Suchergebnisse

Anyone working, or planning to work, as an advocate for people dealing with public services will want to read this book. Based on the experience of advocates and using case studies based on real practice issues, the accessible style of Speaking to Power will make it an enjoyable read for professionals, students and lay people alike.

Some readers will recall the last time we marched under our union banners to protest against widespread cuts in the public services - teachers, nurses, social workers, local government officers and others, chanting 'What do we want? The right to work!', 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - out, out, out!'. What I also recall is that the pupils, the patients, the social work clients and council tenants stayed at home. Noting that, the government pressed on undeterred. With even bigger cuts now in view, those days will come again. Will the people who depend most heavily on the public services stay away again? With the same result? These patterns reflect the outcome of an earlier revolution whose importance is still not widely recognised. After the second world war, Western governments had to settle class conflicts which had threatened their regimes in former times. On the far side of the North German plain - perfect tank country - stood the vast forces of the Red Army, soon to be equipped with nuclear weapons: a constant reminder that other regimes were possible if democracies failed their people. Along with full employment, recognition of workers' rights and high rates of taxation on the rich came the creation of what came to be called 'welfare states'. Along with a steadily growing array of services providing pensions, medical and social care, education, subsidised housing, legal aid and town and country planning came the public service professions working in these services. This brought about a massive transfer of power to these professions from the local gentry - the people who had founded and managed the public services of their day: the voluntary and municipal hospitals, poor relief, the schools, the improvement commissions, and charities of every kind. Adapted from the source document.