Helen Carr

Law for social workers

PART I: THE LEGAL CONTEXT OF SOCIAL WORK PART II: RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARDS CHILDREN PART III: RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARDS ADULTS APPENDICES

Policing the housing crisis

In this paper, we argue that the ‘crime control housing crisis’ which has engulfed social housing is qualitatively different from most previous and current understandings of housing crisis (which have been of a quantita tive nature, or been resolved to that). By contrast, the crime control housing crisis is a crisis precisely because it appears insoluble. All hous ing problems and policies now have to be legitimated by reference to this crime control housing crisis. The gaze of this crisis has been upon the ‘social’ sector, but that has also caused reflection on how to placate the crime control housing crisis in the private sector. It is this latter area that is the focus of the case study in the second part of this paper and starkly raises the central, deceptively simple, problematization for government: how to govern the ungovernable without being seen to govern. The case study concerns regulations promulgated by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive regarding the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. We argue that this regulation is symptomatic of a mutated ‘housing crisis’ in which the old questions of the adequacy of provision have been supplanted by new questions of responsibility for deviant behaviour.

Managing vulnerability : homelessness law and the interplay of the social, the political and the technical

Martin Partington was at the forefront of a new generation of legal scholars who, in the 1970s, sought to democratise the discipline through the introduction of new subject areas more relevant to the concerns of ordinary people. His work, in housing law and homelessness in particular, provided user friendly and comprehensive tools to support housing activists who were keen both to ensure that their clients took full advantage of their statutory rights and to press government to extend those rights (Partington 1978, 1994, Arden and Partington, 1983). This paper – a revisiting of homelessness legislation via governmentality theory – would not have been possible without Martin’s work and it is dedicated to him in gratitude. The analytical opportunities, which are provided by Rose (1996) in particular, and, more generally, governmentality theory have been widely used and discussed (see Cowan and Marsh 2001). This work explores Rose’s suggestion, that we are witnessing,

‘Someone to Watch over Me’: Making Supported Housing Work

Hostels and other forms of housing where support services are provided as an intrinsic part of the accommodation package have traditionally been developed by the voluntary sector at a distance from conditional state welfare. Supporting People is an innovative and ambitious programme which in effect annexes supported housing and, in return for a commitment to improved provision, promises certainty of income and professional prestige. Supporting People provides an example of contemporary social policy. It attempts to address both the failures of the ‘old’ welfare state and the anxieties of the neo-liberal state. It does this through a distinct ‘third way’ form of regulation which extends new public management practices into a new regulatory arena and places a particular emphasis on ‘joined-up’ thinking, risk management and the ideological pragmatism of ‘what works’. This has particular consequences for the diverse range of both providers and residents who are disciplined through a variety of mechanisms to deliver social progress for the state.

Rational men and difficult women – R (on the application of McDonald) v. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea [2011] UKSC 33

The case note argues that the failure of the Supreme Court justices to recognise Ms McDonalds claim to dignity and equal treatment can be explained by the neo-liberal context of contemporary judicial reasoning. It sets out the circumstances of Ms McDonalds application for judicial review and the legal framework of community care; it then explores the legal reasoning of the majority of the court, and the response to Baroness Hales dissent, before commenting on the extent to which the decision demonstrates neo-liberal characteristics.

Looking Again at Discipline and Gender: Theoretical Concerns and Possibilities In the Study of Anti-Social Behaviour Initiatives

This paper suggests that current theoretical approaches to the contemporary governance of anti-social behaviour have certain limits which may be overcome by emphasis on its gendered dimensions. It argues that the paradoxical relationship that women have with the state may prove a fruitful starting point. Third way ideologies recognise and respond to the vulnerabilities of the ordinary citizen. The governance at a distance that they practice means that the responsibility for reassuring citizens falls disproportionately on women who have had a historical role in managing the anxieties provoked by proximity. Yet womens acknowledged vulnerability means that this is an incoherent strategy.

