Social Welfare and its Critique

This assignment delves into critical perspectives on the welfare state. It examines arguments against the medicalization of mental health issues and the creeping privatization of public services like housing and healthcare. The analysis also considers social inequality as a key factor influencing access to and outcomes within the welfare system. Notably, it incorporates Ivan Illich's later critique of 'Deschooling Society,' highlighting his evolving views on the limitations of traditional societal structures.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Health and Social Welfare
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Essay 1
The essay aims to focus on the welfare state policies. The essay aligns with the quote
'the real disputes are not about whether welfare should exit, but about how much provision
there should be, and how it should be done' by Paul Spicker, which means, that it does not
matter, whether welfare is being done or not, but depends on how much provision has been
allotted for an individual, depending upon the socio economic status (Spicker 2013). This
essay would further discuss regarding the changes incorporated and the political context of
the welfare state policies. The essay will also provide an insight to the different health care
perceptive as per the social strata.
In 1984, historian Derek Freaser stated the British story briefly. At the time of the
great depression in the year 1930, the U.K local and the state government and the private
charities were concerned about the poor families asking for food, shelter and clothing. Hence,
in the year 1935, the government took the responsibilities of the impoverished and the
deprived classes of people. The reforms remained for 60 years (Morel, Palier and Palme
2012). In the year 1942 the Beveridge Report spelled out a social insurance system, taking
each and every citizen under the coverage, regardless of the socioeconomic status. It
promised a concept of 'cradle to grave ' welfare state, till it dangled in 1946, before the British
electorate. In the year 1942 the Beveridge Report spelled out a social insurance system,
taking each and every citizen under the coverage, regardless of the socioeconomic status
(Beveridge, 2014). It promised a concept of' cradle to grave ' welfare state, till it dangled in
1946, before the British electorate. The report published by Beveridge report, contained the
strategies for providing help to those who are in real need. The report was termed as "the five
giants". The key elements of the five giants related to the well fare of the people are 'want,
Ignorance, disease, Squalor and idleness' (Beveridge, 2014). The report was like a push to the
government to indulge in reforms for the impoverished class of people. In accordance with

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the collectivist concept, the cradle to grave concept focuses mainly on the provision of
minimal levels of health care. It facilitated the dismantling of the British privileges and class
system.
As discussed earlier that the main aim of the state welfare is to improve the life style
of the population of the United Kingdom. The state welfare concept mainly focused on
children, so that they are properly clothed, fed and is imparted with basic education (Renzoni
2013). Some of the advantages of the State welfare are that it improved the access to the
health care. The essential needs of the children are addressed properly, in case where parents
are incapable of taking up financial responsibility of the child. Some of the benefits that the
welfare states give are tax credit, housing benefits, child benefit, incapacity benefit, income
support, community care grant, child tax credit and more (Morel, Palier and Palme 2012).
Other benefit is constant attendance allowance, crisis loans, funeral payment. The empirical
evidences supported that taxes and the transfers would help to reduce the poverty at a
significant level, but some of the people might become dishonest at their point and can hide
their economic status to come under the welfare scheme and get the welfare benefits. Some
of the well fare programs might not sustain capability of supporting others in the long run.
A significant number of disadvantages could be seen; such as there will be a massive
misuse of the tax payers money spent by the people having no wish to better themselves. The
youths will not strive to get better jobs, or plan their career, if they are provided with all the
necessities from the beginning. They will not be encouraged to get enough money to support
themselves. As stated by Starke et al.(2013), state well fare was set with good intentions to
help the poor people to prevent starvation, misery and disease. But a large number of people
just tend to survive on welfare rather than to earn by working.

