Explains and analyses the development of contemporary social policy in Aotearoa New Zealand. It helps students to understand the conflicting values and perspectives in policy-making and implementation, and to relate the theories of social policy with the practices they will encounter in the field.
Social Policy Practice and Processes in Aotearoa New Zealand introduces the reader to social policy in the contemporary New Zealand context. Commencing with an overview of political theory that has influenced New Zealand's social and institutional architecture, Social Policy examines how current ideas about uncertainty, big data, well-being and 'future-proofing' are influencing approaches to policy design, implementation and evaluation.
S ocial policy reflects the dominant social, economic and political discourses of a nation's government and reveals how each country addresses the needs and wellbeing of its population. For practitioners in social work and human services, questions of human rights, citizenship, social justice and equity are ever-present in their day-to-day work with clients of all ages. As such, social policy plays a significant role in shaping the response to need in any community or population, through the provision of financial, physical or legislative protections or resources. The extent to which social policy offers security for the most vulnerable, while addressing economic and social inequality, signals the moral and ethical compass of those who govern. There are ways for practitioners and other advocates to influence, and resist where necessary, the direction of policy through community development, strategic change, research and social action. This volume provides examples of such initiatives and examines the making and shaping of contemporary social policy in Aotearoa New Zealand. The text covers a broad range of social policy topics from a critical perspective including fields of practice, current debates and case-study examples of social-change inititiaves. Students, lecturers, researchers and people interested in New Zealand society in general will find a critical appraisal of current social policy within these pages
"Social Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand explains and analyses the development of contemporary social policy in Aotearoa New Zealand. It helps students to understand the conflicting values and perspectives in policy-making and implementation, and to relate the theories of social policy with the practices they will encounter in the field." - Cover.
Exploring the current and historical tensions between liberal capitalism and indigenous models of family life, Ian Kelvin Hyslop argues for a new model of child protection in Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of the Anglophone world. He puts forward the case that child safety can only be sustainably advanced by policy initiatives which promote social and economic equality and from practice which takes meaningful account of the complex relationship between economic circumstances and the lived realities of service users.
"The principle guide to the political context, institutions and processesz of government in New Zealand. It provides readers with a clear and comprehensive introduction to the history, theory and knowledge required to understand the New Zealand political system."--Publisher's description.
In Australia and New Zealand, many public projects, programs and services perform well. But these cases are consistently underexposed and understudied. We cannot properly ‘see’—let alone recognise and explain—variations in government performance when media, political and academic discourses are saturated with accounts of their shortcomings and failures, but are next to silent on their achievements. Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand helps to turn that tide. It aims to reset the agenda for teaching, research and dialogue on public policy performance. This is done through a series of close-up, in-depth and carefully chosen case study accounts of the genesis and evolution of stand-out public policy achievements, across a range of sectors within Australia and New Zealand. Through these accounts, written by experts from both countries, we engage with the conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges that have plagued extant research seeking to evaluate, explain and design successful public policy. Studies of public policy successes are rare—not just in Australia and New Zealand, but the world over. This book is embedded in a broader project exploring policy successes globally; its companion volume, Great Policy Successes (edited by Paul ‘t Hart and Mallory Compton), is published by Oxford University Press (2019).
By any measure, New Zealand must confront monumental issues in the years ahead. From the future of work to climate change, wealth inequality to new populism – these challenges are complex and even unprecedented. Yet why does New Zealand’s political discussion seem so diminished, and our political imagination unequal to the enormity of these issues? And why is this gulf particularly apparent to young New Zealanders? These questions sit at the centre of Max Harris’s ‘New Zealand project’. This book represents, from the perspective of a brilliant young New Zealander, a vision for confronting the challenges ahead. Unashamedly idealistic, The New Zealand Project arrives at a time of global upheaval that demands new conversations about our shared future.
‘Systematically exposes the neoliberal myths in unequal societies’ - Niels Rosendal Jensen ′A call to arms to challenge inequality and social exclusion.′ - Lel Meleyal ‘An impassioned dissection of the highly coded lexicon of so-called welfare reform...get reading, get angry, get ready’. - Gargi Bhattacharyya Welfare Words analyses the keywords and phrases commonly used by policy-makers, news-outlets and wider society, when referring to social policy, welfare reform and social work in the present-day culture of neoliberal capitalism. Examining how power relations operate through language and culture, it encourages readers to question how welfare words fit within a wider economic and cultural context riven with gross social inequalities; to disrupt taken-for-granted meanings within mainstream social work and social policy, and to think more deeply, critically and politically about the incessant usage of specific words and phrases. Written by an authoritative voice in the field, Paul Michael Garrett makes sense of complex theories which codify everyday experience, giving readers vital tools to better understand and change their social worlds.
An ethnography of the development and travel of the New Zealand model of neoliberal welfare reform, this study explores the social life of policy, which is one of process, motion, and change. Different actors, including not only policy élites but also providers and recipients, engage with it in light of their own resources and knowledge. Drawing on two analytic frameworks of the contemporary anthropology of policy—translation and assemblage—Kingfisher situates policy as an artifact and architect of cultural meaning, as well as a site of power struggles. All points of engagement with policy are approached as sites of policy production that serve to transform it as well as reproduce it. As such, A Policy Travelogue provides an antidote to theorizations of policy as a-cultural, rational, and straightforwardly technical.