Welfare states increasingly activate citizens in the provision of care and welfare services, expecting them to take over certain parts of professional work. The consequences of this ‘volunteer responsibilisation’ for front-line workers’ professionalism have not been studied extensively. Professionalism may be pointed in another direction, from professional self-control or organisational forms of control based on management criteria toward forms of embedded control in which professional work is defined in interaction with all kinds of ‘outsiders’, including volunteers. In this paper we analyse how front-line workers cope with such shifts in care and welfare provision. We find that they move away from frail volunteers, move toward vigorous volunteers, and move against policy makers.

Since 2009, the UK has witnessed marked increases in the rate of sanctions applied to unemployment insurance claimants, as part of a wider agenda of austerity and welfare reform. In 2013, over one million sanctions were applied, stopping benefit payments for a minimum of four weeks and potentially leaving people facing economic hardship and driving them to use food banks. Here we explore whether sanctioning is associated with food bank use by linking data from The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network with records on sanctioning rates across 259 local authorities in the UK. After accounting for local authority differences and time trends, the rate of adults fed by food banks rose by an additional 3.36 adults per 100,000 (95% CI: 1.71 to 5.01) as the rate of sanctioning increased by 10 per 100,000 adults. The availability of food distribution sites affected how tightly sanctioning and food bank usage were associated (p < 0.001); in areas with few distribution sites, rising sanctions led to smaller increases in food bank usage. In conclusion, sanctioning is closely linked with rising food bank usage, but the impact of sanctioning on household food insecurity is not fully reflected in available data.

In 2012, the Government invited local councils in England to participate in a pilot programme to test direct payments in residential care. While the programme was set up to allow for comprehensive summative evaluation, the uptake of direct payments in residential care was substantially lower than anticipated, with only 40 people in receipt of one at the end of the programme. Drawing on qualitative data collected for the evaluation, this paper aims to understand better the barriers to implementing direct payments in residential care. Evidence from the use of direct payments in domiciliary care identified gatekeeping by council frontline staff as a major barrier for service users to access direct payments. Our findings suggest that, whilst selectivity of both service users and providers was an integral part of the programme design, gatekeeping does not fully explain the poor take-up. Other factors played a part, such as lack of clarity about the benefits of direct payments for care home residents, the limited range and scope of choice of services for residents, and concerns from care providers about the financial impact of direct payments on their financial sustainability.

European Union (EU) law-making has played a key role in promoting social equity in the UK through safer working conditions, enhanced rights for workers, and by reducing environmental pollution. Concerns over its effect on business competitiveness have long been a major driver of Euroscepticism, underpinning criticism of the EU by influential opinion formers within British conservatism. The Leave Campaign argued that EU laws damage the UK economy by imposing unnecessary costs on British business, claiming that EU regulations cost the UK economy £33.3 billion per year. This paper examines the reliability of, and assumptions that underpin, aggregated estimates of the costs and benefits of EU-derived regulation, and considers how the economisation of public policy influences understanding of the social value of regulation. It brings together the findings of studies that have evaluated the accuracy of the estimated costs and benefits in formal impact assessments and analyses impact assessments of EU-derived policy instruments aimed at regulating working conditions. Our findings suggest that aggregated estimates represent poor guides to understanding the social costs and benefits of social regulation and highlight the value of discarding impact assessment estimates of costs and benefits in the context of efforts to shape social policy post-Brexit.

European Freedom of Movement (EFM) was central to the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. Under a ‘hard’ Brexit scenario, it is expected that EFM between the UK and the EU will cease, raising uncertainties about the rights of existing EU citizens in the UK and those of any future EU migrants. This article is concerned with the prospects for family rights linked to EFM which, I argue, impinge on a range of families – so-called ‘Brexit families’ (Kofman, 2017) – beyond those who are EU-national families living in the UK. The article draws on policy analysis of developments in the conditionality attached to the family rights of non-EU migrants, EU migrants and UK citizens at the intersection of migration and welfare systems since 2010, to identify the potential trajectory of rights post-Brexit. While the findings highlight stratification in family rights between and within those three groups, the pattern is one in which class and gender divisions are prominent and have become more so over time as a result of the particular types of conditionality introduced. I conclude by arguing that, with the cessation of EFM, those axes will also be central in the re-ordering of the rights of ‘Brexit families’.

