Welfare and Health in the UK - Case Study Example

WELFARE AND HEALTH By Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 0 Detailed Plan 3 2.0 Introduction and Historical Perspective of Welfare State 4 3.0 Welfare Theories 6 4.0 Impact of Social Differences on Health of Individuals in the UK 7 5.0 Conclusion 11 References 12 1.0 Detailed Plan Welfare and health in the UK have both been through a strong transitional period. Many changes have been circumstantial while others have been pre-planned. In either case, there was a progressive move to attaining universal health care to the residents of Britain. This report will seek to address the development of the British Welfare Provision and the impact that it has on the health inequalities in relation to social class, gender or ethnicity. The report will feature majorly on social class differences and provision of health. First, the report presents a historical background of the state of health differences in the UK. That meant to provide the position of the welfare state by the respective governments and other parties to the social welfare. That is a situation that stretches back to the earlier years of the 21st century when the respective governments arranged to make it possible for the people to access sufficient health. In this section, there is a systematic reference to the laws that were created during that time as a basis for access to health services. In this section, particular attention is given to the reports by the then liberal Prime Minister Asquith brought up the Liberal Welfare Reforms in 1906. The Old-Age Pensions Act is mentioned in this section. Other acts that were implemented through reports are; Labour Exchanges Act, Development Act, Beveridge Report and Universal Child Benefit Fund act. All these are mentioned in section 1 to introduce the reasons for the need to take further actions to curb the inequalities. The second section has a focus on the applicable welfare theories. This section leads to the understanding of the theories applicable to the cause in the context. In this case, there is a strong emphasis on two theories that are the social democratic theory and the market liberal theories. These are used in explanation and understanding of the behaviours attributed to the society. In the third section, there is a focus on the impacts of the social differences on the health of individuals in the UK. It is noted that there are several social differences, but the greatest focus is on economic ability. When people are economically disabled, they miss out on the ability to effectively afford good health. The section presents a collection of other reports that explain the impacts as have been noted and presented in reports. The sources in the report are presented in three categories; books, reports and from websites. The books are much about explaining the theories used while the reports present the ideal position of the health status. The websites are on heath institutions and government information centres that present the latest information on the subject topic. 2.0 Introduction and Historical Perspective of Welfare State The emergence of the modern welfare state in the UK started when the liberal Prime Minister H. Asquith brought about the Liberal Welfare Reforms in between 1906-1914. In 1908, the Old Age Pensions Act was passed. Free school meals were also introduced in 1909 with other acts like the Labour Exchanges Act and the Development Act following suit in the same year. These acts were the beginning of the government intervention in the process of economic development and what followed was the enactment of other acts in the subsequent years with specific reference to health and insurance. Thirty years later in 1942, Beveridge Report was released and entailed creation of ways to make welfare reach out to people considered disadvantaged in one way or another (Sines, Appleby, & Hammond, 2001, p. 112). It specifically dwelt on people that were in trouble of any sought that led to them being disadvantaged in their search for welfare. The poor were especially targeted in the fight against want, ignorance, diseases, squalor amongst other forms of inabilities. In the report, there were recommendations for the government to take up the mandate of providing income, health care, education, housing and many other services to the people in the country under its jurisdiction (Sines, Appleby, & Hammond, 2001, p. 221). Special focus was placed on the national health insurance in which people of ability were supposed to remit a contribution to the national insurance consolidated fund. Moreover, there was supposed to be a Universal Child Benefit Fund that would be of benefit to the parents in which people were effectively encouraged to have children that would be fed by the government and effectively taken care of. In most instances in this case, the main objective was to plan and attain a universal objective in health care regardless of the social differences between the different people (Sines, Appleby, & Hammond, 2001, p. 234). The recommendations in the report were effectively supported and adopted by a collection of parties that rule the country in the subsequent years; The Liberal Party, the conservative party and the Labour Party. In the implementation process, only the rich people paid the health insurance contributions and the state provided the services to all the people regardless of whether they were rich or poor. Actually, this scheme is the one responsible for the baby boom of the 1950’s in the UK. Everybody was able to afford health care and other costs of bringing up a child. Before the fall of 1939 though, health insurance used to be provided through non-governmental organizations and it was directly viable to those that were able to pay for the same (Acheson, 1997, p. 1992). Otherwise, the people in the lower social class were not able to afford the same and, therefore, had to be considered under the government initiative that came to service later on. The meaning was that there was a group of people, especially the uninsured poor that were left out of the programme. With the implementation of the Beveridges recommendations, the institutions were set up to provide the services by use of the local councils to the non-insured people that were also poor. With the reaching out to the poor, there was merging off the laws that traditionally applied to the people of high, social class so that those in the lower social class could also benefit. Many church schools, hospitals and other social bodies were all passed over to the state (Haralambos, 2000, p. 34). That marked the beginning of a strong haul of information to the people of UK and in the subsequent decades; there has been a change in operations leading to there being a strong following of these services. Since then, there has been re-introduction of NGOs that serve a different perspective in which case the benefits reach out to as many people in the UK as possible regardless of their social, cultural and gender restrictions. 