The Nature and Role of Information 1 страница

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Social welfare

State and voluntary services

In Britain the State is now responsible, through either central or local government, for a range of services covering family allowances, social insurance, help for war victims, financial assistance when required, health and welfare services for mothers and young children, the sick, mentally disordered, elderly and handicapped and for families in difficulties of various kinds, and the care of children lacking a normal home life (all described in this chapter); and for education (see Chapter 6), housing (see Chapter 7) and employment services (see Chapter 16). Public authorities in the United Kingdom are spending about 5,230 million a year on this range of services; that is, over 97 a year per head of the population.

Voluntary organisations, especially the Churches, were the pioneers of nearly all the social services. They provided schools, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, and social and recreational clubs before these were provided by the State. They made themselves responsible for the welfare of the very young and the very old, the homeless and the handicapped. Gradually the State accepted the primary responsibility for the major services, supplementing the voluntary services and developing a comprehensive structure that ensured a minimum standard of living and wellbeing for all citizens.

State and voluntary social services are now complementary and co-operative. The State often works through voluntary agencies specially adapted to serve particular needs and ensures that necessary standards are maintained. The officers of central and local government, in carrying out their duties, co-operate with the workers of many voluntary social service societies, while the residential provision made by the State and by local authorities for the care of the chronic sick and the aged is supplemented by voluntary homes of various types for the care of the sick and elderly, most of whom receive State pensions or benefits.

The Charity Commission, a government department, gives free advice to trustees of charities, making schemes to modify their trusts and purposes when necessary; it maintains a Central Register of Charities in which information about all the charities in England and Wales is being gathered together; and it works to promote co-operation between charities and State services.

Voluntary Organisations

The number of voluntary charitable societies and institutions in Britain runs into thousands; they range from national organisations to small individual local groups. Most organisations, however, are members of larger associations or are represented on local or national co-ordinating councils or committees. Some are chiefly concerned with giving personal service, others in the formation of public opinion and exchange of information.

Organisations concerned with personal and family problems and misfortunes include the voluntary family casework agencies, of which the Family Welfare Association, working mainly in London, is the best known; marriage guidance centres affiliated to the National Marriage Guidance Council; and the Family Service Units.

Voluntary service to the sick and disabled in general is given by the British Red Cross, the St. John Ambulance Brigade and the St. Andrew's Ambulance Association, but a number of societies exist to help sufferers from particular disabilities, such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, the National Association for Mental Health, the constituent members of the Central Council for the Disabled and their Scottish equivalents.

Bodies working on a national scale whose work is specifically religious in inspiration include the Salvation Army, the Church Army, Toe H, the Committee on Social Service of the Church of Scotland, the Church of England Children's Society, the Church of England Council for Social Work, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Society of Friends, the Crusade of Rescue, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council and the Jewish Board of Guardians.

A wide range of voluntary personal service is given by the Women's Voluntary Service, which 'lends a hand' in every kind of practical difficulty, brings 'meals on wheels' to housebound invalids and old people, minds children, and visits the sick in hospital, as well as doing relief work in emergencies.

A central link between different voluntary organisations and official bodies concerned with social welfare is provided in England and Wales by the National Council of Social Service, which brings together most of the principal voluntary agencies for consultation and joint action, either as a whole or in groups of those concerned with particular aspects, such as youth work or old people's welfare. There are also the Scottish Council of Social Service and the Northern Ireland Council of Social Service, which perform similar coordinating functions in the voluntary sphere. It was the National Council of Social Service, which set up the Citizens' Advice Bureaux, of which there are now about 430 in Great Britain. The primary role of the bureaux is to give explanation and advice to the citizen who is in doubt about his rights or who does not know about the State or voluntary service which could help him.