The double crisis approach distinguishes two kinds of challenge confronting modern welfare states: long-term structural problems and short-term difficulties resulting from policy choices which affect the success with which the long-term issues can be addressed. Structural challenges include two main areas:

• • globalisation and technological changes demanding that governments direct attention to national competitiveness, and

• • population ageing, requiring more spending on pensions, and health and social care.

This article makes the case for a radical new strategy on ageing which focuses on the whole life course with the intention of preventing many of the chronic conditions associated with old age. The case is built on recent research evidence and the life-course concept of ‘active ageing’ is used to encapsulate the practical measures required. Combining biological and social science insights it is argued that, while ageing is inevitable, it is also plastic. This means that it not only manifests itself in different ways but also that it can be modified by mitigating the various risk factors that drive it. Such action would have considerable potential to reduce the personal costs of chronic conditions such as strokes and those falling on family carers but, also, to cut the associated health and social care expenditures. The question of why such apparently beneficial policy action is not being taken is discussed and a range of barriers are identified. One of these appears to be the UK's extreme brand of neo-liberalism, which militates against the collective approach necessary to implement a social policy for active ageing. Although the case is made with primary reference to UK policy and practice, the call for action to prevent chronic conditions has global relevance.

There is intense debate over the legitimacy of interventions which seek behavioural change on the part of street homeless people. ‘Hard’ measures, such as arresting people for begging, are particularly controversial, but ‘softer’ interventions such as motivational interviewing have also prompted objections on grounds that they are paternalistic. At the same time, the ‘non-interventionist’ stance of some service providers has been accused of perpetuating harmful street lifestyles. Inspired by Ruth Grant's philosophically informed interrogation of the ethics of incentives, we propose a normative framework for application in this field. Via systematic exploration of Grant's three ‘legitimacy standards’ (legitimate purpose, voluntary response, effects on character), and an additional outcome-focussed fourth (effectiveness, proportionality and balance), we attempt to unsettle any intuitive assumption that non-interventionist approaches are necessarily more morally defensible than interventionist ones. We also, however, explicate the high ethical and empirical bar required to justify social control measures.

Social impact bonds are payment by results contracts that leverage private social investment to cover the up-front expenditure associated with welfare services. The introduction of private principles and actors through outcome-based commissioning has received a great deal of attention in social policy research. However, there has been much less attention given to the introduction of private capital and its relation to more established forms of quasi-marketisation. This paper examines what effect private social investment has on outcome-based commissioning and whether the alternative forms of performance measurement and management, that social impact bonds bring to bear on service operations, demonstrate the capacity to engender: innovation in service delivery; improved social outcomes; future cost savings; and additionality. This paper draws on an in-depth study of four social impact bonds in the UK context, as the welfare regime at the vanguard of this policy development. The findings suggest that the introduction of private capital in outcome-based commissioning has had a number of unique and unintended effects on service providers, operations and outcomes. The paper concludes by considering whether social impact bonds represent a risk or an opportunity for public service reform both in the UK and further afield.

This paper derives from a study of community food aid in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith city in the North of England. The paper begins to make sense of the diversity of types of food insecurity assistance, examines the potential exclusion of certain groups from receipt of food aid, and explores the relationship between food aid providers and the state. Faith-based food aid is common in the case study area, particularly among food bank provision to the most ‘destitute’ clients. While food aid is adopting service responsibilities previously borne by the state, this does not imply an extension of the ‘shadow state’. Rather, it appears reflective of a pre-welfare state system of food distribution, supported by religious institutions and individual/business philanthropy, but adapted to be consistent with elements of the ‘Big Society’ narrative. Most faith-based providers are Christian. There is little Muslim provision of (or utilisation of) food aid, despite the local demographic context. This raises concerns as to the unintentional exclusion of ethnic and religious groups, which we discuss in the concluding sections.

