definition for volunteering have been put forward. For example, the then Volunteering Center UK (later superseded by Volunteering England) encapsulated it as ‘any activity which envolves spending time, unpaid doing something which aims is to benefit someone (individual or group) other than or in addition to close relative or to benefit the environment … formal volunteering being undertaken by a respondent for, or through a group or organization of some kind.

SOCIAL POLICY IN GLOBALIZING WORLD

At the most basic, globalization is a term that has been given to a range of economic, technological, cultural, social, and political forces and processes that are said to have collectively produced the characteristic conditions of complementary life. Foremost among these characteristics is a defense, extensive network of interconnections and interdependencies that routinely transcends national borders.

SOCIAL POLICY IN GLOBALIZING WORLD

Multiple kinds od border-spanning processes and connections at work:

• Cross-border movements of people (health professionals)

• Internationalized labour market.

• Effects of underinvesting in one country is shaping policies adopted by other countries.

• Impact of domestic policies of international recruitment on the quality of health care and the health status of population overseas.

• The influence of IGO policies on national policy and welfare provision.

• The provision for informal care by migrants for families ‘left behind’ in the course countries.

• Financial flows (remittances).

EDUCATIONAL POLICY

In 1944 Education Act recommended the creation of schooling system composed of three types of secondary school catering for different abilities and aptitudes: the grammar for traditional academic curriculum, technical school for more practical or vocational studies, and secondary schools for less academic route.. The debates about merits of selection for different kinds of secondary school at 11 remains to the present day, with grammar school existing in some local education authority areas such as Kent, and with the development of a diverse range specialists and Academy schools.