Suchergebnisse

Following its review of the Sexual Offences Act (2003), the Home Office undertook a review of legislation on sex work. Policy will be shaped by responses to the consultation document, Paying the Price: a Consultation Paper on Prostitution. How the consultation conceives problems of sex work is therefore crucially important. Sex work service providers and rights campaigners are concerned that the consultation turns attention away from health issues and focuses instead on legislation to penalize both sex workers and their clients. Further, Paying the Price seeks solutions for sex work at the individual rather than structural level. Sex workers might be recommended to 'exiting programmes' and individual pimps and traffickers prosecuted, but there is no attempt to prevent sex worker abuse through human rights and employment laws. This article identifies the problems associated with a perspective that prioritizes punitive responses over public health strategies on sex work.

English
Tackling health inequalities is a policy priority for the Labour government in the UK. We use Kingdon's model of 'policy streams' to explain how the issue of health inequalities gets onto the policy agenda nationally and locally, and how it is being implemented. Using empirical evidence from local agencies, we suggest that the issue of health inequalities is on the agenda nationally and locally but implementation is hampered by deficiencies in performance management, insufficient integration between policy sectors, and contradictions between health inequalities and other policy imperatives. Thus, the government's expectations are not only dashed locally, but also local expectations are being dashed at the centre.

The article draws on two separate studies employing developmental vignettes (hypothetical scenarios which unfold through a series of stages) to interview research participants. One study used the 'Davie' vignette, which was a conventional fixed narrative, while in the second, the 'Jack and Jenny' vignettes were made interactive by hyperlinking a series of PowerPoint scenarios and making the choice of the succeeding slide dependent on the interviewee's reaction to its predecessor. Our analytic standpoint, in respect of both vignettes, is that of Schutzian phenomenology. We point to differences in both topical and motivational relevances in the processes of interpretation undergone by participants in considering the vignette scenario and in the situation of action. However, we show that research participants' responses to vignettes can yield data of interest in their own right as participants perform 'Thou-orientations' and 'They-orientations' in their consideration of the stimuli. We close with a comparative evaluation of the fixed 'Davie' and the interactive 'Jack and Jenny' vignettes.

Social Policy Review is an annual selection of commissioned articles focusing on developments and debates in social policy in the UK, Europe and internationally. The Review has become recognised as a topical, accessible, well-written and affordable publication and has a substantial readership among social policy teachers, students, researchers and policy makers. Social Policy Review 13 continues the tradition of providing a different style and approach to policy issues from that found in most academic journals and books. Chapters have been purposely chosen to review a varied and interesting selection of social policy developments in Britain and internationally, and to set current policy developments in a broader context of key trends and debates