The aim of this study is to investigate cross-country variability in transition rates from unemployment to further education among young adults, as well as how barriers in educational systems affect these transition rates. Previous research on adult further education has largely neglected the role of policies, and has not taken unemployed people into account.

Two dimensions of educational policies are investigated. (1) Barriers facing prospective students with regard to previous academic achievements (e.g. second chance opportunities); and (2) financial barriers (e.g. high costs). It is hypothesized that low barriers are associated with higher transition rates into education, especially for unemployed young adults with lower levels of education.

The aim is approached by investigating how differences in transition rates across countries are linked to the design of educational policies. Cross-country standardised individual-level panel data from 29 European countries are taken from EU-SILC. Multilevel multinomial models are fitted.

Results show that lower barriers in the education system are associated with higher probabilities that unemployed young adults leave unemployment to re-enter further education, although only partial support is found for the hypothesis that unemployed young adults with lower levels of education gain relatively more from low barriers. Low barriers are sometimes associated with lower transition rates into employment.

Paul Watt's (1993) response to my article ‘A nation of inheritors?’ (Hamnett, 1991) raises some interesting and worthwhile questions about the class basis of housing inheritance which I would like to address and clarify. To recapitulate briefly, my article attempted to assess the validity of Saunders's (1986, 1990) arguments regarding the importance of home ownership and housing inheritance in the creation of a new consumption cleavage independent of social class. Using data from a survey of beneficiaries I argued that although housing inheritance is distributed across the class spectrum, the incidence of inheritance is far greater amongst home owners, higher social classes and those living in southern Britain (where home ownership is longer established) than it is among council tenants, the lower social classes and those living in the north. I argued that there is nothing inherent in a person's social class, housing tenure or location which makes inheritance more likely. On the contrary, the determinants of housing inheritance are influenced by the social characteristics of dying home owners. Because the structure of inheritance reflects the structure of property ownership a generation ago, current differences in the incidence of inheritance will reflect the class and tenure characteristics of the dying population and their relationship to the class and tenure characteristics of beneficiaries. The incidence of housing inheritance is higher among home owners and those in higher social classes because their parents are more likely to have been home owners. I went on to argue that because home ownership has become much more widely spread across the class spectrum over the last 40 years (Hamnett, 1984), the incidence of housing inheritance in 30–40 years' time is likely to be more widely spread than it is today. Thus, I concluded that whilst Saunders' arguments regarding the distribution of house inheritance are not empirically supported today, they may be more so in 30–40 years' time. I argued, however, that although housing inheritance was likely to be more widespread in future than it is today, the children of tenants were unlikely to inherit. Given the growing social residualisation of the council sector I argued that ‘the less skilled, the low income and the unemployed’ were likely to be excluded from inheritance.

Technological change has squeezed the demand for middle-skill jobs, which typically involve routine-intense tasks. This squeeze has coincided with an increase in the number of part-time working individuals who wish to work more hours. We argue that these two trends are linked. Due to the decline of middle-skill employment, medium-educated workers shift into low-skill employment, increasing the supply of labour for jobs in this segment of the labour market. This pushes those dependent on these jobs to accept part-time jobs, even if these involve fewer hours than they prefer. To empirically assess this claim, we analyse involuntary part-time employment across 16 European countries between 1999 and 2010. Our analysis confirms that a decline in middle-skill employment is associated with an increase in involuntary part-time employment at the bottom end of the labour market. This finding implies that the automation of routine-intense labour worsens employment possibilities in this segment of the labour market. However, we show that training and job creation schemes mitigate this effect. These programmes cushion competition either by providing medium-educated workers with the necessary skills to shift into high-skill jobs or by increasing employment possibilities. Thus, governments have the tools to support workers facing challenges in the knowledge economy.

The broad contours of the move from the old to the new welfare are well established but the changes in social theory which bear on this have been relatively neglected. Also neglected are the links between these theoretical positions and contemporaneous shifts in economic thought. Drawing on the works of Titmuss, Marshall, Putnam and Etzioni, this paper traces how understandings of social cohesion, social provision, responsibility and obligation have shifted over time. It then indicates the relationship between these constructions and parallel developments in economic theory. Here attention is drawn to a fundamental ideological tension between communitarian and neo-classical accounts. It is argued that governments attempt to resolve this tension by projecting notions of moral disintegration onto welfare claimants. Alternatives to the new welfare are canvassed in the final section of the paper.

Technical experts frequently prescribe simple technical ‘solutions’ to complex social problems. In this article, the authors describe an experimental project which was designed to increase the take-up of means-tested benefits. The project incorporated a computer-based information system which provided individuals who supplied details of their financial and other household circumstances with personalized information about their entitlement to a wide range of benefits. Although the project was a technical success, it made little impact on take-up rates. In attempting to explain why this should have been so, the authors point to the complexity of the problems involved and advocate the need to examine and simplify existing administrative procedures at the same time as investigating the potential of computerization, rather than assuming that a technical device can of itself side-step the problems. They also point out that administrative simplification is itself no easy task and is fraught with political and organizational problems.

