Social Work and Poverty

A Critical Approach

Lester Parrott, Parrott, Lester

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781447307952
• eBook ISBN: 9781447307969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Social work and poverty: A critical approach provides a timely review of the key issues facing social workers and service users in working together to combat poverty.First, it situates social work and poverty within a historical context, then analyses definitions and theories of poverty along with their importance in enabling anti-oppressive practice with service users. It goes on to evaluate the Welfare Reform Act 2012 in relation to the negative impact on service users and social workers alike. Key areas of social work and social care are covered with regard to the effects of poverty including, uniquely, access to food, obesity and problematic drug use. Finally the impacts of globalisation on social work and issues of poverty are explored.

The book will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in social work and policy makers working in related areas.

1

Poverty and social work: the historical context

Research on the attitudes of social work practitioners and students provides a mixed view of how poverty is understood. An early study by Becker (1997) argued that social workers had an attenuated view of poverty, holding largely discriminatory views of how people became poor and operating from mostly individualistic theories to understand service users’ experiences of poverty. Theories that understood poverty as a structural problem were less likely to emerge in social workers’ accounts, which in turn had a negative impact on what social workers considered appropriate in terms of their practice. As Davis and Wainwright (2005) observed, social workers’ attitudes could be considered ambivalent, confused and at the extreme, hostile to service users living in poverty. Considering the current organisation of social work, where services are not attuned to issues of poverty, the consequences for service users can be highly negative. Thus current social work practice, centred on legal and procedural concerns, may result in social work ignoring action to combat the effects of poverty in service users’ lives.

Why is it, then, that despite all the evidence that points to the preponderance of service users living in poverty (Schorr, 1992; Becker, 1997; Dowling, 1999), so little is done to counter it by social workers?

In order to understand this phenomenon we need to explore how poverty has historically been addressed in the UK. In particular, we need to understand how social work as it has developed never saw itself as the appropriate medium through which the provision of assistance to those living in poverty should pass.

The origins of public assistance to the poor in the UK can be traced back to the succession of Poor Laws instituted over time that governed the way in which poor relief, as it was known, could be administered. (The development of the Poor Laws took different trajectories in Scotland and Ireland, albeit influenced by similar principles as they emerged in England.) The Poor Laws were not the only form of assistance to people living in poverty; the provision of relief also involved the church and private charities. Many charities were often influenced by deeply held religious convictions to intervene in the lives of poor people (Fielder, 2006). Much of the earlier provisions to people experiencing poverty were localised, based on the parish as the unit of administration. This was a reflection of the largely rural nature of the UK and its economy in which control over the Poor Law was in the hands of local magistrates. This form of giving saw assistance to poor people more as a gift of charity and benevolence in which the better off in society had a duty to help those people living in poverty whom they considered to be their social and moral inferiors. A lifetime of poverty was seen as the natural state for the majority of the population.

Once industrial capitalism began to develop, assistance became less communal and more individualised, as the new entrepreneurial class became more critical of the wastefulness, as they viewed it, of the old systems of giving. It is from this moment that assistance to poor people began to be dominated by attitudes that emphasised individualism and self-help. Poverty was understood as a moral problem, a scourge on society brought about by a morally degenerate underclass or residuum (Kidd, 1999). From their inception the Poor Laws were always considered to be a last resort for the destitute poor, while poverty itself was seen as the natural state for the majority. Thus many charities’ efforts were directed at preventing the poor from sinking into destitution or pauperism, as it was called. This became more evident after the Poor Law (Amendment) Act 1834 that paired back the relatively generous levels of assistance that had characterised earlier periods.

Poverty before capitalism

As Novak (1988) argues, the treatment of the able-bodied poor prior to the rise of industrial capitalism in the late 18th century can be described as an attempt to contain and control those people living in poverty within the locales of a rural society. This involved limiting the movement of labour around the country and punishing those deemed to be idle and not in work. The landed ruling class was concerned to maintain their hold over the poor as a means to store a pool of labour available to work in the agricultural economy. As capitalism rose to prominence in an emerging industrialised society, and the importance of a money economy to people’s existence began to grow, so the social relations that had characterised the rural economy increasingly became a fetter on the movement of labour around the country. Thus a more coherent response was required if poor people were to be contained. Ultimately, by the reign of Elizabeth I, a compulsory poor rate was levied on property owners within the parishes to provide relief for those who could not work. In addition, Justices of the Peace were required to purchase materials that would enable the able-bodied poor to be put to work. These provisions were later codified in the Poor Law 1601. As the century progressed, it became clear that society was caught between an existing ruling class based on the ownership of land trying to manage the problem of people experiencing poverty, in the face of a burgeoning class of merchants and nascent factory owners in the cities, who were requiring a more flexible approach to the problem of poverty.

