This article presents results of a Dutch randomised experiment, challenging the ‘workfare’ paradigm, which is dominant in many countries. We study whether social assistance (SA) schemes with fewer conditions and more autonomy for recipients stimulate valuable but often overlooked unpaid socio-economic activities (USEA), which are not classified as work. In the qualitative part of the mixed method study, we generated new hypotheses stating that particularly recipients who are older, higher educated, have a migration background, have relatively poor health, or have young children, will spend more time on USEA in less conditional and more autonomous regimes. The quantitative part of the study, where two experimental conditions are compared with the usual treatment of SA recipients, does not show convincing average treatment effects, but does reveal that a less conditional and more autonomy-oriented SA scheme translates into more USEA for older people, people with a migration background and people with relatively poor mental health.

‘Value pluralism’ is a strand of analytical philosophy that posits the plurality of morally significant values. By enabling systematic mapping of the diversity of moral registers within which social policy concerns might legitimately be considered, we contend that value pluralist-inspired analysis can aid constructive policy dialogue. Our argument is founded on four claims: first, as a matter of normative principle, value pluralism represents a defensible ethical standpoint; second, as a matter of fact, people are attracted to a plurality of moral values; third, as a matter of democratic legitimacy, pluralism offers a means of (partially) reconciling rival moral claims; fourth, as a matter of political strategy, pluralism offers a pragmatic approach that can engage protagonists on their own terms. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply this pluralist approach to the vexed question of welfare conditionality, which we interrogate via six normative perspectives (rights, utilitarianism, contractualism, communitarianism, paternalism and social justice).

With targeted childcare initiatives and welfare-to-work programmes policy-makers have sought to address employment activation of lone mothers and negative outcomes for children in lone parent households. The present study examines non-parental childcare use and maternal employment among children living in lone and co-parent family situations at ages three and four and emotional and behavioural difficulties at ages four and five. The results demonstrate that negative outcomes associated with lone motherhood are explained largely by mother's age, education, material circumstances and area deprivation; and that maternal employment does not relieve lone mothers’ disadvantages in a way that alleviates the risks of difficulties to their children. However, in any family constellation, mainly group-based formal pre-school childcare does have a positive impact on child difficulties compared to drawing on informal childcare arrangements as main provider. In addition, and specifically for the difficulties of children in lone mother family situations, any non-parental childcare – formal or informal − for at least twenty-five hours per week is beneficial. Study findings support policy agendas which tackle families’ material hardship beyond promoting mothers’ employment, and through investment in formal childcare provision, and also through arrangements allowing lone mothers to divide their weekly load of childcare with another main provider.

Employment subsidies are important active labour market policy (ALMP) tools, suited to a variety of labour market challenges. This paper engages with recent ALMP categorisation debates by appraising Cronert’s (2019) recent typology of employment subsidies. It uses empirical material to assess the typology’s explanatory power and produce insights to inform further typological development. The illustrative case of the British ‘Wage Incentive’ (2012-2014) is used to assess the typology’s analytical purchase. Cronert’s typology helpfully identifies key distinctions in the distributional profiles of employment subsidies, but further understanding of the category is impeded by the practice of defining them as demand-side interventions. The paper argues for a reappraisal of their supply-side characteristics, maintaining that the (potential) worker should be included in the analysis, and that employment subsidies’ relationship with training and job creation should be acknowledged. It proposes a redefinition of employment subsidies reflecting their real-world use, and suggests a framework for further exploring varieties of employment subsidy design from the perspective of beneficiaries.

Employer engagement with active labour market programmes (ALMPs) and related employability projects is seen as vital to their ‘success’. However, the role of employers remains under-researched – a gap which widens in relation to non-governmental programmes led by not-for-profit, third-sector organisations (TSOs). Recent studies suggest that engaging employers may depend on addressing both human resource (HR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) ‘logics’ and linking the roles of ‘gatekeeper to jobs’ and ‘proactive strategic partner’. A key question is whether TSO-led programmes are better placed to combine these logics and roles in engaging employers to help vulnerable groups into decent sustainable employment. The article explores this through a case study of two projects in England. The findings highlight the challenges that TSOs face in having to appeal almost exclusively to a CSR logic and explores why this is the case.

