Making Connexions: a case study in contemporary social policy

Abstract

The article reports an evaluation of a Connexions pilot in a South London borough. Connexions is a new service for teenagers uniting teachers, youth workers, careers officers and others to integrate education with social services and other provision. However, we are less concerned with describing Connexions than with showing how it illustrates what we previously described as the present government's `experimental' approach to social policy development. As well as a speedy response, this approach encourages `social entrepreneurs' to deliver new services and recombine old ones to meet changing individual and group needs. The fluidity of the new arrangements encourages competition to meet these needs between the various `partners' involved. Similar scenarios are predicted for other public services, most immediately those in other parts of the new Learning and Skills sector that includes Connexions. This way of delivering social services is creating an extraordinarily dynamic but also extremely uncertain social policy environment.