THE SOCIAL FUND AS AN EXERCISE IN RESOURCE ALLOCATION |
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| Authors: | ROBERT WALKER DOROTHY LAWTON |
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| Affiliation: | Robert Walker is Assistant Director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and Senior Research Fellow in the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York.;Dorothy Lawton is Research Fellow in the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York. |
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| Abstract: | The social fund is the latest attempt to cope with the exceptional needs sometimes experienced by people in receipt of social assistance. It is also the first occasion when resource allocation decisions have been located centre-stage in a policy area that, hitherto, has been primarily demand-led. The social fund, which is eventually to be cash-limited, is allocated between over 400 Department of Social Security ( dss ; formerly Department of Health and Social Security, dhss ) local offices. The article describes how the 1988/9 budget was fixed and allocated between local offices, considers some of the problems that policymakers faced when devising the allocation criteria and examines the territorial redistribution inherent in the chosen strategy and which may or may not have been intended. |
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