As climate change progresses, natural hazards are projected to continue to increase in frequency and intensity, posing a new form of social risk, implicating both the welfare and environmental state and raising the salience of ecosocial policy as a mechanism to attend to the distributional effects of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This study posits a novel conceptual framework for ecosocial policy and offers the US ecosocial safety net as a case analysis. While we conceptualise disaster relief policy as a mode of the environmental state, it includes unique ecosocial policies that constitute the backbone of the US ecosocial safety net. This study describes and compares the developmental and functional synergies between the US welfare and environmental state manifested in the form of an ecosocial safety net by explicating the Individual Assistance Program and the National Flood Insurance Program. Our findings reveal synergies between US disaster relief and welfare, including parallel developmental trends, philosophies of deserving/undeserving, functions of racial capitalism and relationships with economic growth. This study and its conceptual framework of ecosocial policy offer a groundwork for the study of ecosocial policy in other contexts.

Integrated government initiatives have become a common approach following the institutional fragmentation of New Public Management reforms. Complex societal issues require equally complex solutions, which sectorial units of government cannot attend to alone. However, integrated policy initiatives are prone to a range of obstacles. Using a study of policymaking aimed at homelessness in Norway as a case, this paper discusses how sectorial-shared knowledge creates barriers to a common view of policy problems and solutions. Engaging theories of governmental fragmentation, coordination, discourse, and epistemic cultures enable an exploration of how the involved policy sectors understand and address homelessness. The findings indicate that all policy sectors seem to recognise their responsibility within a social welfare frame, but despite having cooperated for several years, embeddedness in sectorial discourse and epistemic culture causes differing problem definitions. Established terms and categories within homelessness policies are filled with content according to epistemic embeddedness, thereby contributing to obscure the differences, rather than integrate the policy initiatives.

Paul Spicker's article has provided a thought-provoking contribution to which I am broadly sympathetic. I have two principal concerns, however. Firstly, it fails to contextualise itself vis-à-vis some key debates. Secondly, therefore, it neglects to ask some crucial philosophical and methodological questions. As such, researchers should pause before embracing a phronetic social policy. Below, I specify the nature of my concerns, paying particular attention to the implications of phronesis for universalism. My aim is not to critique Spicker's entire article, but to draw attention to key issues to which those interested in phronetic approaches should attend.

In volume 20 part 3 (1991), the review by N. Charles of Women and Poverty: Exploring the Research and Policy Agenda (page 437) incorrectly gave its editors as Caroline Glendinning and Jane Millar. The editors are in fact Jennie Popay and Hilary Graham. We apologise for this error.

The article discusses the evolution of Newfoundland's health care system from the turn of the century to the present. During this time there were considerable changes in social conditions, political arrangements and the availability of public monies, all of which influenced the structure of the health care sector. In general terms, Newfoundland's health care system shifted from one involving low expenditures and many British type institutions to one involving high expenditures and American type institutions. The evidence suggests that the changes have been particularly beneficial for Newfoundland's merchant class, including the doctors and dentists, although some benefits have also accrued to patients and fishermen.

The Short-To-Medium-Term Assistance (SMTA) is a state programme in Singapore providing financial, employment and other assistance to individuals in financial need. SMTA frames the resources that it provides as a temporary form of support that applicants should use to regain their financial self-reliance through employment. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article identifies two forms of self-reliance which differ from the objective of the programme. First, informants worked to receive assistance by convincing Social Service Office (SSO) officers of their financial need; they further approached their Members of Parliament (MPs) to enhance the approval of their assistance. Second, informants worked to find jobs on their own rather than accept job recommendations from SSO officers and career consultants. The different forms of self-reliance illustrate the agency of informants to get by, which contrasts with the agency resource embedded in the neoliberal governmentality of SMTA. These ethnographic insights indicate that SMTA was unsuccessful in directing informants to work and achieve financial self-reliance.