The landed classes faced an increasing challenge from a capitalist class that required greater freedom to exploit the labour of the rural working class. While from the point of view of capital poor people could be contained in the country through the administration of the local Poor Law, the ‘rights’ of the urban property owners to exploit the labour of those people living in poverty was stifled. The outcome of this conflict between the landed aristocracy and the urbanised capital class over control of people living in poverty was to be further regulation of poor relief. This resulted in a regime of relief that was designed to weaken the Elizabethan Poor Law in order to contain the cost of poor relief, encouraging a greater freedom for labour and encouraging migration to the centres of employment in the towns and cities. However, the aims of the urbanised capitalist class were modified by the still powerful hold that the landed aristocracy had over Parliament, and therefore the legislation that developed represented a compromise between these two standpoints.

The shift in emphasis is often understood as the change from what some writers have called one of a moral economy to deal with the problem of poverty to one embodied in a free market economy. Thus the old order emphasised, to an extent, its duty to support people living in poverty in a limited way in a society in which the rich and poor, the landed and the property-less, were fixed within a rigid hierarchy of social relations (Polanyi, 1957; Thompson, 1968). The free market economy emphasised the rights of those who owned property to be able to exploit this in the way they saw fit. Within this, the labourers owned their property, that is, labour, and it was up to the labourers to support themselves through the selling of this labour power. It was the right of the owner of the means of production, those who owned the land and the machines on which the labourer would toil, to buy this labour at the most economical price. This is not to say that this was a purely economic argument in terms of efficiency, but it also acquired moral justification, that is, the freedom of the factory owner to develop their business to produce profit and the freedom of the labourer as an autonomous individual to sell their labour power. From this point of view the capitalist owed nothing to the labourer except his wages, and held no duty or responsibility towards others except themselves. The nature of social relations was then to be transformed from clearly defined duties and responsibilities to a seemingly fluid set of relationships tied only by the impersonal laws of contract. As Dean (2002) observes, the development of the Poor Law reinforced the principle that any form of social assistance was to be provided on a discretionary basis; social assistance has never been a social right, and as such, informs the treatment of poverty to this day.

Reform of the Poor Law

The social upheavals underway by the late 18th century created a new set of social relations in society, and these changes provided the context for the reform of the Poor Law. The relatively static systems of regulation of those people living in poverty were increasingly coming under strain. The gradual move of the population from the countryside to the city, and the financial aftermath of funding the war against France, resulted in serious economic and social distress and significant unrest in the early 1800s. Handloom weavers in Lancashire destroyed the new machines that had made them redundant as new technology drove down the price of the production of cotton. In the countryside the ‘Captain Swing’ riots resulted in rural labourers burning hayricks and assaulting the local gentry in protest against the increasing levels of rural unemployment. The cost of poor relief began to increase significantly as a response by the landed classes to the rising levels of rural poverty and unrest. These responses took the form of relief through subsidising wages in the rural economy (for example, the Speenhamland System, a system that subsidised farm labourers’ wages in line with the price of bread) and the use of public works to provide employment. The rise in the cost of relief to the poor brought forth a critical response of the existing system. One influential critic was Thomas Malthus, who, in his work An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society (Malthus, [1806] 1989), argued that the increase in population outstripped the ability to provide the means to maintain its subsistence. In particular, he posited that poor relief was undermining the independence of labourers. Generous Poor Law provision encouraged the growth of population within those classes least able to support such increases. Thus, he argued that the Poor Laws created increasing numbers of the poor who in turn required extra poor relief to maintain them. For Malthus the dangers were clear in that independently minded labourers would be dragged down to the level of the irresponsible poor on poor relief; the problem was not poverty as such, but the destitute who were maintained by the Poor Law rather than forced to seek employment. Dependent poverty was morally wrong, a vice that had to be expunged from society. Malthus’s prescription for change was the wholesale repeal of the Poor Laws rather than reform. Malthus died in the same year that the Poor Law was amended, and his essay had by that time run to six subsequent editions. Although Malthus had made much impact in his critique of the Poor Laws, his prescription was not carried forward into the subsequent reform.

The amendment of the Poor Law was brought on by the impact of the hard winter of 1829 that caused a harshening of economic conditions for the poor and a hardening response from the magistrates charged with administering poor relief. The ‘Captain Swing’ revolt of agricultural labourers, mainly in the South East of England, was a consequence of rising levels of rural unemployment and inadequate levels of outdoor relief paid. The rioters asserted their right to decent levels of relief to support them through such hard times. This revolt was threatening to the local landed classes who feared further insurrection if these demands were allowed to spread.

