Social Work and the Third Way: Tough Love as Social Policy

The New Labour government in the UK is committed to a programme of reform of the welfare state that will pull away safety nets and replace them by trampolines, to bounce citizens back into active participation. Its regime of ′tough love′ will make more demands on those claiming benefits and services, as well as clamping down on dependencey, fraud and crime. This will be done by changing the culture of welfare agencies, towards promoting achievement and independence, as well as meeting ′genuine need′.

In Social Work and the Third Way, Bill Jordan provides an accessible and lively analysis of the tensions between ′toughness′ and ′love′ in the Third Way′s political philosophy, and the problems of implementing New Labour