Many commentaries on social policy in the UK assume that policy as developed in England applies to the constituent countries of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. However, the advent of political devolution in the last five years is slowly being reflected in the literature. This paper takes education policy in Northern Ireland and discusses recent policy developments in the light of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. The Agreement, it is suggested, is providing a framework which promotes equality, human rights and inclusion in policy making. Some early indications of this are discussed and some of the resultant policy dilemmas are assessed. The paper concludes that accounts of policy development in the UK, which ignore the multi-level policy-making contexts created by devolution, do a disservice to the subject.

This article explores continuities and changes in relation to the problem and troubled families’ initiatives across three areas: the ways in which families have been defined and described; the nature of the interventions; and the criteria for ‘success’. First, while the criteria for identifying troubled families seem initially more explicit than those for problem families, data on the families indicate important continuities. Second, although both initiatives have been characterised by the claimed novelty and distinctiveness of the approaches, it is the practical, commonsense nature of the interventions that have also been highlighted. Third, whereas voluntary organisations and local authorities made little effort to assess ‘outcomes’ for problem families, or were pessimistic about the chances of success, the troubled families initiative has focused on costs, savings, payment-by-results and families ‘turned around’. Overall, troubled families have been much more visible in political rhetoric than their 1950s counterparts.

The devolved governments and parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increasingly have been adopting different approaches from England to the delivery of public services. With more powers and responsibilities, Scotland has initiated these moves to divergence, not least with respect to the roles of volunteering, the Voluntary and Community Sectors (VCS) in the context of the ‘Big Society’. This article explores how the environment and institutions in Scotland increasingly are generating moves for different relations between the public, private and VCS. With key powers reserved for the Westminster parliament, differences are demonstrated in the position and development of the VCS.

This article explores some impacts of relationships between the third sector, the state and the market on the non-profit sector workforce in Reading, England. We argue that: the growth of state influence has brought forth paid and unpaid workers to represent the sector to the state; in most non-profit organisations paid workers create the conditions for unpaid work. For a minority the opposite is true; labour in the non-profit sector is influenced by competition from the private sector for workers and ‘clients’; workers’ paid work, family commitments and market services limit volunteering, especially for what we term ‘lifestage’ volunteers.

Although poverty rates among the elderly in the US are at an all-time low, many face rising fiscal insecurity. The US welfare state is being remodeled in market-friendly ways that maximise individual choice, risk, and responsibility, rather than family friendly ways that maximise shared risk and responsibility and reduce insecurity. This article analyses how each of the main sources of income for the aged are being either frozen or shrunk in ways that are likely to increase inequality and insecurity in the years ahead among the elderly, particularly those who are female, black and/or Hispanic, and unmarried. The article assesses various policy changes for their capacity to either increase or decrease financial insecurity and inequality, particularly for those with a life time of lower earnings, more labour force disruptions and greater responsibility for providing unpaid care work for the young, disabled or frail elderly.

There is growing interest in how enterprises based on co-operative values can help to meet needs relating to welfare and re-energise public services. The objective of this article is to examine critically the intersection of personalised adult social care services and the co-operative tradition, which emphasises mutual aid and value-led enterprise. We do this by retelling the story of personalisation through a co-operative lens, and ground this reading in case studies of two new co-operative enterprises that were supported under a Department of Health programme in England (2006–2009) intended to demonstrate how personalised adult social care could be extended by developing collaborative, co-operative organisational forms.

This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations which mobilise around partnering and parenting. It finds that a shared identity based upon common experiences of misrecognition and stigma is the most significant element of involvement. This provides the basis for new knowledge, for challenging professional practice, and for alternative practices of care and support based on trust, reciprocity and mutual respect. However, sometimes it also contributes to forms of social closure. The article sets these findings in the context of New Labour policy on voluntary organisations, participation, and parenting and partnering.

Since 1997, Labour has redistributed welfare spending to caregivers, especially parents. Two primary aims of this policy were getting more mothers into paid work and reducing child poverty. But the implications are more complicated than this. All households with children have gained, and especially those on low and middle incomes. But lone parents and mothers and fathers in couple households have each been affected differently. Defining what constitutes ‘money for care’ is a prerequisite for normative discussion on how the social costs of caregiving should be shared between and within households.

This paper argues that agrarianism was a central force in shaping outcomes in Irish social insurance in the post-war period, as Irish policy makers sought to balance the needs of urban and rural Ireland, and the interests of diverse groups in the agricultural sector. Using the Beveridge Report as a policy template, Irish policy makers struggled to apply this model to very different Irish conditions, where the agricultural sector had a profound economic and ideological weight. The paper points to the need for political theories of the welfare state to encompass variation in the way in which agrarian interests are structured.

