The Definition of Social Policy

Abstract

All policy means choice involving change. Policy by its very nature implies that we ‘believe we can affect change in some form or another. We do not have policies about the weather because, as yet, we are powerless to do anything about the weather.’¹ Yet, precisely because it cannot escape the constraint of choice involving change, precisely because it is action-oriented and problem-oriented, no policy can escape from values, ideologies and images of what constitutes the ‘good society’. Titmuss stressed that human values cannot be ignored in any meaningful discussion of social policy. Since in the last analysis, ‘social policy is all about social purposes and choices between them’,² it was obvious to him that it could never be ‘value-free’:

We all have our values and our prejudices; we all have our rights and duties as citizens, and our rights and duties as teachers and students. At the very least, we have a responsibility for making our values clear; and we have a special duty to do so when we are discussing such a subject as social policy which, quite clearly, has no meaning at all if it is considered to be neutral in terms of values.³