Flexible employment has been suggested as an important policy solution to ‘the problem’ of inactive older workers. Temporary contracts, part-time jobs, self-employment and freelance consulting have been seen as viable options for people needing to make gradual transitions into retirement and for governments wishing to encourage an extension to working lives. Using the case of the UK, the paper examines the multi-stakeholder appeal of flexible transitions into retirement. However, the term has been poorly defined and conceptualised. Drawing on her own research, the author challenges the notion of flexible extensions to working lives for the oldest members of the labour force.

A key component of sustainable welfare policy is the extension of working life (EWL). Currently this aim is chiefly pursued by financial policies, neglecting the potential role of quality of working life (QWL) in attracting people to remain employed. National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate deteriorating overall job attitude among older employees, following the changed competitive and technological conditions of the 1990s. The investigation goes on to diagnose aspects of the work situation implicated in adverse experience of work among older employees. Work demands and the nature of work emerge as key areas of discontent, with additional evidence of insecurity, and dissatisfaction with pensions, emerging over the recent recession. Policies potentially addressing QWL, with particular attention to the role of employers, are reviewed in the conclusion.

The UK Government has recently implemented large-scale public-sector funding cuts and substantial welfare reform. Groups within civil society are being encouraged to fill gaps in service provision, and ‘social innovation’ has been championed as a means of addressing social exclusion, such as that caused by worklessness, a major impediment to citizens being able to access money, power and resources, which are key social determinants of health. The aim of this article is to make the case for innovative ‘upstream’ approaches to addressing health inequalities, and we discuss three prominent social innovations gaining traction: microcredit for enterprise; social enterprise in the form of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs); and Self Reliant Groups (SRGs). We find that while certain social innovations may have the potential to address health inequalities, large-scale research programmes that will yield the quality and range of empirical evidence to demonstrate impact, and, in particular, an understanding of the causal pathways and mechanisms of action, simply do not yet exist.

Against the background of the ‘Inspiring Communities’ programme to raise ‘community-level’ educational aspirations in England, this article considers whether the existing evidence about place and aspirations suggests that it will be beneficial.

We address three questions: Do neighbourhoods have an influence on educational attainment? Are ‘community level’ aspirations a mechanism by which neighbourhoods affect individual aspirations? Is there evidence that aspirations are lower in poor neighbourhoods?

The article suggests that the available evidence does not lead to firm conclusions; a key problem is that few studies have measured aspirations at a neighbourhood level. It suggests that limited spending on a pilot is a reasonable response. However, aspirations are shaped by a wide range of other influences. This suggests that any interventions on ‘community’ aspirations’ should be conjoined with other programmes to support schools and to address inequalities between neighbourhoods.

In France, public policies in the field of disability was transformed by the law in 11 February 2005 on ‘Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation, and Citizenship of People with Disabilities’. The law was framed as the introduction in France of the international ‘social model of disability’, in order to combat discrimination. Yet international references in parliamentary debates leading to the adoption of this law were all but absent. How do we explain this paradox? This article aims to answer this question by showing how the newly introduced measures reflected the needs of different stakeholders involved in this public policy to maintain their positions and reform their mutual agreements. This transfer was not characterised by a thorough rethinking of the public policy subsystem, but rather resulted in layering of new rights on top of old frameworks. How then did the organisations promoting these measures manage to implement public policies despite clear contradictions between old and new goals? This article suggests that the organisational regulation of political conflict (conflict avoidance and circumvention of obstacles) and the safeguarding of embedded interests (by limiting possibilities for compromise and administrative obstruction of legal disputes) played a decisive role in this process.

It has been claimed that there is a global Third Way (TW) debate. Giddens (2001: 1) writes that, ‘Across the world left of centre governments are attempting to institute third way programmes – whether or not they favour the term itself. ‘ He claims that there are self-declared third way parties in power in the UK, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, among many other countries. Similarly, according to Blair (2001), the ideas associated with the TW are still the wave of the future for progressive politics. From Latin America to Europe to parts of Asia, TW politics or ‘progressive government’ is exerting a huge influence on global politics. The TW is seen as a trailblazer for a new global social policy, a new model for a new millennium (e.g. McGuire, 1998/9). One of the main blueprints for the new politics (Giddens, 1998) has been translated into many languages. A number of international meetings in Paris and Florence have discussed the TW. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder issued a joint paper, ‘The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte’ (Blair and Schröder, 1999) that was drafted by Peter Mandelson and Bodo Hombach. Hombach's book has been translated into English as ‘The New Centre’ (Hombach, 2000), with a preface by Tony Giddens and an introduction by Mark Leonard.