This article sees the new housing benefit scheme as a policy initiative which presents local authorities, as the implementing agencies, with enormous problems in making a success of the operation of a scheme deeply flawed because of the government's commitment to save staff costs and avoid increases in benefit costs. It looks at the way in which during the policy-making process there was a move away from the ordiginal commitment to ‘unified housing benefit’ and explores the consequences of this for implementation.

While ideology may not explain differences in welfare policy on an international comparative basis, it can help account for the process of policy development in a particular country. In Israel, ideology was very significant in the historical development of public assistance by its influence on social security policy choices concerning the removal of certain groups from the residual programme of public assistance. Indirectly, ideology also shaped the extent and type of convergence of public assistance and social insurance, as well as the relative size and scope of these two benefit systems. It had, however, relatively little influence on the subsequent operating character of the public assistance programme, which seems to have an inner logic, independent of ideology, inhering in its operating principles. The latter — local responsibility, relative liability, less eligibility and means-testing – were reinforced by the organizational character of the sponsoring agency. Because they serve as a residual programme for groups whose claim for support is not yet legitimized, public assistance programmes in most Western countries will confront the same dilemmas and acquire a similar operating character.

Using a form of discourse analysis of various government texts, this article examines the way in which central government in Scotland formulated its response to the problem of ‘glue-sniffing’. Drawing on a theoretical framework developed by Foucault, it traces the links between professional knowledge, political programmes and parents' desires. It describes the discursive manoeuvres government deployed in constituting parents as primarily responsible for their children's sniffing. It suggests that in doing this government sought to align its own political objectives with the aspirations of parents, by purporting to preserve their freedom and autonomy. It concludes that ‘expertise’ is used selectively, both in legitimating and producing policy, and in linking this to subjective life.

During the 1970s a complex range of formal planning procedures were developed by central and local government and other public bodies. By the end of the decade there were well over twenty ‘public planning systems’ in operation, each with its own timetable, procedure and information demands. A number of allocation formulae were evolved to distribute cash and capital allocations between geographical areas, and various procedures to improve service coordination were also introduced. Together these innovations have had an important impact on the allocation of social service resources and the implementation of social policies. The first part of the article describes the growth of such planning activities, while the second part seeks to analyse their purposes both in terms of the official accounts and from a rather more critical perspective. It is possible to see these changes as attempts by government to come to terms with the problem of ‘overload’ – the tendency for demands on government for more and better services to outrun its and the economy's capacity to respond. They may be seen as more explicit and centralized rationing procedures which seek to combine a realistic appreciaation of budgetary constraints with responsiveness to varied individual and community needs. Critics see these procedures as attempts to contain public spending by insulating popular demands for improved services in increasingly technical and centralized procedures. The article ends by considering the impact of the new government's public expenditure policy.

The political philosopher Michael Sandel (2012) has recently argued compellingly for more attention to the moral limits of markets, arguing that market values can crowd out other values we should care about. Meanwhile, conservative advocates for welfare reform, such as the Australian Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, have raised concerns about the impact of long-term welfare receipt on community values. Pearson's argument about welfare can be articulated in similar terms to Sandel's argument about markets. Pearson maintains that in heavily disadvantaged communities – such as the Aboriginal communities of Cape York Peninsula – the state's provision of non-contributory welfare can crowd out important values such as trust, respect, care for the weak and mutual help as well as self-reliance and hard work. Though Sandel's and Pearson's arguments find receptive audiences on different ends of the political spectrum, the parallels between their arguments are striking. The article seeks to promote greater scholarly engagement with Pearson's moral critique of welfare while expressing scepticism about one of the key correctives he proposes.

The issue of black youth unemployment has become a central aspect of government race relations policies over the last few years, particularly in the aftermath of the 1981 street disturbances. This paper attempts to locate the various stages of response to this question, both at the level of ideology and of policy. It argues that although the policies pursued have been legitimized as helping young blacks, they have failed to mount an effective response to the employment crisis facing this group. In addition, it is argued that policies have tended to ignore the question of racism and to concentrate on the supposed cultural and personal handicaps which young blacks inherit from their cultural background. It concludes by questioning the ideology of equal opportunity, which is the core concept underlying government responses to racial discrimination, and argues for a more critical analysis of recent interventions premised on this notion.

Whilst quantitive and ‘positivist’ modes of comparative social policy can reveal significant structural factors involved in the making of welfare states, they too often ignore the role of human agency, intention and political processes. A critical-historical comparative case study of the introduction of ‘child endowment’ and of ‘family allowances’ respectively in Australia (1941) and in Canada (1944) reminds us of the interplay between structural constraints and human agency in the history of welfare states. Detailed analysis suggests that institutionalised arrangements in Australia after 1905 to resolve capital-labour conflict via arbitral and wage fixation mechanisms put the question of the adequacy of wages in meeting family needs and with it proposals for child endowment onto the public agenda as early as 1920. In Canada the absence of such mechanisms, and alternative welfare arrangements to deal with family welfare, combined to keep such proposals off the public agenda. After 1939 the development of ‘war economies’ in Australia and Canada created common contradictions for governments, trying to maintain both industrial peace and anti-inflation policies, which the introduction of family allowances in both countries were attempts to resolve. Consideration is also given to a range of political problems and contexts in both countries which this particular policy measure attempted to deal with.