Social Workers

While the voluntary worker giving full-time or part-time service has done pioneer work in many of Britain's social services and continues to play an essential part, social services of all kinds increasingly depend for their operation chiefly on the professional social worker, that is, the full-time salaried worker trained in the principles and technique of social work. Training for many forms of social work consists of a basic university degree, diploma or certificate course in social science followed by a university course in applied social studies or specialised training for a particular service. The latter is sometimes organised by the profession concerned. Under the Health Visiting and Social Work (Training) Act 1962 a Council for Training in Social Work was set up to promote the training, in the first instance, of workers in the local authority health and welfare services and similar services run by voluntary bodies. Full-time courses lasting two years, now being provided by eleven colleges of further education, lead to the Council's Certificate in Social Work. More courses are being arranged, including two starting in October 1965 in Scotland.

Voluntary organisations were the pioneers in the employment and training of social workers, but government departments and local authorities now employ a considerable number of trained social workers, for example, in child care, youth work, medical-social work, psychiatric social work, and the probation service.

Immigration and Welfare

In recent years many people from Commonwealth countries in Asia, Africa and the West Indies have entered Britain to take up employment, some with their families but many alone, their families coming later. Often they concentrate in large industrial areas where they add to the demand for housing and increase the pressures on educational facilities and other social services.

In 1965, because the Government was not satisfied with progress in integrating Commonwealth immigrants into the community, the Prime Minister appointed one of the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State in the Department of Economic Affairs to be personally responsible for coordinating government action and promoting the efforts of local authorities and voluntary bodies to deal with the various social and economic problems.

The Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council, which was set up in 1962, has published three reports on these problems. On its recommendation a non-official National Committee was set up in 1964. The Government intends to replace these two organisations by a new National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants which will promote integration efforts on a national basis.

The Race Relations Bill 1965, of which the main object is the introduction of legal sanctions against discriminatory behaviour, provides for local conciliation committees to inquire into complaints of racial discrimination in places of public resort and a Race Relations Board to look into cases where conciliation is not achieved. If necessary, the Attorney-General would take proceedings in the civil courts.

Social security

National Insurance, Industrial Injuries Insurance, ramily Allowances and National Assistance together with (in a special category) War Pensions, constitute a comprehensive system of social security in the United Kingdom which ensures that in no circumstances need any one fall below a certain minimum standard of living.

The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance administers the first three of these services in Great Britain; in Northern Ireland they are administered by the Ministry of Health and Social Services. National Assistance is administered by the National Assistance Board in Great Britain, and in Northern Ireland by the National Assistance Board for Northern Ireland. Pensions and welfare services for war pensioners and their dependants are the responsibility of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance throughout the United Kingdom. Appeals relating to claims for insurance benefits, family allowances or war pensions, or to applications for assistance, are not decided by the Ministries or the Boards but by independent authorities appointed under relevant legislation.

Although the development of public provision for social security in Britain can be traced back for several centuries (the Poor Relief Act of 1601 maybe regarded as specially important in England and Wales), the modern system of comprehensive provision is a creation of the twentieth century. Non-contributory old age pensions were introduced in 1908, and the first contributory pensions for old people, widows and orphans in 1926. A contributory National Health Insurance Scheme was begun in 1912, and in the same year a scheme of unemployment insurance was introduced which in 1920 was extended to cover the great majority of employees. By the beginning of the second world war social security provision in Britain was among the best in the world, but lacked co-ordination by the very fact of its piecemeal development, and not everyone came within its scope. In the immediate post-war years a series of Acts introduced the present comprehensive system, which became fully operative on 5th July, 1948. Adjustments have been made by a number of subsequent Acts. Statutory provision for the war disabled goes back to the end of the sixteenth century, but the main lines of the present war pension provisions were laid down during the first world war.

Family allowances and national insurance benefits or allowances, other than maternity, unemployment or sickness benefit, are included in the taxable income on which income tax is assessed. On the other hand, various income tax reliefs and exemptions are allowed on account of age or liability for the support of dependants. War disablement pensions are not taxable.

Reciprocity

The national insurance, industrial injuries and family allowances schemes of Great Britain and those of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man operate as a single system. Reciprocal agreements on industrial injuries, family allowances and all, or most, national insurance benefits are in operation with Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the German Federal Republic, Guernsey, Jersey, Norway and Yugoslavia. Agreements with France, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey cover industrial injuries and most national insurance benefits. With Australia, Canada and New Zealand there are agreements on family allowances and some, or most, national insurance benefits. There is an agreement with Cyprus on national insurance, and one with the Irish Republic which covers some national insurance benefits; it also contains some industrial injuries provisions relating to seafarers. Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, as well as Great Britain, are party to most of the agreements with other countries.