3.0 Welfare Theories These are theories that seek to explain the viability of social democracy and equal distribution of resources among populations with different social characteristics. There are several social characteristics determined by a collection of factors such as religion, class, gender as well as the ethnicity (Castle, 2013, p. 106). The social democratic theory determines that equal respect is supposed to be given to all persons in a society regardless of their respective positions. The democratic aspect of these theories comes to effect with the proposal that all citizens have the right to enjoy the respect that would otherwise have been selective to a given section of the same population. Equal respect becomes the goal of the institutions in the society including the society itself. Giddens (1995) determined that the society is also an institution that must have its leadership and must be accorded the attention as such. It is also noted that in social democracy, equal respect is taken a direct goal applicable to government initiatives. That is because the individuals have the principal focus of being responsible for life. Individuals live in institutions. Therefore, the creation of equal respect to all people in the society becomes the sole reason for the state to apply and live with the people as having rights that are equal. The perspective of social democracy determines that the people will be looking at the state in terms of what it ought to do and what it can do for the people. The government then changes its political inclination to respond to the required changes in the society so that every citizen gets valuable care that then becomes considered basic (Haralambos, 2000, p. 18). Therefore, in this case, respect and right to service is not based on ability but on the value that all human being are equal and ought to be treated as such. The state becomes a reliable agent of sustainability to its people regardless of their social position. The other theory; the Market Liberal Theory puts a strong emphasis on state and social interests in the societies. This theory states that governments are not only embroiled in domestic, but also multinational societies. These help in the creation of incentives that drive the socio-economic practices in the given states, in which case there will be social and cultural interactions that will be of value to the societies. The state has the function of enacting policies that will importantly facilitate and boost the growth of the social functions in the society. When given social groups are pressurized under negative prevailing circumstances, they have the liberty to put the government under pressure to make changes in the whole society for the sake of a better and improved social services (Department of Health, 2012, p.512). Moreover, that takes to account the different social groups in terms of gender, social class and ethnicity. The liberal theory works on the basis of there being rationality against anarchy but represents societal preferences. 4.0 Impact of Social Differences on Health of Individuals in the UK From the introductory section, it has been noted that there are great discrepancies in the health status and development in different parts of the UK. Worth noting is the fact that the UK is made up of different countries, and the health statuses in the different countries still differ despite most of the laws being similar. According to a report compiled by the Royal College of Nursing (2012), the life expectancy in the UK has been on the rise from year to year. This is applicable across all social classes despite there being discrepancies between the rich and the poor. In application of the social democratic theory, it is determined that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of health access and life expectancy has been on the increase over the years (Sines, Appleby, & Hammond, 2001, p. 119). Illustrative statistics on the social determinants of health in the different countries show diverse aspects of growth as well as the existing differences. Worth noting is the fact that the differences in access to the social services are determined by the economic ability or lack of it. From a UK statistical point of view, people that live in the poorest parts of England will die at an age that is 7 years earlier than the others living in the richest areas. In Scotland, the number is different at 11 years between the richest and wealthiest areas. On the issues of gender, the same research has shown that men are Scotland are bound to live 18.5 years more in wealthy areas as opposed to the poor areas. England also has a disability-free difference in life expectancy between the poor and rich areas standing at 17 years. Research on Cancer (in England) shows that unskilled workers are twice likely to die as opposed to the skilled workers. In this case, there is a clear application of the market liberal theory asserting that state-run services are relatively inefficient. It can be noted that the very rich access their medical services through well-established medical schemes offered by private hospitals and NGOs as opposed to dependence on the government. The more powerful in the society, especially the politicians are able to effectively make way with the best services while the general society is left to share the remaining services collectively (Giddens, 1995, p. 126). The case of Northern Ireland is that the men living in poor areas die eight years earlier than those in the high-income areas. The perspective of the social determinants of health in the UK had been changing since time immemorial apart from the earlier parts of the 21st century when the government unified the services to serve the poor and the rich. It was not until 1980, however that a committee led by Sir Douglas Black determined that the greatest cause of the differences in the inequality in the UK is caused by the differences in economic abilities. Their main recommendation was that there should be the distribution of services that was fairer at the childhood level in terms of provision of sufficient services. That was to help end the poverty in children by making them self-sufficient. In 2010, two reports on inequalities in health were published; Sir Michael Marmot’s Report called ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’. In