This article furthers understanding of the value of experiential knowledge for social policy and practice. It draws on new empirical material to critically explore the opportunities and challenges inherent in lived experience support work with multiply disadvantaged adults. Reflecting on the experiences of those delivering a ‘navigator’ service, particular attention is paid to an ambiguity around the ways in which experiential knowledge might generate more productive models of relationship-based work, the positioning of lived experience in relation to ‘expert’ ways of knowing as well as the potential risks that the navigator role poses to those employed in the position. The discussion is situated within a wider body of literature that helps us to understand these practical, ideological and political tensions within the wider context of neoliberal welfare reforms.

The statutory function of local health councils in Scotland (and of community health councils in England and Wales) is to represent the interests of the public in the health service. This article, based on data from a fouryear research project financed by the Scottish Office, examines official and participants' assumptions and claims about the legitimacy of health councils, as at present constituted, to carry out this function. Clarification of the basis of their legitimacy would assist, it is argued, in the resolution of a central dilemma: How are councils to represent the interests of the public? The conclusion is reached that inadequate thought was given to developing theoretically sustainable arrangements. Several interpretations of representation are admixed in the rationale for the present system and they cannot be aggregated to produce a coherent defence of it.

This article examines the activities of the Children's Committee of the London County Council (LCC) and what a contemporary newspaper referred to as a ‘daring experiment’: its efforts to discharge children from public care to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. Archival evidence reveals how Irish children were identified and separated from English children in care and, in many instances, sent to Ireland. It is maintained the dominant constructions of ‘Ireland’ played a role in the scheme. In addition, the LCC policy is examined and viewed in the context of other exclusionary practices centred on Irish people in Britain in the mid-twentieth century.

Although community care has been the professed policy of successive governments over three decades, according to the Prime Minister's own adviser, Sir Roy Griffiths, ‘in few areas can the gap between political rhetoric and policy on the one hand or between policy and reality in the field on the other hand have been so great’. This paper examines the extent and causes of this ‘implementation gap’ in respect of services for people with mental handicaps—a consistent priority group for national policymakers. We examine centre–periphery relations in the health and personal social services in the light of Rhodes' power–dependence framework and his concepts of policy networks and policy communities. The NHS has been described as the archetypal professionalised policy network but we conclude that it is possible to account for implementation failures in community care only partly in terms of the dominance of the medical professions' values and interests and the deficiencies of accountability and control due to clinical autonomy. Such failures are due also to the inherently limited power of the centre. Sub-central units are not merely its meek agents. Moreover, the centre must explicitly structure local environments by itself providing a coherent framework of service and resource policies compatible with the national objectives it is seeking to achieve.

The concept of Sozialpolitik (social policy) has rarely been considered in the English-language literature thus far. The present article surveys the pertinent English, American and German literature which led to the initiation of the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Social Policy Association) in 1873. All these efforts culminated in Otto von Zwiedineck's classic book, Sozialpolitik (1911). A chapter of this book, now printed in Zwiedineck's collected essays, Mensch und Wirtschaft, is offered in English translation for the first time. The article presents and clarifies the concept of Sozialpolitik in terms of social action directed toward problems affecting society as a whole and the continued attainment of society's goals. However, the definition of these goals remains subject to change. A theoretical foundation for the integration of scientific and normative perspectives in the social sciences is thereby provided.

This article explores the response of the child welfare system in Germany to the recent refugee crisis. Drawing on administrative data and qualitative interviews with administrators, front-line workers and refugee youth in Nuremberg, the article provides a contextualized account of how the crisis led to the collapse of established bureaucratic procedures, new forms of interagency collaboration and a flexible distribution of responsibilities and tasks. Combining a street-level bureaucracy (SLB) perspective with insights from the literature on crisis and policy change, the analysis shows how the responses of front-line workers effectively altered the content of services, introduced new actors and expanded the professional capacity of the local child welfare system. On a broader level, the findings indicate that front-line practice is not merely guided by policy mandates, but also responds to situational and institutional circumstances. For the child welfare system in Nuremberg, the findings raise important questions about the extent to which aspects of the crisis response will remain a part of the service delivery process moving forward, and whether the recent experience will better prepare them for future crises.

India’s main food and nutrition security programme, the Public Distribution System (PDS), provides subsidised rice and sugar to deprived households. Using longitudinal data from Young Lives for Indian children (n = 2,944) aged 5 to 16 years, we assessed whether PDS subsidies skewed diets towards sugar and rice consumption, increasing risk of stunting (low height-for-age). Linear regression models were used to quantify additional rice and sugar consumption associated with accessing the PDS, and the association with stunting linked to consumption. Controlling for sociodemographics, accessing the PDS was positively, significantly associated with consumption of rice (30g/day) and sugar (7.05g/day). There was no evidence that this increase corresponded to nutritional improvements. Each 100g increase in daily rice intake was associated with a lower height-for-age z-score (HAZ) and no decline in stunting. Results were robust to alternative model specifications. There was no evidence that receipt of PDS rice and sugar was associated with improvements in child nutrition.