Long-range temporal choices are built into contemporary policy-making, with policy decisions having consequences that play out across generations. Decisions are made on behalf of the public who are assumed to give much greater weight to their welfare than to the welfare of future generations. The paper investigates this assumption. It briefly discusses evidence from sociological and economic studies before reporting the findings of a British survey of people's intergenerational time preferences based on a representative sample of nearly 10,000 respondents. Questions focused on two sets of policies: (i) health policies to save lives and (ii) environmental policies to protect against floods that would severely damage homes, businesses and other infrastructure. For both sets of policies, participants were offered a choice of three policy options, each bringing greater or lesser benefits to their, their children's and their grandchildren's generations. For both saving lives and protecting against floods, only a minority selected the policy that most benefited their generation; the majority selected policies bringing equal or greater benefits to future generations. Our study raises questions about a core assumption of standard economic evaluation, pointing instead to concern for future generations as a value that many people hold in common.

The concept of commissioning has risen in prominence in recent years as a result of ongoing reforms to the funding and delivery of public services in the UK. The model of commissioning constructed by policy has however been overlaid on existing practices, which themselves differ between different service areas. This paper, focusing on commissioning of third sector organisations (TSOs) in the field of community mental health services, shows that its introduction has not led to the straightforward public sector ‘marketisation’ that advocates desire or that critics fear. Instead, commissioning has led to an indeterminate outcome or ‘halfway house’ position in which the status and role of commissioning remains somewhat muddled – both internally to participants within public sector organisations and externally in terms of the experience of the interface by TSOs. We found that commissioning as it is actually practiced remains contested and political – it is a highly relational process dependent on personal practices and skills and on personal relationships between stakeholders – and is therefore not fully managerialised or marketised. This has implications for the policy and practice of commissioning and the interpretation of more ‘open’ public services.

The way that welfare policies influence the interpretative processes of social actors is attracting increasing attention. In this article, we investigate policy change impacts on ideas mothers have about the best form of care for their children. The data are taken from representative surveys among mothers of preschool-age children in 2002 and 2010 in Norway. The surveys cover a decade of marked reforms in childcare services with regard to the supply of places, parents’ fees and the right to be given a place in care. Policy change gave rise to major shifts in attitude. From conditional attitudes to the suitability of institutional care, the majority view shifted towards ‘childcare services only’ being considered the best form of care for preschool-age children. This occurred among mothers in all socio-economic groups and in all parts of the country. Based on policy feedback theories, mechanisms likely to have caused this shift – policy visibility, proximity and timing – are considered.

There has been extensive concern about the effect of recession and of subsequent public spending austerity on the voluntary sector – but a lack of comprehensive sector-wide data to examine this empirically. We construct a unique longitudinal dataset, which follows through time the population of charitable organisations in England and Wales since 1999, and assess the impact of recession and austerity by placing organisations’ recent annual income within the context of longer-term trends. The results reveal the scale of the impact on charities’ incomes for the first time: since 2008 median real annual growth in income has been negative for six consecutive years, leading to sizeable cumulative real income decline over the period. Mid-sized charities, and those in more deprived local areas, have been most significantly affected, consistent with concerns about a ‘hollowing out’ of the charitable sector and about the uneven impact of austerity. However, there has also been considerable variation in the fortunes of charities working in different fields of activity. The analysis in this paper helps to widen our perspective on the implications of the Great Recession and of public spending austerity for social policy.

Of all the social sciences, social policy is one of the most obviously policy-orientated. One might, therefore, expect a research and funding agenda which prioritises and rewards policy relevance to garner an enthusiastic response among social policy scholars. Yet, the social policy response to the way in which major funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are now prioritising ‘impact’ has been remarkably muted. Elsewhere in the social sciences, ‘research impact’ is being widely debated and a wealth of concerns about the way in which this agenda is being pursued are being articulated. Here, we argue there is an urgent need for social policy academics to join this debate. First, we employ interviews with academics involved in health inequalities research, undertaken between 2004 and 2015, to explore perceptions, and experiences, of the ‘impact agenda’ (an analysis which is informed by a review of guidelines for assessing ‘impact’ and relevant academic literature). Next, we analyse high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies to assess whether these concerns appear justified. We conclude by outlining how social policy expertise might usefully contribute to efforts to encourage, measure and reward research ‘impact’.