In Australia financial counselling has emerged as an important component of policy responses to assist low income households and individuals in financial stress. However, the evidence on its effectiveness in alleviating or resolving debt-related issues is patchy. This article contributes much-needed empirical evidence on its impact on low income households and presents the results of a recent national study of financial counselling clients in Australia. The research findings demonstrate the complex factors contributing to financial stress and the effectiveness of financial counselling in providing positive outcomes on a range of measures, including debt resolution, financial capability and health and wellbeing, and highlight the importance of early intervention. From a policy perspective, the study points to the importance of having a mix of strategies to address financial stress in low income earners that combine approaches based on individual responsibility and models based on social justice and advocacy.

Based on a mixed methods approach, this article describes the prevalence of different levels of food budget restraints in a sample of 1,650 Danish households, and explores different types of coping strategies to deal with such restraints. Strategies concerned cooking, eating and buying food. A deeper knowledge of coping strategies was obtained by analysing qualitative data from interviews with thirty families who have experienced food budget restraints. Results revealed that more than 40 per cent reported some level of restraint on their food budget, while about 20 per cent experienced more substantial food budget restraints or food insecurity. Single parent households were at significantly greater risk of experiencing restraint than others. An investigation of coping strategies showed that some strategies, for example, using leftovers and cooking seasonal products, were common across all levels of budget restraint, while strategies affecting social life and taste preferences negatively were mostly applied when restraint was more severe. The qualitative analysis explored how the various strategies involved the potential for both positive and negative experiences for the individual, depending on the wider context surrounding the need to reduce household food budgets. Results from this study may be important for developing adequate measures to influence food purchases and eating practices in specific groups in situations of widespread economic turbulence in welfare societies.

Increasingly, social policies combine to intensify old risks and create new social risks with unequal consequences for men and women. These risks include those created by changing normative expectations and the resulting tensions between social policy, paid employment and family life. Policy reliance on highly aggregated standardised outcome data and generalised models of autonomous rational action result in policies that lack an understanding of the rationales that structure everyday life. Drawing on two Australian studies, we illustrate the importance of attending to the intersections and collisions of social change and normative policy frameworks from the perspective of individual ‘lived lives’.

This article provides a historical analysis of particular policy initiatives undertaken in the US and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s and asks to what extent the lessons from these policy initiatives can be transferred to current policy development in the UK today. The focus of the discussion is local community-based interventions, aimed at combating poverty and exclusion. These are now generally referred to in the UK as Area Based Initiatives (ABIs).

The literature is reviewed: (a) comparing models of abuse and protection applied at each stage of the lifespan; and (b) exploring abuse and protection issues with respect to individuals over time. A paucity of comparative and lifespan work in the field of abuse and protection is reported. Within the available literature, different types of knowledge are drawn upon and contrasted definitions of ‘abuse’ and ‘protection’ employed. Accordingly, the most significant findings of the review are in the dissonances and the gaps surrounding the substantive findings. Examples are presented to demonstrate this, while new directions for discussion and research are proposed.

This article reviews the different forms of legal interventions which may be available to address parent abuse. It seeks to examine the evidence as to which are actually used currently and the problems which are inherent in them. We do this both by examining the statutory basis of the existing potential legal remedies and reported cases relating to those provisions, and by drawing on evidence from a small-scale study of relevant professional workers in one city. We conclude that while recourse to the police, and hence potentially the criminal justice system, is most frequent in practice, the criminal justice system is not suited to tackling the issue. Other interventions, such as anti-social behaviour orders and injunctions, also reveal problems. Law struggles to find an effective response to such a complex problem. Notwithstanding the acknowledged limits of law in changing behaviour, we argue that law could be used more effectively to reduce the incidence and impact of parent abuse.

Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). According to Headey et al. (1997: 332), it has become a canon in comparative social policy against which any subsequent work must situate itself. Abrahamson (1999) notes that, since the publication of the book, every welfare state scholar has referred to Esping-Andersen's tripolar scheme. Scruggs and Allen (2006: 55, 69) remark that it ‘is difficult to find an article comparing welfare states in advanced democratic countries (or a syllabus on social policy) that does not refer to this seminal work’, and ‘it is hard to overstate the significance of the impact of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC) on comparative studies of the welfare state’. Its seminal status is evidenced by the extent to which it continues to be cited in articles on comparative welfare states. It also remains required reading for most (graduate) students of comparative political economy and social policy (Scruggs and Allen, 2008). Kröger (2011) claims that, with few exceptions, comparative social policy research is shaped by welfare regime analysis. Arts and Gelissen conclude that TWWC is a defining influence upon the whole field of comparative welfare state research (2010: 569). Danforth (2014) writes that the ‘three worlds’ typology has become one of the principal heuristics for examining modern welfare states. In short, TWWC is a ‘modern classic’ (Arts and Gelissen, 2002).

