Social Policy and Society

Social policy and Society
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Professor
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Institution
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Introduction
Generally, a social policy consists of principles, guidelines, and activities which tend to
affect the living conditions of human being. Bonoli (2010) shows that social policy is
always within the political setting or governmental setting such as the social services
and the welfare state. Different sources have explained social policy in different
perspectives. The department of social policy in the school of economics in London has
defined social policy as an applied subject that is entirely concerned with the societal
needs thus helping the students to foster and withdraw much knowledge which is
relevant for social science disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and political
science. Therefore, in simple words, the social policy discusses the systematic
evaluation of societies on responding to social need. Breheny and Stephens (2010)
argues that the issue of social policy was established as a complement of social work
back in the 20th century.
The essay uses one of the articles which entirely discusses on social policy. The article
used is Parker, A., Meek, R. and Lewis, G., 2014. Sport in a youth prison: male young
offenders' experiences of a sporting intervention. Journal of youth studies, 17(3),
pp.381-396.The article analyses the issue of social policy whereby it advocates for
support of youths in participating in social activities such as sports. The main discussion
of the essay comprises the arguments explained by the article, advantages and
disadvantages of methods used to collect information in the essay and lastly discussion
on how the arguments used in the article relates to normal inequalities, social
inclusion/exclusion and poverty/deprivation in the society. The conclusion summarizes
the key arguments outlined in the article section. Conley (2010) concludes by showing
that sports-based initiatives for youths in custody can play a key role in promoting
personal rehabilitation by clearly integrating the support programmes and the provision
services which are of benefits to the young people.
The main argument of the article shows how social activities such as sports focuses to
reduce the number of youths serving prison sentences in countries such as England
and Wales has been increasing from an year to another. The article indicates how
reoffending rates among the youth sentenced to custody remains the highest for all

prisons. Every year more than 71% of the prisoners comprise the young people. This
shows that youth offending has become an issue and much attention needed to curb it.
The need to reduce the reoffending rate by young people has initiated to development
of new projects and programs. Ehrenreich (2014) shows how the government has
initiated structuring interventions which emphasize mentoring aspects to the society and
training the young people on participating in social activities such as sport and leisure
opportunities in the country. Despite initiating the key processes to reduce youth-crime
and antisocial problems in these countries, only a few programs on sports-based
interventions have been evaluated. The article shows how the research was carried out
to determine how multimodal sports-based activities will help in reducing juvenile cases.
There is a summary of how existing evidence which shows how the sports-based
initiatives for young offenders in custody have been enhanced by the physical education
for the youths detained in Wales and England. Foley-Nicpon and Lee (2012) explains
the diverse range of personal motivations and the benefits such as reducing personal
stress, elevating the boredom and improving social skills thus helping to support the
social rehabilitation for young people .
In addition, the article analyses the community sports-based initiatives which provides
the rehabilitation tools for youth's delinquency. Academic research clearly describes
how the rearrangement of a marginalized youth group in the community has been
prevented from criminal activities by the use of sports. There are sports activities such
as the Midnight basketball programmers which focused on reducing the crime rates
associated with the youths in the community. According to Griggs et al (2013) the sport
counseling intervention programme has successfully incorporated direct participation
thus reducing the reoffending rates especially for youths who have undergone a number
of training. Also, different authors have argued that sport is the successful activity is
discussing the proximal risk factors associated with the youth's crime in society. For
example, we have poor interpersonal skills and the poor social aspects which
characterize the negative peer groups and improper use of leisure time. According to
Currie (2010) the research carried in the article indicates the findings which highlight on
how physical and social aspects of sports have played a key role in improving personal
self-esteem and social skills for young people. In simple words the physical activities