Public services

The origins of modern welfare was published in July 2010, by Peter Lang.  The publisher and I agreed at the time of publication that our contractual agreement would expire after ten years, and the rights would revert to me.  I am taking the opportunity now to make this work freely available, on a Creative Commons licence.

The book contains modern English versions of two documents from the early sixteenth century, which have some claim to be the earliest ever studies made in the field of social policy.  The De Subventione Pauperum, by Juan-Luis Vives, was a commissioned academic report, written for the Senate of Bruges, and published in 1525.  It represents, a watershed in thinking about governance, social responsibility and public policy. In Book 2 it proposes a comprehensive civic organisation of welfare services. 

Poverty as measured by material deprivation through lack of economic resources remains absolutely central to understanding the causation of most aspects of social exclusion and a range of social outcomes, concludes the 2nd of the two-volume PSE-UK study.

This latest PSE report assesses the state of local public and private services and trends since 1999. It finds that while most universal services have high usage, leisure and cultural services have seen falls in usage risking a spiral of decline.

This annotated questionnaire gives top level results on a range of items and activities people in Northern Ireland feel are necessities and those thought desirable but not necessary. Items and activities for adults and, separately those for children are covered.

A programming error resulted in higher than expected amounts of missing data which appears to consist mainly of unrecorded Don't Know responses. Rigorous testing found no additional biases and the missing data and don't knows are excluded from the analysis, as is the normal practice with these kind of analyses. See Statistical Briefing Note 2.