This paper provides new empirical evidence about English and Welsh charities operating internationally. It answers basic questions unaddressed in existing work: how many charities work overseas, and how has this number changed over time? In which countries do they operate, and what underlies these geographical patterns? It makes use of a unique administrative dataset which records every country in which each charity operates. The results show a sizeable increase in the number of charities working overseas since the mid-1990s. They show that charities are much more likely to work in countries with colonial and linguistic ties to the UK, and less likely to work in countries with high levels of instability or corruption. This considerable geographical unevenness, even after controlling for countries’ population size and poverty, illustrates the importance of supply-side theories and of institutional factors to an understanding of international voluntary activity. The paper also serves to provide a new perspective on international charitable operation: while it is the large development charities that are household names, the results reveal the extent of small-scale ‘grassroots’ registered charitable activity that links people and places internationally, and the extent of activity in ‘developed’ as well as ‘developing’ country contexts.

Concern about the increasing use of payday lending led the UK's Financial Conduct Authority to introduce landmark reforms in 2014/15. While these reforms have generally been welcomed as a way of curbing ‘extortionate’ and ‘predatory’ lending, this paper presents a more nuanced picture based on a theoretically-informed analysis of the growth and nature of payday lending combined with original and rigorous qualitative interviews with customers. We argue that payday lending has grown as a result of three major and inter-related trends: growing income insecurity for people both in and out of work; cuts in state welfare provision; and increasing financialisation. Recent reforms of payday lending do nothing to tackle these root causes. Our research also makes a major contribution to debates about the ‘everyday life’ of financialisation by focusing on the ‘lived experience’ of borrowers. We show that, contrary to the rather simplistic picture presented by the media and many campaigners, various aspects of payday lending are actually welcomed by customers, given the situations they are in. Tighter regulation may therefore have negative consequences for some. More generally, we argue that the regul(aris)ation of payday lending reinforces the shift in the role of the state from provider/redistributor to regulator/enabler.

Legislative changes and a recent court ruling allow private schools in England and Wales to determine how to provide the public benefits required to justify their charitable status. We investigate how private school headteachers and other informed stakeholders perceive their public benefit objectives and obligations. We find that schools interpret public beneficiaries widely to include one or more of state school pupils, local communities, other charities, and general society through raising socially responsible adults. Private schools pursue their own goals through public benefit provision, and balance the advantages of public benefit activities against the costs. The schools are not constrained by the ‘more than tokenistic’ minimum set by the regulator. The findings highlight the difficulties faced by governments who seek to pursue redistributive educational policies through charitable law.

This paper explores the effectiveness of paid services in supporting unpaid carers’ employment in England. There is currently a new emphasis in England on ‘replacement care’, or paid services for the cared-for person, as a means of supporting working carers. The international evidence on the effectiveness of paid services as a means of supporting carers’ employment is inconclusive and does not relate specifically to England. The study reported here explores this issue using the 2009/10 Personal Social Services Survey of Adult Carers in England. The study finds a positive association between carers’ employment and receipt of paid services by the cared-for person, controlling for covariates. It therefore gives support to the hypothesis that services for the cared-for person are effective in supporting carers’ employment. Use of home care and a personal assistant are associated on their own with the employment of both men and women carers, while use of day care and meals-on-wheels are associated specifically with women's employment. Use of short-term breaks are associated with carers’ employment when combined with other services. The paper supports the emphasis in English social policy on paid services as a means of supporting working carers, but questions the use of the term ‘replacement care’ and the emphasis on ‘the market’.

In recent decades, consensual approaches to poverty measurement have been widely adopted in large-scale survey research both in the UK and internationally. However, while ascertaining the extent of public agreement on the ‘necessities of life’ has been central to this approach, long-standing critiques have questioned the nature of public consensus on poverty derived using survey methods. By drawing on new primary research preparatory to the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, we consider the contribution of qualitative methods in understanding public views on necessities and discuss their implications for survey-based poverty measurement. Our findings raise some important conceptual and measurement issues for consensual poverty measures within large-scale social surveys. Firstly, our research suggests that public understandings of the term ‘necessity’ are diverse and may not always be consistent with researchers’ interpretations or with wider usage of this term within consensual poverty measurement. Secondly, a better understanding of the considerations which inform survey respondents’ deliberations is needed. Thirdly, our findings have important implications for how we should interpret the concept of ‘consensus’ within the context of consensual poverty surveys, and emphasise the need for the application of more deliberative methods in determining public views on the ‘necessities of life’.