The social security appointee system.
Abstract The aim of this article is to analyse the operation of the social security appointee system, evaluating it from the point of view of the claimant, the appointee and the public. Consideration is given to the criteria for appointment, the appointment process, the effect of the appointment and the controls after an appointment is made. The Law Commission's proposals in relation to the appointee system are discussed and further suggestions are made for reform. The background research to the article has focused on the Northern Ireland appointee system which is identical to that operated in Great Britain.
Charging and quasi-markets in community care: Implications for elderly people with dementia
Social services authorities in the UK are increasingly involved in charging and fee collection activities with clients in receipt of community care services. This article explores the implications of these developments for elderly people with dementia. The starting point of the article is a critique of existing legal and administrative options for handling other people's money, including the difficulties and dilemmas raised for both paid and unpaid carers by the existing arrangements. This is then related to the failure of charging and fee collection systems which have developed as a result of the community care reforms to address the particular needs of elderly people with dementia. A case study of policies in one local authority is outlined and this is followed by the presentation of the view of 37 fieldlevel professionals who were interviewed in focus groups. The concerns of these respondents included the complexity of the assessment task, conflicts between care managers and finance/revenue staff, the difficulty of defining and responding to financial abuse, and dilemmas over the extent to which relatives and carers should be trusted. The final section of the article considers the implications of a move to quasi-markets in social care for elderly people with dementia, particularly in terms of their vulnerability to financial exploitation.
The Gospel and the land;: Early Christianity and Jewish territorial doctrine,
Ostensibly Davies' patient study of the concepton of the "land" (Israel, Jerusalem) in early Christianity is an essay in Biblical theology, but he also wishes to raise serious questions about Christian understanding (or misunderstanding) of Judaism. "Christians have usually understood Judaism in too theological, and therefore, too intellectual terms. And they have also looked at their own foundation document, the New Testament, in the same way. In their proper concern to unravel theological developments and subtleties in primitive Christianity, they have neglfected to search for evidences of an encounter between it and the realia of Judaism and for any possible resolutions of such an tencounter. In particular, they have failed to inquire after the place of the land in the thought and lives of early Christians" (p. 161). Davies observes, for example, that bible dictionaries often have no references whatsoever to "land" and those that do allot it but a few pages. Even in Old Testament scholarship, where the land is of central significance in the documents themselves, it has been neglected. His work is an attempt to provide a context of Jewish thinking from early Israelite writings up to the Talmud in which to place the Christian materials. The bulk of the book is an account of the historical and theological process by which early Christianity gave a "spiritual" interpretation of traditional Jewish views of the land. Read against the Jewish background, the radical spiritualizing of the tradition is striking. Yet Davies also shows that Jewish attitudes were not monolithic in the first century, that notions of a preexistent, heavenly or eschatological Jerusalem were present, and that some Jews considered the viability of Judaism apart from the land. At some point however what could be entertained as an abstraction in Judaism, when it was made concrete in the life of the Christian movement, could not be tolerated. The conflict was heightened, of course, by the destruction of Jerusalem and the continued existence of Christianity as a movement increasingly receptive to non-Jews. Christianity, however, while rejecting the link between the land and religion, did create a new sense of "holy space" by hallowing the places where Christ had been, a development which would find fullest expression some several centuries later. As a result of the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern state of Israel Christians are faced with a whole new series of issues which have lain dormant since the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Davies' work must be read against this backdrop to appreciate its significance. It is as much a book about modern Christian thinking as it is about the past, as many of his citations and his several appendices of speeches at Jewish-Christian conferences show. To some it may appear that he has sided too closely with certain strands of Judaism and allowed this to color his way of handling the pre-Christian and pre-Rabbinic material, but such criticism is carping. Much of the material here is gathered together in this fashion for the first time, and he has successfully shown that a major preoccupation of ancient Judaism is missing in contemporary biblical scholarship. Further, he has given us a moving yet scholarly statement of the pathos of the modern Christian who cares about Christ and Israel and who tries to understand Israel while loving Christ.