The capability approach and a child standpoint
The capability approach and a child standpoint
This chapter examines what the capability approach can do for realising the Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’—expounding the strongly held values around egalitarianism and ensuring that people have a reasonable opportunity to make what they want of their lives. It first acknowledges social policy as a normative enterprise, seeking not only to ‘develop and deliver services for people in order to meet their needs for welfare and wellbeing’, but to do so in ways that privilege particular ideas and values. It then considers how a ‘fair go’ resonates with a capability approach, with synergies between the expansion of capabilities and freedom to live the life one values and Australian ideas of egalitarian individualism. It also explains how a child standpoint can be useful in rethinking social policy to move beyond the narrow agenda of workforce participation to an agenda of social inclusion, social justice and opportunity.
Keywords: capability approach, Australia, fair go, egalitarianism, social policy, child standpoint, social inclusion, social justice
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