Family allowances

Family allowances are provided in Great Britain under the Family Allowances Act 1945, and in Northern Ireland under the Family Allowances Act (Northern Ireland) 1945. Nearly 6 million allowances are being paid in Great Britain to about 3 million families with two or more children and over a quarter of a million in Northern Ireland to 118,000 families. An allowance is paid for each child other than the first child below the age limits. The age limits are 15 years for children who leave school at that age, 16 years for certain incapacitated children, and 19 for children who remain at school or are apprentices. The rate of the allowance is 8s. a week for the second child below the age limits and los. a week for the third and each subsequent child.

Family allowances are paid from the Exchequer and their object is to benefit the family as a whole; they belong to the mother, but may be paid either to the mother or to the father. There is no insurance qualification for title to the allowances, but there are certain residence conditions.

National Insurance

The National Insurance Acts 1946-64 apply, in general, to everyone over minimum school-leaving age (15 years) living in Great Britain. There are similar schemes in Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.

The National Insurance scheme provides benefits in specified contingencies to insured persons who have paid the required contributions. The benefits are paid for partly by insured persons' contributions, partly by contributions of employers in respect of their employees, and partly by a contribution made by the Exchequer out of general taxation. The rates of contributions (except for retirement pensions) and benefits are standard amounts varying only with the sex and insurance class of the insured person (with lower rates for those under 18). For retirement, graduated contributions and pensions were introduced in 1961; the scheme applies to all adult employed persons earning over ^9 a week and not 'contracted out' of it and provides for them to earn additions to flat-rate retirement pension (but not to any other benefit) in return for graduated contributions, related to earnings between ^9 and ^18 a week and normally paid in addition to the flat-rate contribution. Employees whose job provides them with an occupational pension, at least equivalent to the maximum State graduated pension, may be 'contracted out' of the scheme. About 4^ million employees are contracted out in Great Britain and over 39,000 in Northern Ireland.

Contributions

All three classes pay flat-rate contributions. Table 7 shows the main weekly rates of these contributions (including the National Health Service contribution, which for convenience is paid with it though the two services are separately administered). The table also shows the range of graduated contributions which are payable by employed persons aged 18 or over (unless they have been 'contracted out') who earn more than ^9 a week, at the rate of approximately 4^{^} per cent of that part of their weekly pay between ^9 and j ^ i S. The employer pays the same amount.

Flat rate contributions are normally paid on a single contribution card by national insurance stamps bought from a post office. It is the employer's responsibility in the first place to see that the class i contributions are paid, but he can deduct the employees' share from their wages. Graduated contributions are collected through the same machinery as is used to collect Pay As You Earn (deduction at source) income tax. The self-employed and non-employed must stamp their own cards. Contributions are usually credited for weeks of unemployment, sickness or injury, or if widow's benefit is being paid.

Contributors

Contributors under the National Insurance scheme are divided into three classes:

Class i. Employed persons. Those who work for an employer under a contract of service or are paid apprentices - over 23 million. This class falls into two groups: those who are, and those who are not, participating in the graduated part of the scheme.

Class 2. Self-employed persons. Those in business on their own account and others who are working for gain but do not work under the control of an employer - nearly i^ million.

Class 3. Non-employed persons. All persons insured who are not in class 1 or 2 - over a quarter of a million.

