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Health ‘On the Welfare’ – A Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Mildred Blaxter
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Extract

A welfare benefit concerns a ‘need’ which a society has decided ‘ought’ to be met. What match is there between the system of welfare which has been laid down by legislation, and the way in which the members of society who are the potential recipients conceive of it? If, as Titmuss has said, definitions of needs are the interdependent manifestations ‘first, of society's wish to survive as an organic whole and, secondly, of the expressed wish of all the people to assist the survival of some people,’ how are these two objectives related, and how do the concepts of need held by ‘all the people’ match those held by the ‘some’? How in practice is the ‘need’ defined, and how do individuals define their own needs?

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 1974 , pp. 39 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Titmuss, R. M., Essays on the Welfare State, London: Unwin University Books, 1958, p. 39.Google Scholar

2 Bradshaw, Jonathan, ‘A Taxonomy of Social Need’, Problems and Progress in Medical Care, 7th Series, O.U.P. for the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1972, pp. 71–82.Google Scholar

3 Leaflet EC91, Department of Health and Social Security.

4 The weekly income limits (late 1972) ranged from £12.95 for a single person, or £18.10 for a married couple with one child, to £28.55; for a family with five children (gross income including Family Allowances, and depending on some variables such as rent, rates and expenses of work).

5 Take-up was estimated at 52 per cent of those eligible, at the end of March 1972 (Parliamentary Question in the House of Commons, 11 04 1972Google Scholar).

6 This work is part of a programme of studies of Objectives and Needs in Social and Medical Care Systems, supported by the Social Science Research Council. The interviewing for this survey was ably shared by Isobel Morrison, Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology, Centre for Social Studies, University of Aberdeen.

7 All incomes quoted exclude Family Allowances, if relevant, but include everything else (e.g. rent allowance).

8 Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books. 1972, p. 291.Google Scholar