This article sets out to explore the relationship between civil society, social policy and participatory democracy, challenging the paternalistic and egoistic tradition of charity and the voluntary sector as its defining paradigm. Civil society is linked to the right to associate for social and political purposes. Radical and liberal traditions of civil society are compared and contrasted. It is suggested that historically participatory democracy can be viewed as a Social Left that embraces the politics of difference (recognition/respect) and equality (social justice/redistribution) through the mobilisation of the poor and excluded. The emphasis is on the activist citizen (new social movements) as opposed to the traditional active citizen (charity). It is concluded that this version of civil society potentially offers a new political and cultural grammar for the discourse of social policy – that is reflexive, inclusive and democratic.

Improvements in offender healthcare are key to the current UK Government's reform of the criminal justice system and the aims of reducing reoffending and protecting the public. Current approaches to offender health care emphasise the importance of ‘continuity of care’. Reference to the ‘offender health pathway’ suggests the existence of seamless delivery and experience of care; however, evidence suggests these remain some way off. This research explores prison health discharge planning in four North East prisons and uncovers elements of good practice, but also a number of challenges the prisons continue to face in their attempts to improve clinical pathways for prisoners being released or transferred, including institutional, staffing and prisoner issues. These challenges need to be acknowledged and addressed if robust discharge planning and continuity of care at the end of the offender health pathway is to be achieved.

Research on the processes underpinning the contemporary growth in the commoditisation of domestic labour focuses on feminised areas of work, such as cleaning and care. Yet research examining trends in domestic outsourcing highlights how men's, as well as women's, household work is subject to increased commoditisation. Through a qualitative enquiry of households which outsource stereotypically male domestic chores – essentially, household and garden repair and maintenance – and men who do such work for pay, we seek to understand the processes underpinning its outsourcing. In doing so, we adopt a framework which treats the paid domestic-work sector as a critical nexus at which gendered care and migration regimes intersect. The focus on male domestic chores, however, requires that we broaden that framework in ways which can more fully illuminate men's positions within it.

Using a rigorous, evidence-focused review method, this literature review found eleven relevant studies that directly compare the impacts of cash transfers and remittances on a range indicators of poverty at the household level. The evidence base is small and highly context specific. The external and internal validity of most studies are limited, so the conclusions that can be drawn from this review are tentative. However, in the majority of studies both cash transfers and remittances are shown to have positive impacts on reducing poverty. Overall, remittances seem to have stronger poverty-reducing impacts. There are a number of factors that seem to explain why remittances have a greater effect. In the studies reviewed here, remittances appear to reach both a greater share of the overall population than cash transfers and a greater share of poorer households. Furthermore, remittances were higher in value in the majority of studies reviewed. Further high-quality research is needed.

The major reform package adopted by the Swedish Government in the late 1990s to counteract men's violence against women has now been evaluated seven years on. The original reform included legislative changes, as well as assignments to public authorities with an emphasis on improving encounters between abused women and representatives of the various authorities. The evaluation inquiry has identified pervasive shortcomings in the implementation of the reform package. Areas of special concern include the low priority given to the issue and the lack of guidelines, of continuity, of adequate resources, and, not least, of a ‘shared perspective’ on the causes and impact of men's violence against women. Future discussions and efforts will also be informed by, yet another, and slightly more recent government commissioned report on gender equality that includes an extensive discussion about men's violence against women and advocates a more eclectic approach than advocated by the evaluation inquiry.

Central to the Blair government's economic and social policies has been the promotion of a more ‘knowledge-based economy’. However, some commentators have suggested that the knowledge economy stretches income distributions and polarises skilled and unskilled workers. Drawing on empirical data about the UK case to explore such claims, this paper concludes that there is a significant positive correlation between the extent to which a region's economy has become ‘knowledge based’ and its level of income inequality. It argues this finding has important policy relevant implications.

This article contributes to the literature on engaging employers in activation policies. It focuses on a specific policy aimed at promoting the labour-market participation of people with disabilities. Unlike many activation policies, this policy recognises that the engagement of employers and the human resource management practices in their organisations are crucial factors for the policy’s success. The article reports on a study among employers participating in this policy. It focuses on the challenges employers experience in placing people with disabilities in their organisations, and on the public support they expect in dealing with these challenges. The article concludes that as promoting the labour-market participation of groups remote from the labour market requires social policy interventions as well as interventions in organisational human resource management, it poses challenges for policy makers, agencies providing employment services, and employers and their organisations.