This general classification is subject to certain modifications, made by regulations, to meet special circumstances. Married women engaged only in their own household duties are, in general, provided for by their husbands' insurance and need not pay contributions. They can choose to pay contributions provided they were insured persons when they married. (Those who were already married when the scheme began to operate on 5th July, 1948, cannot be insured in their own right unless they were then insured under the old scheme and continued to pay contributions as non-employed persons, or unless they have since taken up paid work.) Employed married women may choose whether to pay separate contributions themselves or to rely on the cover provided by their husbands' contributions, which make them eligible for maternity grant, retirement pension at lower rate, widow's benefit and death grant, but they must pay graduated contributions if they are employed in a participating employment and their earnings are over 3^{^}9 a week. Students receiving full-time education and unpaid apprentices need not pay contributions. Up to the age of 18, contributions are credited to them. Over that age they may, if they wish, pay as non-employed persons (class 3) and thus safeguard their title to widow's benefit and to retirement pension at full rate. Self-employed and non-employed persons whose income is not more than £260 a year can apply to be excepted from liability to pay contributions. They too may pay as non-employed persons to safeguard entitlement to pension.

An insured person ceases to be liable for national insurance contributions at the age of 70 for men, 65 for women, or when he retires, or is deemed to have retired, from regular employment after reaching minimum pension age (65 for men, 60 for women), whichever is the earlier. If such a person does any work as an employed person thereafter, he must pay an industrial injuries contribution; the employer still has to pay his full share of the flat-rate contribution.

Benefits

The scheme provides payments to contributors in case of unemployment (if normally working for an employer), sickness (if normally working for an employer or self-employed), and confinement and the weeks immediately before and after (for women normally working for an employer or self-employed and paying national insurance contributions at the full rate). Retirement pensions are paid to people who have reached 65 (60 for women) and who, if under 70 (65 for women), have retired from regular work; widows receive benefit in the first 13 weeks after bereavement and subsequently while they have young children or if they have reached the age of 50 when widowed or when their children have grown up; and there are two kinds of allowance in respect of orphan children where a widow's pension is not payable. The scheme also provides lump-sum cash grants for two expensive contingencies - the birth of a child and a death (though not for the death of someone already over minimum pension age when the scheme started).

For most of the benefits there are two contribution conditions. First, before benefit can be paid at all, a minimum number of contributions must actually have been paid since entry into insurance; secondly, the full rate of benefit cannot be paid unless a specified number of contributions have been paid or credited over a specified period. There are special rules to help a widow who does not become entitled to a widow's pension at widowhood or when her children have grown up, to qualify for sickness or unemployment benefit in the period before she can have established or re-established herself in insurance through her own contributions; there are also provisions to help divorced women who were not paying contributions during their marriage.

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The nature and role of information

1. Introduction

Think of a place to which you have never been or a person to whom you have never been introduced. Think of some food or drink which you have never tested or a film which yon have not yet seen. You may be thinking of New York or Glasgow, the Prime Minister or the principal of the college you attend, malt whisky or bird's nest soup. Whatever you are thinking of, it must be something of which you, yourself, have absolutely no first-hand personal experience.

How is this possible? The answer, of course, is that you have been told about, or have read about, these things (and where there are gaps in your knowledge you use your imagination). You have been on the receiving end of the communication process, forming your view of the world partly on the basis of second-hand information. For no one relies exclusively on personal experience and our minds are full of ideas that do not depend for their existence on our own sensory experience.

2. Sources of information

We receive information about things from a very wide range of sources. We may read of a place in a travel brochure or learn about it from looking at a friend's holiday snaps. We may form an impression of what sort of person a professional footballer is by reading an interview in a national newspaper. Our impression of malt whisky may depend entirely on the advertisements that we see for it in glossy magazines.

Of course, our own personal experience is also a vital source of information. But we can often manage surprisingly well without it.

If you were to summarise all the sources of information which contribute to this process of idea and image formation you would probably finish up with a list something like this:

• Things you know from your own personal experience.

• Things you have read in newspapers, magazines, leaflets and books.

• Things you have seen and heard on television and radio.

• Things told to you in a formal setting, such as a college lecture.

• Things told to you in an informal setting, such as a friendly chat.

• Things you overhear - in a bus queue, for example.

• Things you see - in a shop window, for example.

All the above represent different forms of communication. Amongst all that communication there will be many examples of publicity.

3. Direct publicity and indirect publicity

A great deal of publicity emanates from an organisation in order to influence people's opinions and actions in favour of that organisation. Advertisements, direct-mail letters and speeches are examples. This is known as direct publicity and is sometimes also called promotion.