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Until 1800, the state or the government was not involved in the provision of social
welfare (Forrest and Murie 2014). The provisions were mainly supplied by the local
churches, private welfare organizations. The provisions were provided locally by the local
recipients. Most of the social work occurred locally or within small groups. According to
Starke et al.(2013), the requirement of welfare support through benefit services and payments
can be replaced by several alternatives. At first it has to be understood regarding the meaning
of the benefits. The benefits provided by the welfare state were undervalued by many people.
One of the major alternatives to the state welfare is the increasing role of the voluntary
sectors (Renzoni 2013). Community welfare can be suitable where the members can be
responsible for each other and care for each other. As stated by Forrest and Murie (2014) the
friendly societies set up in German long before the welfare state policy, was much successful
in giving 'mutual aid' to the people who are working. This concept spread to the other
European countries including Britain (Murray 2016). A successful alternative such as mutual
funds meant putting money in a common fund for helping each other in times of need. The
mutual aid was commissioned form one person to the other rather to a poor person from a
distant bureaucrat. In such a case the well being of the welfare recipient have to remain
dependant on this distant bureaucrat. There were provisions for fraternal societies, which
provided insurance policies like accident and sickness benefits by (Forrest and Murie 2014).
The immigrants were also benefitted from the mutual aid organizations. The family members
that are rich can serve the needs of the needy member. Several charitable trusts and
philanthropists are there that can address the needs of the poor (Murray 2016).
The welfare state had always been on the frontline of the political debate. As the
societies have changed the welfare policies have also changed. Since 1997, the government
had cut the costs of the unemployment (Gelauff and Graafland 2014). Work is promoted to
those who have capacities and security to those who cannot work. It was not until after the

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Second World War that the state welfare got its mature form. After World War II, the
contemporary party felt a need for reform to look after the poor people of the society (Gelauff
and Graafland 2014). The ideology of labor included providing provisions to the working
class that are socially poor until the idea of universalism came in to being, that suggested that
well fare should not be confined to the poor, but for all. Margaret Thatcher and her chancellor
Sir Geoffrey home were thought to be politically behind the dismantling of the Welfare state
(Slater 2014). Thatcher believed in the concept that the state cannot provide everything to
everybody. During the conservative government from the year 1979 to 1997, four key
elements wee the central policies of the welfare states that is attempt to control the public
spending, privatization, targeting and rising equality (Danson et al.2012).
Despite the welfare policies, health inequalities still persist after 70 years of the
welfare provisions of UK. Poor and the socially backward people always tend to consume
more health care in terms of both the cost and the volume (Hemerijck, 2013). In spite of the
policies the poor classes of the people face earlier death and failing illness. Despite of the
wellness policies, the life expectancy of people living in the remote areas are less than those
living in the richest areas. The gap is more prominent for the impoverished women (Marmot
and Allen 2014). Inequalities in health can be linked to literacy, physical and social
environment. As stated by the American theorist Talcott Parsons social action can be stated
as taking positive innovative steps for amending the wrong things in the society by
introducing new ideas and for the betterment of the society (Giddens et al.2016). In this
context, life style changes of the richer class of people and proper strategies and policies
taken up by the government can bring about an end to inequalities in health care.
Different social classes are subjected to different levels of health care. There are
certain social determinants of health, out of which the socio economic condition is one of the
most important factor (Weightman et al.2012). People belonging to the lowest rung of the

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social ladder have to remain dependant on the publicly funded health care facilities, which
sometimes cannot meet their complicated needs (Giddens et al.2016). Further more people
belonging to low economic background can have low health literacy and thus they lack the
knowledge regarding which health policies are to be used. Poor people living in remote areas
also can act as a barrier to health care for them (Jones and Novak 2012). People who are rich
does not have to remain dependant on the public or government funded organizations for
health care, nor do they have to stand in long queue for accessing health care. Hence these
are the factors that are responsible for the differential access of health care by different
classes of people (White 2016).
There should always remain equality in health care. Care should be taken such that
health facilities reach the needy people. Focus should be given on child health, child
education, women education, facilities for the immigrants. There should be Proper health
insurance facilities, proper taxation for avoiding the wastage of the public fund.

