Eithne McLaughlin

Paying for Long-Term Domiciliary Care: A Comparative Perspective

Concerns over growing numbers and proportions of older people in industrialised societies have prompted interest in the development of cheaper ways of providing long-term care for older people. While debate in the UK is currently focused on the costs of residential and nursing care, other European and Nordic countries have introduced schemes designed to encourage or sustain the provision of ‘social’ care by family members, friends and ‘volunteers’, on the assumption that this can be provided at lower net public expense than either residential care or formally-organised domiciliary services. Drawing on material from a detailed comparative study, this paper describes four different models on which such payments are currently based. These models are discussed and evaluated, taking into account factors which include the eligibility criteria for payments; maximising the autonomy of older people and family care-givers; and the relationships between financial payments and access to services. These models locate systems of payment within the broader context of financial and service support designed to help frail older people and those who support them. They therefore highlight the importance of considering both financial support and services in comparative studies of social welfare provision. However, further evaluation and policy development is hindered by the lack of evaluation of different models of paying for care and a lack of evidence about the experiences of older people and care-givers.

Work and Welfare Benefits: Social Security, Employment and Unemployment in the 1990s

This paper considers social security policy and structures in relation to the labour market of the late 1980s and 1990s. The paper begins by describing the labour market of the late 1980s and summarising projective descriptions of labour demand in the 1990s. The second section of the paper reports on recent research examining the labour supply behaviour of long term unemployed people, drawing out the role of social security policy and structures therein. The third section of the paper concludes that the role of social security policy is at present essentially reactive rather than proactive; that it does little to address the likely need for labour of certain kinds in the 1990s; and that efforts to address the problem of long term unemployment through social security policy have been largely misdirected. The final section of the paper briefly considers some of the ways in which social security systems can be more proactive and suggests a number of both short term and longer term policy changes which research indicates would be of benefit in the UK.

Paying for Informal Care: Lessons From Finland

Growing numbers of elderly people, combined with falling birthrates, have generated increas ing interest within most western European and Scandinavian countries in measures which might increase the supply of care-giving labour while at the same time reducing the unit costs of that labour. To what extent, and how, might expensive formal service provision be replaced by less costly and more plentiful help from informal sources; and what is the role of the welfare state in protecting and regulating the different interests of those who give and those who receive care on an informal basis?

Women and the family in Northern Ireland: A review

Synopsis This article reviews published literature on the family in Northern Ireland, complemented by ethnographic data from a study of Derry City. Although ‘embedded’ families, and especially the extended family focused around ‘strong’ mothers, are assumed to be characteristic of Northern Ireland, very little study of the family has occurred. In this analysis of the available material, it is argued that although extended families and high levels of physical, material, and emotional reproductive work among women are characteristic features of Northern Ireland, this does not mean that women in Northern Ireland experience the family as a site of power. The interaction of external and internal household relations limit the extent to which womens influence in families can be converted into power. The subordination of influence to power occurs through the limits imposed by, on the one hand, the importance of attained family status (and within that tensions around ‘respectability’) in a relatively closed society, and, on the other, low levels of economic and political resources among women.

The Rise and Fall of the UK’s First Tax Credit: The Working Families Tax Credit 1998–2000

The Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC), introduced in 1998/9, was regarded as the most important and easily the most redistributive measure introduced by the New Labour administration elected in 1997. WFTC is, however, scheduled to end, and to be replaced by another tax credit in 2003. This paper reviews the birth, brief life and “death” of WFTC in the period 1998–2000 and examines the structure of eligibility for WFTC in one UK region.

Listening To Children, Speaking For Children: Health and Social Services Complaints and Child Advocacy

Health and Personal Social Services are required to respond positively and effectively to complaints from service users. This paper discusses the importance of such complaints systems in upholding childrens rights, and in particular Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It outlines the nature of some of the advocacy services available to children and young people who may wish to make a complaint about their treatment within Northern Ireland Health and Personal Social Services. It then moves on to discuss some possible future developments, and in particular speculates on the potential role of the Northern Ireland Childrens Commissioner in investigating complaints concerning the care and treatment of children in Northern Ireland health and personal social services.

Book reviews : Women, Health and Poverty: An Introduction Sarah Payne Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1991, 206pp, £9.95 pbk

There is a growing stream of new textbooks on women and health (for example, the excellent Women’s Health Counts edited by Helen Roberts) which go beyond earlier work in this field dominated by concerns surrounding childbirth and reproduction. Payne’s book represents an important addition to this later stream of literature. Sarah Payne has produced an excellent student textbook on both women’s poverty and women’s health with comprehensive, well-written overviews of the literature, and good production values at a good price (£9.95). The evidence on women and poverty has been a growth field in the 1980s. This literature has provided an important critique of ’malestream’ conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, has concentrated on the