We can learn a lot about an organisation, a business for example, from the direct, publicity it puts out. We can also learn a great deal from statements made about that organisation by other people. Documentaries on television, newspaper articles, competitors and consumers can all have something to say. This is publicity of an indirect sort - it does not come to us directly from the organisation.

Case Study

Bergerac and the Island of Jersey

Sometimes indirect publicity is an accidental by-product of a piece of work which was designed to serve quite a different purpose. The television detective series Bergerac was produced to provide thrilling entertainment but in doing so it gave a great deal of publicity to Jersey, the Channel Island in which the series was set. As a consequence of this publicity visitors to Jersey increased considerably, although the programme was not designed to boost local tourism. Paradoxically, some of the residents of Jersey objected to the attention which Bergerac brought to the island. They thought that it created the image of Jersey as a place with an unusually high, and violent, crime-rate.

How many people who have never visited Jersey have an image of it based almost entirely on watching the series Bergerac? And what sort of image would they have?

In common with most holiday destinations, Jersey does have a Tourist Office whose task it is to promote Jersey in the most positive way. There is nothing accidental about the television commercials, which expound the natural and beautiful Jersey coastline. Neither is there anything accidental about the brochures describing holidays in Jersey, which you can pick up in any good high-street travel agent. These are examples of planned and deliberate publicity using paid-for means of communication to enhance the image and performance of any organisation, product, etc. Jersey has its professional image-makers whose job it is to attract visitors (and business) to the island.

Image-making

In fact, every product of every sort, a holiday, a car, an insurance policy, a tube of toothpaste or an ice-cream, has an image, and every product has its image-makers.

Now imagine that you are one of those image-makers. You are probably either working for a business organisation or acting as one of its agents. Actually, you could be working for a political party, a charity, a religious organisation, the police force, local government or a branch of the armed services.

Your job is to use your communication skills to promote the interests of your employer in a positive way. Those interests may range from increasing sales to winning elections: from raising funds to attracting new recruits: from saving the church tower to fighting drug addiction.

* Advertising is shown here as just one example of a promotional activity

Fig.1.1. The relationship between promotion, publicity and advertising

Whatever those interests are they will be undermined if your employer has a poor image and strengthened if your employer has a good image. It is your job to use a range of promotional techniques to enhance that image and support your employer's objectives and interests. It is also your job to be aware of all the indirect publicity that your employer may attract and, where it is unhelpful to your employer's purposes, to counter it.

It is almost certainly too big a task for just one person. A number of people with a wide range of promotional skills between them will have to work together to achieve the employer's objectives. Apart from promotional skills there is also a need for research, analysis and planning. That is what this book is about.

Figure 1.1 shows some of I the above ideas in relationship to each other. In the large outer circle we have all the forms of publicity to which an organisation or its products might be exposed. Some of that publicity, as we have seen, arises indirectly and is outside the control of the organisation and some of it is direct and within the organisation's control. The Jersey Tourist Board had no control over the scripts for Bergerac but it certainly controls its own television advertisements.

In the middle circle we have those aspects of publicity which we can call promotion - all the communication which an organisation does on its own behalf to improve its image and to improve its chances of achieving its objectives. Promotion includes advertising, sponsorship, direct mail, personal selling, public relations, conferences, exhibitions, etc.

In the smallest circle we have just one example of a promotional activity - advertising. We could put public relations, direct mail or any of the other items into this circle. As we go through the book the two larger circles remain unchanged - there is always publicity in its widest sense and promotion as a particular kind of publicity in a narrower sense. It is the content of the inner circle that changes as we discuss different types of promotional activity.

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What is publicity and promotion?

Introduction

Any business decision is developed within the context of the organisation's environment. This will be discussed more fully in chapter 3. Here we are concerned with a particular aspect of the environment which we will call the publicity surround. Any organisation is surrounded by publicity which pervades both its internal and its external environments. As we have noted, some of the publicity is direct in the sense that it originates from the organisation (we will later define this as promotion). Some, however, is indirect in that its origin lies elsewhere - this is obviously not promotion as such.