‘Parent abuse’ is the most under-researched form of family abuse and the research that exists is characterised by diverse and discrete methodological approaches which have produced somewhat inconsistent findings. This critical review examines these different research approaches and discusses the methodological challenges which they present. The review concludes by suggesting how research might develop to produce a more coherent and contextual methodology which does justice to the complexities of the topic.

Britain has entered a new era of super-diversity and many regions of the UK are experiencing the arrival of new communities. Refugee Community Organisations (RCOs) have developed following the arrival of new asylum seeking and refugee communities, and have been charged with the role of supporting the integration of these newcomers. However, there is much evidence to suggest that they are functioning only with individuals rather than working with institutions to transform systems and ensure welfare provision is adapted to account for diverse needs. This paper looks at the role of RCOs in attempting transformation and, using data collected through survey, interviews, and participatory action research, examines the extent to which RCOs are able to engage with the public and wider voluntary sector, to ensure that refugees' welfare needs can be met. It finds that in addition to the much-researched functional barriers to transformation, there are major institutional barriers to engagement. Institutions have failed to adapt their systems to enable representation of new communities instead expecting RCOs to build their own capacity to communicate. The paper ends by offering some ideas around resourcing RCOs to be represented and developing the capacity of institutions to adapt to new diversity.

The 2008 welfare reform introduced by the previous Labour government requires (most) lone parents with older children to be available for work. This article examines the potential effect of this reform on the employment rate of lone parents and whether the age of the youngest child is a good indicator of ‘ability to work’. It suggests that reform will not lead to the desired increase as the target group is too small and the levels of multiple disadvantages within the group too high. ‘Ability to work’ needs to be conceptualised more broadly if it is to mean ‘ability to get a job’.

Drawing on two studies in England, this paper explores the workforce-related impacts that social care providers envisage, and have so far experienced, from an increase in the number of people using personal budgets. It presents findings in relation to financial and workforce planning, recruitment and retention, workforce training and service user/provider relations. The discussion considers the implications not only for providers but also care workers, service users and local authorities.

This article discusses some of the problems involved in trying to develop gender-sensitive ways of measuring poverty. It argues that what is needed is a way of placing individuals within households and measuring both their contribution to the resources of that household and the extent of their dependence on the resources of others within the household. It is argued that this should involve examining sources as well as levels of income, and by adopting an approach that is dynamic, rather than static. The concept of social exclusion – multi-dimensional, dynamic, local and relational – could provide a way to explore these issues of autonomy and dependency, and their gender dimensions.

Recent texts on globalisation and education policy refer to the rapid flow of education policy texts producing or responding to common trends across nation states with the emergence of new knowledge economies. These educational policies are shaping what counts as research and the dynamics between research, policy, and practice in schools, creating new types of relationships between universities, the public, the professions, government, and industry. The trend to evidence-based policy and practice in Australian schools is used to identify key issues within wider debates about the ‘usefulness’ of educational research and the role of universities and university-based research in education in new knowledge economies.

Adolescent to parent violence is a problem which remains largely unarticulated within youth justice policy literature and academic discourse in England and Wales. This article presents research evidence suggesting that adolescent to parent violence is a significant problem which needs to be clearly addressed in the youth justice policy agenda. Although it is widely recognised by practitioners and regularly encountered in their work, there is a ‘silence’ at the policy level and a lack of appropriate support services or responses. The article considers reasons for the absence of adolescent to parent violence in youth justice policy and argues for the importance of recognising and defining the problem and for the development of appropriate responses.

Welfare state retrenchment and its corollary, the encouragement of ‘active citizenship’, are widespread phenomena in Western countries today. While public and academic debates have focused on the practical consequences of changing rules and shrinking entitlements, there has been much less attention on how citizens experience these reforms and their accompanying rhetoric. We know even less about how welfare reform impacts upon people's emotions. Such a focus, however, is important because the reform of the welfare state is about more than changing rights and duties. Reforms tell citizens what they are worth, how they are valued and judged, and how they are supposed to feel about the new arrangements.

In response to the ageing and shrinking of the working-age population, the European Union has agreed ambitious goals for raising the employment rate and the exit age of older workers. This article traces the development of EU policy approaches and presents EU-15 figures on the state of affairs. Progress so far has been modest, but EU policies are expected to facilitate the emergence of better regimes of age management within Member States. In turn, this will help Europe move towards its employment targets for the working population aged 55 to 64 years.

There is growing interest in research that informs more effective practices in employment services across Europe, Australia and the USA. However, despite the ever-expanding amount of research on the implementation and efficacy of various policy programmes in practice, the knowledge on how to bring unemployed individuals closer to the labour market remains ambiguous and inconclusive. This is especially so in the context of the more vulnerable unemployed, who face physical, mental and social challenges in addition to unemployment. In this article, we examine the existing literature in terms of its potential to inform (the development of) effective employment policies. On this basis, we outline an alternative approach based on the concept of relational causality, and discuss the implications of such an approach for applied policy research.

This article explores the intention and effects of New Labour's ‘conditional’ welfare-to-work strategy. Conditionality has been the subject of substantive debate, with New Labour distinguishing its own contractualist welfare reforms from alternative strategies, often associated with ‘punitive’ US workfare. This article assesses whether New Labour's attempt to fashion what is described as ‘reciprocal responsibility’ in welfare arrangements avoided the commonly cited by-products of workfare. To achieve this, evidence is presented from the British Social Attitudes series, which shows a profound hardening of attitudes towards the unemployed. In light of these findings, the evidence supports arguments about the adverse effects that welfare contractualism can have for wider social relations.