the same year, the UK parliament confirmed that there is an increasing gap between the people in the higher social class and those in the lower classes. The report by Sir Marmot recommended that the solution to the social differences in access to health issues would only be resolved through the creation of social justice. This is a recommendation that operates in conjunction with the provisions of the social democratic theory. In this case, democracy determines that all the people need access. The access needs just not be about the quantified amount but also the quality of the services that were accessed. In social democratic theory, there is belief in ‘collective welfare provision by the state’ that were supposed to positively manipulate the current social systems for the benefits of the people of low class in the country (Giddens, 1995, p. 65). The different in classes forced the respective governments to enact policies applicable to the development of the system that would maximise the service to the people. It was openly noted that there is lacking in the health provision which was importantly more of capitalist than benefitting all the people. Having realised that there is an increasing gap between people of different social status, the labour government in 1997 put in place measures that would help tackle the problem. This was part of an implementation plan that had been set up in 2004 in which there was a need to reduce the life expectancy gap at the fall of 2010 by 10%. Five key goals were developed, but the stronger reference was made to the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda. A commitment was then made to increase the level of health education from the level of younger children through effective health education (Castle, 2013). Child poverty was to be halved within the next ten years. This was the meaning of social democracy. The systems had become absolute capitalism in which case they would not regulate themselves, and so much effort was needed to create a trend. Some elements of the state were to be used to solve the problem of there being high numbers of children affected by the class differences. From the pattern that had been drawn, it was quite evident that by the time the children were to become older, the differences in classes would have increased drastically. To create a workable system, the government, through the reports and parliament determined that it was necessary to have a comprehensive, long-term plan. The Marmot Report was therefore supported by the government through parliament. The action therefore involved creation of a public awareness programme through local authorities so that more people could get knowledge on the need to increase their awareness of health from their respective social classes (Butler, 1992, p. 187). Therefore, well-being boards, the local authorities on health and local leadership had the responsibility of determining the spread of the knowledge. Reference to social democracy indicates a direct and clear application of the social democratic theory in trying to make level the life systems through early knowledge on the same issue. Scotland and Northern Ireland had their own laws and capacities depending on the central state leadership. In Northern Ireland, it was determined that a new public policy on health was established in 2012 which also had the responsibility of addressing the issues of health. The development of the welfare system has therefore had a strong impact on the growth of the welfare system in Britain. The developments have always been proposed by strong research and reports that have helped unearth the underlying differences between the health of the people and the current trends. The developments have helped shape the financial security of people as well as their health in the context of the economy. The social democratic theory determined that the government has a big burden that need to be leveraged through enabling that all people access the health. However, not all people can access health at the same level, and that is how the people in the high, social class determine their health destinies (Nolan, 2001, p. 321). Poverty and the lower standards of living were found to be the main causes of health that is poor and the eventual inequalities. In times of recession for that matter, the government may totally fail to provide sufficient health services to the people. This is in disregard of its trying to create a liberal system of management of the social welfare of the people. Health impacts are also found to be associated with housing in which bad housing affects the health status of the people in that social class. The opposite is also true. When housing has access to good health systems, transport and other social amenities, it is important to note that access to external health facilities is made easy. Examples are given of children living in poorly constructed homes during winter being unable to live as effectively as possible comparable to those from better housing (Acheson, 1997, p. 1782). 5.0 Conclusion The development of the British health welfare system has had far-reaching effects on the lives of the people under such a directive measure. It has been noted that any changes that were being implemented led to there being a new concern over the next step that would later improve for an adaptable purpose. Therefore, every child needs to be given the best start in life to be able to appreciate the importance of having better health. By use of both liberal market theories and social democratic theories, it has been understood and identified as applicable to the process of initiating the successful change process. References Acheson, S. D. 1997. Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report. London: The Stationery Office. Butler, J. 1992. Policies and Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press. Castle, A. (2013. Child Tax & Welfare Benefits and Their Possible Effect on Population Growth. London : Population Matters . Giddens, A. 1995. Politics, Sociology and Social Theory, Encounters with Classical and Contemporary Social Thought. Stanford University Press: Stanford . Haralambos, M. a. 2000. Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. London: HarperCollins. Health, D. o. (2012). The Public Health Outcomes Framework for England, 2013-2016. Retrieved 2015, from Government of the UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216159/dh_132362.pdf Nolan, Y. 2001. Care NVQ 3. Oxford: Heinemann. Sines, D., Appleby, F., & Hammond, E. 2001. Community Health Care Nursing (2nd Edition ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Read More