Demonstration projects and social policy

Higgins, Joan Margaret (1978) Demonstration projects and social policy. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

In the 1960s the British and American governments embarked upon a series of experimental programmes in social policy. They were concerned not so much with testing out specific hypotheses but with exploring undefined possibilities. Pour of these programmes are examined in thin thesis - the Community Action Program and Model Cities Program, in America, and the Educational Priority Area programme and Community Development Project, in Britain.Certain themes were common to all four programmes. Each emphasised 'community action', 'participation of the poor', 'co-ordination' and 'rationality' in social planning, and an 'area approach' to solving the problem of poverty. The programmes were expected to try out new ways of attacking social problems, and to demonstrate n variety of action strategies, in order to soo 'what worked'. This thesis looks at the origins of the programmes, et the techniques they used to attain their objectives, and at the problems they encountered. it examines particularly the extent to which they fulfilled the function of 'informing social policy'. Finally, it sets out to test the validity of those accounts of social policy which see it as a means of social control, and as a result of a conspiracy by a ruling elite to regulate the poor'.

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