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Social Need Revisited*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Susan Clayton
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Abstract

Considerable debate has taken place as to the nature of social need and ways in which it can best be identified in individual people, but little attention has focussed on the way assessments of need are used in the process of policy formation. The article takes Jonathan Bradshaw's commonly quoted taxonomy of social need and assesses its strengths and weaknesses for use in a practical policy making setting, that of assessment of need for sheltered housing for elderly people by a district housing authority. Some fundamental problems associated with Bradshaw's approach are then discussed, together with those arising from use of a term such as need in the process of policy formation.

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Articles
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Journal of Social Policy , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 215 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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