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Task 2
3.1
Social constructionism is defined as a conceptual framework that gives importance
over the cultural and the historical aspects of the phenomenon that is widely thought to be
exclusively natural. Here the emphasis is on how the meanings of the phenomena do not
strictly inhere in the phenomenon themselves but generates via the interactions in a social
context. A social constructionist approach to illness is grounded and is widely recognized as a
conceptual distinction between the diseases (defined as the biological condition) and illness
(the social definition of the condition) (Andrews 2012). This social constructionism goes
against the medical model of illness that assumes that the diseases are universal and are
invariant to time or place. Social constructionists on the other hand emphasize in hoe the
meaning and the experience of the illness is structured by the social and the cultural systems.
Social constructionists envisage symptoms as cultural definitions rather than an individual
property of the individuals. From this point, it can be argued that the existence of the mental
illness is dependent on particular culture. Anthropological work in the non-western cultures
has revealed that the particular behaviours, which are viewed as symptoms of mental disorder
by the western professionals are totally normal or non-existent in these cultures (Pescosolido
2013). Another example that can be cited is, suicide in Catholic societies is against the
preaching of the Christ and is linked to poor mental health condition. Where as, in Japanese
culture, suicide is regarded as a medium to get rid of sins.
3.2
Medicalization in the mental health occurs when any previously known non medical
problems are characterised or treated as mental illness. Few of the examples in this ground

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include Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD).
In the western societies, health or illness is defined and simultaneously controlled solely by
the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies and both the efforts are aptly guided
by the government bodies (Clark 2014). For example previously there are no known
medicines for the treatment of social anxiety as it was regarded as a relative term that varies
from person to person. Recently there are several pharmaceutical companies who are coming
up with specific medicines for the treatment of the SAD and thereby projecting SAD as a
mental health disease. According to the functionalists, these groups help the people through
the recovery of the illness. Marxists on the other hand argue that these groups are solely
interested to maintain their own positions financial positions in the society and that is why
they are taking the maximum benefits of the social taboos’ and projecting them as mental
health disease.. There is a separate view coming from the interactionists who argue that the
people have significant opinion on how they visualize their own health structure that is,
whether they listen to their doctors or take healthy advice to maintain a good lifestyle
(Conrad and Slodden 2013).
Ivan Illich offers a harsh critique over the health care domain. This trained medieval
historian and philosopher states that the "The threat which current medicine represents to the
health of populations is analogous to the threat which the volume and intensity of traffic
represent to mobility, the threat which education and the media represent to learning, and the
threat which urbanization represents to competence in homemaking" (Bruno‐Jofré, R. and
Zaldívar 2012).
3.3
Sociology is the systematic study of the human behaviour in society. Medical
sociology is defined as the systematic study of how human begins manages issues related to

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illness, health, disease and other mental disorders. According to the medical sociologist, the
social stigmas hinder individuals from completely integrating into the society. This
stigmatization of the mental illness frequently cast a significant effect on the patient and the
nature of care that he or she receives. The majority of the health care institution and the
society in which the patient's reside discriminate against several diseases of which the prime
target is the mental disorders, AIDS, venereal diseases and other skin disorders. The basic
concept of the social construction of illness is based on the concept of reality as a cordial
construction. Alternatively, it can be stated as, there is no objective reality and all are self-
made perceptions of human. The social construction of illness deals with several issues under
which the patients control the manner in which they reveal their disease and other lifestyle
adaption in order to cope with the illness (Brown and Closser 2016).
As per my understanding, certain mental illness is social constructs and few of the
doctors along with several pharmaceutical companies utilised these to their positions of
power.

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References
Andrews, T., 2012. What is social constructionism. Grounded theory review, 11(1), pp.39-46.
Beveridge, W.H., 2014. Full Employment in a Free Society (Works of William H. Beveridge):
A Report (Vol. 6). Routledge.
Brown, P.J. and Closser, S. eds., 2016. Understanding and applying medical anthropology.
Routledge.
Bruno‐Jofré, R. and Zaldívar, J.I., 2012. Ivan Illich's late critique of Deschooling Society:“I
was largely barking up the wrong tree”. Educational Theory, 62(5), pp.573-592.
Clark, J., 2014. Medicalization of global health 2: the medicalization of global mental
health. Global health action, 7(1), p.24000.
Conrad, P. and Slodden, C., 2013. The medicalization of mental disorder. In Handbook of the
sociology of mental health(pp. 61-73). Springer Netherlands.
Danson, M., McAlpine, R., Spicker, P. and Sullivan, W., 2012. The Case for
Universalism. Jimmy Reid Foundation.
Forrest, R. and Murie, A., 2014. Selling the welfare state: The privatisation of public
housing. Routledge.
Gelauff, G.M. and Graafland, J.J., 2014. Modelling welfare state reform (Vol. 225). Elsevier.
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Hemerijck, A., 2013. Changing welfare states. Oxford University Press.
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