As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services. This article draws on interviews with lead officers responsible for implementing IBs. It shows how the contexts of local collaboration created problems for the implementation of the personalisation pilots, jeopardised inter-sectoral relationships and threatened some of the collaborative arrangements that had developed over the previous decade. Personal budgets for some health services have subsequently also been piloted. These will need to build upon the experiences of the social care IB pilots, so that policy objectives of personalisation do not undermine previous collaborative achievements.

Hong Kong has a liberal economy, and its welfare regime relies, first, on income through employment and, second, on support provided by family and community members. Although the government has strategically invested in certain social services, generally speaking, its aid is intended to be a secondary, if not the last resort. This system was effective when Hong Kong benefited from globalisation, enjoyed virtually full employment in the decades preceding the mid-1990s. However, the changes in capital flow and increasing capital relocation to Mainland China have had a negative impact on employment. As a result, the current welfare regime is unsustainable. The neo-liberal ideologies adopted by the government have only led to further social polarisation and instability. It is time for an approach that combines balanced development with broader social support.

Genetic developments are viewed with distrust by the disability rights community. But the argument that genetic screening promotes social injustice is not straightforward. Disabled people are affected by both the problems of impairment and the problems of disability. Preventing impairment should be a priority as well as preventing disability. Questions of social justice arise if biomedical approaches are prioritized at the cost of structural changes in society. They also arise when disabled people do not have access to genetic medicine. On a global scale, the priorities for impairment prevention are basic healthcare, not high technology medicine.

This article reviews the burgeoning literature on work–life balance and family-friendly policies in European countries, noting the new interdisciplinary dialogue between traditional ‘work’ and ‘family’ disciplines. It examines the findings from interviews with economic actors, suggesting that, while work–life balance and family-friendly policies are an issue everywhere, progress is very uneven. Overall, strong traditional family policies have not contributed to work–life balance, since they are predicated on a traditional male breadwinner model. A combination of strong demand for female labour in the service sector and equal opportunities policies is, however, causing employers and government to address the issue.

Contemporary models of welfare capitalism have frequently been critiqued about their fit-for-purpose in provisioning for people’s basic needs including care, and longer-term ecological sustainability. The Covid-19 pandemic has also exposed the need for better institutions and a new welfare architecture. We argue a post-productivist eco-social state can deliver sustainable well-being and meet basic needs. Arguing Universal Basic Services are an essential building block and prerequisite for a de-commodified welfare state, we focus on examining the form of income support that might best complement UBS. The article develops, from the perspective of feminist arguments and the capabilities approach, a case for Participation Income. This, we argue, can be aligned with targeted policy goals, particularly reward for and redistribution of human and ecological care or reproduction and other forms of socially valued participation. It may also, in the short term, be more administratively practical and politically feasible than universal basic income.

As couples survive longer and live together into older age they face many issues of financial management, including daily money management on reduced and/or reducing income, and paying for care or the additional costs of disability. Yet household money management is highly gendered, especially for older age groups. This has implications for the ability of women, particularly, to manage financial decisions in the face of their partner's illness, or widowhood, as well as for their autonomy and well-being. We analyse in depth qualitative data from forty-five older couples across the socio-economic spectrum to show that women have varying emotional responses to money management in coupledom: ‘accepters’ who accept financial inequality and dominance by their husbands, ‘resenters’ who recognise these inequalities but resent them, and ‘modifiers/resisters’ who retain financial independence and power within their relationships. It is only the latter group, who have long histories of financial control and management, who are well placed for financial management and decisions in later life. By recognising the implications of different types of couple relationship, policies can be better designed to assist those navigating money in later life.

Based on primary research for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission this article focuses on the conditions and regimes under which women and girls are imprisoned in the North of Ireland. Extensive interviews with women place their experiences and reflections at the heart of the analysis and are supported by full observational access to the daily routines in operation at the Mourne House Unit at Maghaberry Prison. Of particular concern are institutionalised practices regarding self-harm, suicide prevention and the pathologisation of girls and women with mental health needs.

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes (CCTs) have been at the core of the remarkable expansion of social protection in Latin America in the early twenty-first century. Our article reviews the origins of CCTs in the Social Investment (SI) approach to social policy design, explores their characteristics and traces their expansion in Latin America. It further questions whether CCTs designed under the influence of SI can generate long-term substantial improvements in social outcomes. Our analysis suggests that while CCTs have evidently produced a number of positive outputs they are not, on their own, enough to achieve the aim of reducing poverty. CCTs appear to be more effective in poverty alleviation when they are accompanied by – or form part of – a wider package of measures that enhance social and employment rights, integrating workers into the formal economy under better conditions. We conclude that unless the structural deficiencies that shape many of the Latin American welfare regimes are addressed, the potential of social investment policies, like CCTs, to combat poverty will remain limited.

The practice of extended family and friends helping to care for children when their parents are unable to is an enduring tradition in many cultures. Kinship care provides the largest proportion of out of home care in Western society but many of these carers experience poverty and deprivation, and do not receive comparable levels of support, financial or professional, to other placement types. This study provides UK evidence for the relationship between kinship care and deprivation and examines how the welfare state frames kinship care in policy and practice.