Promoting Welfare?

As citizens we need information to exercise our social rights and responsibilities. However, information provision about welfare services is patchy and the 'information poor' are often disadvantaged in access to those services. Promoting welfare? explores how government information policies directly influence which service users claim their entitlements. This book links notions of citizenship with government policy to inform service users about their rights. It explores the role of government in encouraging or deterring the claiming of welfare entitlements as a way of understanding changing political perspectives and attitudes towards citizens and their social rights. Promoting welfare?: compares the rhetoric of claimants' rights with the realities of information provision; uses the example of the increasingly complex social security system to consider the citizenship status of claimants; focuses on government policies rather than on psychological, attitudinal or deprivational explanations for levels of take-up; uses historical and contemporary evidence, including interviews with policy makers, to explore information policy.; Promoting welfare? is aimed at all those who are concerned about poverty, social justice and citizenship including: students and teachers of social policy, politics and public administration politicians and policy makers service users, practitioners and welfare rights groups.