Social Policy and Health

Abstract

The discipline of social policy examines how and why certain issues relating to people’s health and welfare come to be seen as the legitimate focus of state intervention. Social policy also critically examines the consequences, both intended and unintended, of state intervention, regulation and legislation. The first part of the chapter considers the contribution of social policy to health studies. It looks at key concepts and contemporary issues in social policy with specific reference to health. It also looks at the UK in an international comparative context, focusing on the historical development of social policies, including health policies, and identifying key issues such as the extent of state involvement in the provision of welfare and the ways in which changing political ideologies have affected views on this. The second part considers the methods and analytical tools of the social policy discipline. It traces the development of social policy and examines some of the key theoretical and methodological approaches, with a particular focus on the relevance of these for health studies. The chapter looks at how issues become part of the policy agenda and how policies are negotiated, formulated and implemented, and uses the example of obesity to illustrate this process. ‘Policy’ is an expression of the principles underlying or directing action. It is not necessarily explicit, formal or written down. At the institutional level, policy is often written down but it is not always put into practice and often what is practised is not formal policy-short cuts which are not codified may be taken in deciding who to prioritise for a service or who is eligible. The interpretation of what is written down may reflect personal or professional attitudes or values, or it may reflect prevailing public or political attitudes of the time-‘ideology’. (Moran et al., The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. Oxford University Press, 2008; Lipsky, Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service. Russell Sage Foundation, 1980).