In response to these concerns, Parliament instituted a full-scale review of the Poor Laws by setting up a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1832 charged with investigating the existing operation of poverty relief and then to develop policies to reform them. The key figures within the Commission were Edwin Chadwick, Secretary to the Poor Law Commission, and Nassau Senior, a political economist with an unshakeable faith in laissez-faire economics. Chadwick, who ultimately wrote the report, was therefore in a powerful position to steer the outcome of the Commission’s findings. He was a believer in the ideas of Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarian philosophy had had a huge impact on the intellectual climate of the 19th century. For Chadwick, any policy devised to change the Poor Law should be considered in the light of the utilitarian concept of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people within a society. This required not the abolition of the Poor Laws, as Malthus had argued, but for a refinement in which mechanisms could be devised to achieve this ultimate utilitarian goal. As a starting point the Commission was at pains to distinguish between the able-bodied poor and those called the indigent or pauper who relied on poor relief. Poor Law reform should separate the two groups so that only the indigent, consisting of the impotent poor –children, widows, older people – should be offered relief as it had been configured before. The able-bodied pauper and his family were to be subject to more stringent tests. Thus the test applied one of ‘less eligibility’ in which the able-bodied pauper should not be given relief in excess of what the employed labouring poor could earn in wages. The principle of ‘less eligibility’ was then buttressed by a further deterrent to pauperism by only offering relief to the able-bodied pauper inside the workhouse. Conditions in the workhouse should test the pauper’s resolve, so that diets were poor, families segregated from one another, males from females, and strict discipline and labour was the order of the day to educate the pauper into habits of hard work and industry. The key issue for the reformers was to ensure that the able-bodied labouring poor were separated from the able-bodied paupers so that the habits of thrift and industry could be maintained, unsullied by the ‘idle and feckless’ pauper. If the new Poor Law could act as a symbol of dread, so much the better, so that only the most desperate would enter the gates of the workhouse. The overriding assumption underpinning this approach was that poverty was a voluntary and therefore reversible condition. The solution to poverty was the belief in the beneficence of the free market, by which the unemployed labourer would be returned to employment once demand for his labour had recovered.

The Poor Law (Amendment) Act 1834

The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws commenced in 1832 and collected information from 26 assistant commissioners, each appointed to investigate a particular district’s management of the old Poor Law. The brief for the commissioners was to investigate the ‘evils’ perpetrated by the old system. Not surprisingly, the vast amount of information gleaned enabled Chadwick and Senior to construct a report that chimed with Senior’s virulent opposition to the old system and Chadwick’s conviction that a new system needed to be developed from utilitarian principles (Brundage, 2002). The subsequent legislation represented the beginning of a centralised system of poor relief. Poor Law commissioners were charged with oversight of the Act and required to report to Parliament. The 1834 legislation restructured the local system of poor relief based on the parish by organising parishes into Poor Law unions. The unions would be responsible for operating a workhouse overseen by elected boards of guardians and administered by paid officials. The Poor Law Commission had limited powers to standardise systems of administration, to prevent certain kinds of fraud and to veto officials who were deemed unsuitable. However, the new Poor Law was not comprehensive in its coverage and was excluded from interfering in certain parishes and unions set up under the Gilbert Act 1782; it was not until the 1860s that the Poor Law commissioners could wield their power across the whole of the country when the metropolitan boroughs were finally subsumed under its administration (Englander, 1998).

In its focus on poor people the objective was to ensure that the distressed, able-bodied labourer should always be required to seek work at whatever level of pay, rather than seek relief. The principle of less eligibility therefore ensured that only the most desperate of labourers would seek poor relief. When relief was given, the intention was that this should only be offered within a workhouse. However, the practice of offering indoor relief was hampered by the slowness of some unions to build workhouses. Where workhouses were built, it was found that when sharp rises in unemployment were experienced, there was pressure on finding places inside the workhouse for all those who qualified. As a consequence, the workhouse principle was virtually undermined before it had begun. In effect, outdoor relief continued to be paid, but subject to the recipient working in the workhouse labour yards when the workhouse could not accommodate all the unemployed who qualified for relief.

An additional barrier faced by unemployed labourers searching for work was the settlement rules. These provisions required that labourers had to be maintained not where they resided but in their place of settlement (by birth or marriage), and had to return there if they required relief. This process of removal was a constant worry – some unions, where it was deemed cheaper to provide relief rather than remove the pauper, did so, but the fear of removal remained.

The outcome of the Poor Law Commission’s work was to ensure that the Poor Law would be reformed to further the interests of the rising class of capitalists who were beginning to dominate the debate on the Act. This did not mean that they had complete control, but they were beginning to mount a serious challenge against the landed interests. This challenge was further enhanced by many middle-class males acquiring the vote through the Reform Act 1832. The reform of the Poor Law seemed to satisfy both parties in that by reforming the Poor Law rural unrest could be quashed, as Chadwick had emphasised in his report that labourers had a right to a fair subsistence (Kidd, 1999). In enforcing less eligibility it in part spoke to the supporters of the free market in affirming the necessity for people living in poverty to labour at any price and at the same time encourage a national market for labour. Thus surplus rural labourers could be ‘encouraged’ to look for work in the smoky factories of the Midlands and the North, while...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Poverty and social work: the historical context
• 2 Social work and the concept of poverty
• 3 The reform of welfare?
• 4 Service users and the experience of poverty
• 5 Social work and poverty: ethics and practice
• 6 Social work organisations: responding to poverty
• 7 Poverty: social division and service users
• 8 Globalisation, social work and poverty
• Conclusion
• References