The public sector equality duty – a mainstay of justice in an age of austerity

With extraordinary resilience and refreshing optimism, campaigners for disability rights turn to the courts for vindication of their claims of injustice in connection with cuts in services to vulnerable adults. Almost inevitably they are disappointed, most recently when the challenge to the closure of the Independent Living Fund failed in the High Court in March 2013 (Bracking v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2013] EWHC 897). They consistently hope for more from the law in terms of dignity and social justice than it seems currently prepared to deliver. In this case note I consider the Court of Appeal’s decision in Bracking [2013] EWCA Civ 1345 which did something to retrieve activist faith in law. Lord Justices Elias, Kitchin and McCombe unanimously overruled the High Court on the grounds that the Minister had failed to provide the conscious and detailed focus on equality issues that the Equality Act 2010 demands. I provide a summary of the facts and legal issues in Bracking, before making brief concluding comments in connection with the significance of the public sector equality duty (PSED), the limitations of the current proceduralisation of justice and the paradox of neoliberal welfare policies which simultaneously advocate independence and cut the resources required to sustain it. The legal challenge arose as a result of the decision of theMinister for Disabled People to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF) from March 2015. The ILF, set up in 1988 as an interimmeasure pending the implementation of community care legislation and the reformof disability benefits, is funded by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to provide services and direct payments to disabled people to help them to lead independent lives in the community. It has a complex bureaucratic history. Although wound up in 1993, its popularity meant that commitments were made to maintain funding to its existing recipients, and a new fund was established for applications made between 1993 and 2007. The fund works in partnership with local authorities; they receive applications and help construct care packages. ILF has had an important role in counteracting the limitations of local authority funding of disabledpeople’sneeds, but at the same timecomplicates analreadycomplex system. It is also expensive and over-subscribed. At the time of the Court of Appeal hearing it was estimated that over 19,000peoplewere in receipt of assistance through the ILFwhich cost theDWPover £350million. AsMr Justice Blake pointed out in the High Court, much to the irritation of the claimants, the fund created a privileged group in comparison with new potential users.

Are Judicial Approaches to Adult Social Care at a Dead-End?

This article examines the limits of law to resolve or transform the contemporary dilemmas provoked by the provision of social care to adults in the UK. It juxtaposes the judgments in two cases, each of which interrogates the legal consequences of the mixed economy of care: the majority and minority opinions of the House of Lords in YL v Birmingham City Council (2007) and the Care Standards Tribunal decision in Alternative Futures v National Care Standards Commission (2002). We read the opinions/decisions as narratives that tell a variety of stories reconciling the different roles of law, the state, the family and the individual in the provision of care. Drawing upon David Scott’s concern with ‘the conceptual problem of political presents and with how reconstructed pasts and anticipated futures are thought out in relation to them’ (2004: 1), we seek to examine legal responses to the contractions and mutations of social welfare.

Ownership, Narrative, Things

This is a book about the everyday life of “shared ownership”, a peculiar pragmatic invention, both in label and in design. Although it is much messier than this, the marketing slogan for shared ownership is that it involves “part buy, part rent”. However, although shared ownership forms its substantive subject matter, the book ranges across, and makes a contribution to, various methodological pre-occupations of ours—legal consciousness, actor–network theory, property—and diverse interdisciplinary approaches to ownership, home, and things. In this chapter, we set out how we bring these diverse pre-occupations together and introduce this thing called “shared ownership”.

Shared Ownership and Housing Policy

This chapter presents a study of housing policy from the periphery. As we develop below, it is not its numerical significance as a tenure that makes shared ownership so important; rather, it is its totemic significance in housing policy and its location as a social housing low-cost homeownership “product” which make it an object of study. Our argument is that, in the very way in which it is discussed and represented in policy and by policy-makers, shared ownership appears as a very simple “product”, albeit one which has gone through a series of different iterations. And, most of all, shared ownership is constructed as ownership. That very simple ownership product, at heart, is how shared ownership came to be represented and translated by a range of others, including buyers—to adopt the metaphor widely used in policy documents, enabling people to “get a foot on the ladder” of “homeownership”. And, of course, these are very legal translations.