Social value in policies for children: contract or culture?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200800019 |
| Date | 04 May 2008 |
| Pages | 65-75 |
| Published date | 04 May 2008 |
| Author | Bill Jordan |
65
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 3 Issue 3 November 2008
© Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
Introduction
This article considers some of the theoretical
issues behind the concern in the UK over children’s
well-being, which was stimulated by Bradshaw
and colleagues (2007) comparative survey of the
25 European Union (EU) member states, and the
subsequent United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF)
study of 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries (United Nation’s
Children Fund, 2007). These gloomy findings about
childhood and adolescence in the UK (and the US)
clearly relate to poverty and inequality, to disorder,
crime and insecurity, but above all to the lamentable
quality of relationships with parents and peers that UK
children experience. It was in these spheres that they
did worst in comparison with other children in the
EU, and even in the post-communist recent accession
countries. This dragged down the UK’s score despite a
respectable performance in education.
So I want to focus especially on those aspects
of children’s well-being, that seem to be connected
with the other striking and controversial finding of
recent years – that adult well-being, as measured in
people’s self-assessments of their overall quality of
life, is increasingly diverging from their income levels;
as income rises, at least in the affluent countries,
well-being stays stubbornly flat (Kahneman et al,
1999; Frey & Stutzer, 2001; Huppert et al, 2005;
Layard, 2005). In these studies, too, it seems
that well-being is more closely related to social
relationships of all kinds (family, kin, friendship,
associational and community), as well as to health
and employment satisfaction, than to earnings or
material consumption (Argyle, 1999; Myers, 1999;
Helliwell, 2003).
This evidence points towards a paradox that is
fundamentally challenging for economists, but also
for public policy analysts. The most basic assumption
of economics is that ‘more is better’, when ‘more’ is
what is chosen by individuals (increased utility). By
definition, more income means more utility and hence
more welfare – so how can more be less (or at least
no more) in terms of well-being? It seems that more
family income does not give rise to greater well-being
for parents or children.
Although I shall be addressing this mainly as a set
of theoretical issues about the nature and sources of
well-being, it is already a policy issue, and part of the
struggle between party programmes. David Cameron,
the leader of the opposition Conservative party in the
UK, was quick to pick up the themes of both Layard’s
(2005) book and Bradshaw’s (2007) research. In late
January and early February 2008, the Conservatives
Abstract
Both the collapse of the financial system and the recent child protection scandals in the UK illustrate
the limitations of the contract model for regulating social interactions. This article argues that the
economic orthodoxy that has dominated recent public policy in the affluent Anglophone countries is now
discredited, and that the social value derived from communications and exchanges within cultures of
empathy, respect and inclusion should supply criteria for evaluating interventions, and should replace
contracts as means of sustaining quality in many aspects of services.
Key words
Child well-being; social value; welfare; culture
Bill Jordan
Social value in policies for
children: contract or culture?
Professor of Social
Policy, Universities
of Plymouth and
Huddersfield, UK
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