SFV4600 Comparative Social Risk Management Course description

The course presents main social protection strategies with regard to major social risks, as well as evaluation methods to assess the advantages and disadvantages of health and social policy interventions.

None.

A student who has completed his or her qualification has the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge and skills:

Knowledge

The student has advanced knowledge of

• social protection strategies, in particular related to major social risks: unemployment, sickness, disability, lack of a provider, child abuse, and old age
• the interplay between protection provided by the state, the voluntary sector, the family and the market
• principles of social insurance and health insurance
• strategies for providing residual or universal social and health assistance
• the extended family as a risk-managing institution
• problems with social protection coverage and strategies for extending coverage
• strategies for efficient delivery of health and social services
• policy evaluation methods in health and social care

Skills

The student can

• identify similarities and differences in social and health protection strategies in high-, middle-, and low-income countries
• investigate the arguments for and against public management, public/private partnerships, outsourcing and other strategies with regard to the delivery of publicly provided health and social services
• analyse processes of social/health policy implementation
• evaluate social/health policy outputs and outcomes

The course is organised into a series of lectures and seminars. Students are expected to play an active role. Lectures are given by the course lecturer and invited lecturers. Students will also be required to present papers, and discuss course themes during lectures and seminars.

Students must submit a work requirement of at least 3000 words on a course topic, preferably written in groups of 3-5 students. Students must have approval from the course lecturer in order to write individually. The paper must be approved by the course lecturer. Students whose papers are not approved after the first submission will be given the chance to resubmit once.

Papers that are not approved after two submissions will disqualify students from sitting the final examination.

The papers are to be presented at a seminar or poster session. Participation in the seminar or poster session is a mandatory part of the work requirement.

The student's learning outcome will be assessed on the basis of an individual six-hour written school exam.

Students may use a spelling dictionary, as well as a bilingual dictionary.

A grade scale A-F.

The exam is graded by an internal and an external examiner.

A random selection consisting of at least 25% of the exam papers will be graded by both an internal and external examiner. This will inform the grading of the remaining exam papers.

Einar Øverbye