Welfare reform and the Single Work Programme: A local perspective.

The political ideologies and economic strategies promoted since the early 1980s have created the ingrained welfare conditions that current reforms are meant to address. Behind the reforms is an ideology that not only seeks to reduce the role of the state but also implicitly blames the poor for their own condition, as evident in the threat of more sanctions on the supposedly non-compliant. We are witnessing the denouement of Thatcherism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]