Professor Bleddyn Davies

Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, OBE

020 7955 6212

Please note - staff Twitter profiles are personal to the individual, and the views expressed may not be the opinion of PSSRU.

Back to index

Research Interests

Professor Davies' work focuses on equity, efficiency and the reform of community care. Two main themes have been targeting and service productivities and efficiencies. Another has been the development of care management, the focus on which he introduced to the UK through a set of experiments four books and numerous papers during the 1970s and early1980s.

A fourth has been financing mechanisms and reforms of long-term care in other countries. Another activity has been working with the team developing models for the long-run projection of demand and supply in long-term care. His main work currently is working with José Fernández to finish a book on use of community social services and their targeting, and a book on how differences in local authority priorities, other policies structures and endowments affect utilisation and efficiency.

He was awarded an OBE for his services to social science and social policy, and he is an Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

He lectured in economics in the University of Wales and in social policy at the LSE before founding the PSSRU in 1974 to study issues of equity and efficiency in community and long-term care by developing and applying a 'production of welfare approach.

Professor Davies has worked and been the author of books focusing on the theory of territorial justice (which he established with three books written in the 1960s), social and economic consequences of gambling, the mitigation of child poverty, and the economics of higher education.

Professor Davies was recently awarded the American Public Health Association Gerontological Health Section's International Lifetime Achievement Award 2007.

Since founding the PSSRU in 1974 to study issues of equity and efficiency in community and long-term care by developing and applying a 'production of welfare approach, Professor Davies' work has increasingly focused on equity, efficiency and the reform of community care. Two main themes have been targeting and service productivities and efficiencies. Equity and Efficiency Policy: Needs, Service Productivities, Efficiencies and their Implications, written with José Fernandez, is a recent example, a sequel to Resources Needs and Outcomes in Community-Based Care, having the same focus and being based on a collection with the same design.

Professor Davies was awarded an OBE for his services to social science and social policy, and he is an Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Bleddyn Davies' Publications

Journal Articles

Journal Article

Patterns of efficiency-improving innovation: social care and the elderly (1984)

Davies B, Ferlie E

Policy and Politics 12, 3, 281-295

Read more

Journal Article

Territorial need indicators: a reply (1983)

Bebbington A, Davies B

Journal of Social Policy 12, 2, 246-250

Read more

Journal Article

Equity and efficiency in the allocation of personal social services (1983)

Davies B, Bebbington A

Journal of Social Policy 12, 3, 309-330

Read more

Journal Article

Towards a territorial cost function for the home help service (1981)

Davies B, Coles O

Social Policy and Administration 15, 1, 32-42

Read more

Journal Article

Electoral support, bureaucratic criteria, cost variations and intra-authority allocations: a home help case (1981)

Davies B, Coles O

Political Studies 29, 3, 415-425

Read more

Journal Article

A new approach to community care for the elderly (1980)

Challis D, Davies B

British Journal of Social Work 10, 1

Read more

Journal Article

Efficiency promoting innovation in social care social services departments and the elderly (1980)

Davies B, Ferlie E

Policy and Politics 10, 2, 181-203

Read more

Journal Article

Experimenting with new roles in domiciliary service: the Kent Community Care Project (1980)

Davies B, Challis D

The Gerontologist 20, 3, 288-299

Read more

Journal Article

Territorial need indicators: a new approach (1980)

Bebbington A, Davies B

Journal of Social Policy 9, 2 & 4, 145-68 & 433-62

Read more

Journal Article

Area management: long on promise, short on achievement: a review of R. Hambledon, `Policy Planning in Local Government' (1979)

Davies B

Journal of Social Policy 8, 2

Read more

Journal Article

Social workers and client numbers (1979)

Bebbington A, Davies B, Coles O

British Journal of Social Work 9, 1, 93-100

Read more

Journal Article

Hotel and dependency costs of residents in old people's homes (1978)

Davies B, Knapp M

Journal of Social Policy 7, 1, 1-22

Read more

Journal Article

Social service studies and the explanation of policy outcomes (1977)

Davies B

Policy and Politics 5, 3, 41-59

Read more

Journal Article

The 'silting up' of unadjustable resources and the planning of the personal social services (1973)

Davies B, Barton A

Policy and Politics 1, 4, 341-355

Read more

Journal Article

Variations in the provision of local authority health and welfare services: a comparison between counties and county boroughs (1971)

Davies B

Social and Economic Administration , 100-124

Read more

Journal Article

Some constraints on school meal policy (1971)

Davies B

Social and Economic Administration , 34-52

Read more

Journal Article

Welfare departments and territorial justice: some implications for the reform of local government (1969)

Davies B

Social and Economic Administration , 235-252

Read more

Journal Article

Local authority size: some associations with standards of performance of services for deprived children and old people (1969)

Davies B

Public Administration , Summer, 225-248

Read more

Journal Article

The future of local government statistics (1968)

Davies B

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A 131, 1

Read more

Journal Article

School meals - short-fall and poverty (1968)

Davies B, Williamson J

Social and Economic Administration , 3-19

Read more