Successive governments have encouraged the view of users of public services as consumers, choosing between different providers on the basis of information about the quality of service. As part of this approach, prospective students are expected to make their decisions about which universities to apply to with reference to the consumer evaluations provided by the National Student Survey. However, a case study of a post-1992 university showed that not all students made genuine choices and those who did tended to be in stronger social and economic positions. Where choices were made, they were infrequently based on external evaluations of quality.

Single, older women in the State of Victoria, Australia, have emerged as a group experiencing housing insecurity and being highly vulnerable to homelessness in their old age. A sizable demographic cohort, it is a group that could overwhelm the existing homelessness service system. One of the most surprising aspects of this trend is their propensity to be tertiary educated. Focus groups revealed ‘critical life events’ as significant, and a shared ‘control belief’ in the value of education. Given that education is a key means by which Australian governments seek to remedy homelessness, the entry of educated women into the homelessness population suggests policy needs to re-examine homelessness causation and explicitly apply a gender-lens.

In England, the dominant policy narrative recognises no association between spending on children’s services and quality and a limited association between quality and deprivation. We combined 374 inspection outcomes between 2011 and 2019 with data on preventative and safeguarding expenditure and Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores. A multilevel logistic regression model predicting ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ judgements suggests each £100 increase in preventative spending per child was associated with a 69 per cent increase (95 per cent CI: 27.5 per cent, 124 per cent) in the odds of a positive inspection. A one-decile increase in deprivation was associated with a 16 per cent (95 per cent CI: −25 per cent, −5.7 per cent) decrease. Safeguarding expenditure was not associated with outcomes. Deprived communities have worse access to good-quality children’s services and government policies that have increased poverty and retrenched preventative services have likely exacerbated this inequality. Further, inattention to socioeconomic context in inspections raises concerns about their use in ‘take over’ policies.

A growing body of research quantifies the recent impact of fiscal consolidation and public service reform in liberal welfare regimes. However, less is known about how this is affecting the common terms upon which citizenship status is granted and experienced. With this in mind, this article examines what bearing the political crafting of welfare austerity is having on the status, rights and identity of notionally equal citizens. To do so, this article draws on a qualitative study examining lived experiences of poor and rich citizenship in New Zealand and the UK. Despite policy programmes idiosyncratic to their institutional context, both countries exhibit a similarly bifurcated system of social citizenship that is serving to structure, rather than moderate, material and status inequalities in austere welfare regimes.

In most developed and developing nations individuals are actively being encouraged to save towards retirement via a plethora of savings mechanisms. In Malaysia, the reliance on individual savings through the Employees Provident Fund has costly implications for those in low paid, insecure employment, women and those working in the informal sector. Focussing on Malaysia, this paper seeks to present the pitfalls of such over reliance on the provident fund mechanism, which allows early access to savings and diverts members' contributions to subsidiary accounts. In conclusion, the paper suggests paths of reform which would, at the very least, lessen the growing threat of poverty and social exclusion amongst older Malaysians.

We investigate alcohol consumption as one of the main factors contributing to variation in the gender gap in life expectancy in the Russian regions. We consider the socioeconomic indicators and mortality coefficients that enable us to capture the causes of death related primarily to alcohol abuse and smoking. We assume that macroeconomic situation, coupled with alcohol consumption are substantial determinants of the gender gap in life expectancy in the Russian regions. A panel data analysis confirms that alcohol consumption has a significant influence on the gender gap in life expectancy and reduces the life expectancy of men first and foremost, as they are more inclined toward unhealthy behaviours. We have determined that employment and income support policies should be conducted in conjunction with the anti-alcohol policy. Social policy aimed at reducing alcohol consumption should be vigorously reinforced during an economic recovery.

This article aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the social resilience approach. Recognising the interface between resilience and poverty studies, it proposes a distinct role for resilience research from a critical perspective to understand the dynamics of hardship in exceptional times, such as times of socio-economic crises, rather than explaining the long-term trajectories of poverty. It then provides a conceptual framework on the structural foundations of social resilience, highlighting three components: rules, resources and power relations. The article uses the 2008 crisis and the ensuing period of austerity as a microcosm to place the discussion within a contemporary context.

In social policy debates and research over recent years, ‘risk’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘the life course’ have become influential topics. In this themed section we will revisit these concepts and analyse how they have influenced policy debates and research in Australia and elsewhere. The contributions were developed as part of a research collaboration that brings together expertise from social policy, gender studies, risk sociology, social work, youth studies and research on ageing and old age. This introduction outlines the concepts and dimensions we found helpful for analysing social policy practice and research and the key arguments of the contributions.

The ‘ChangeUp’ and ‘FutureBuilders initiatives have provided substantial funding to support and facilitate ‘capacity building’ in voluntary and community organisations and so enable them to contribute to the achievement of public and social policy goals. This paper builds on findings from a study of an early ‘capacity-building’ programme delivered between 1998 and 2005. We explore the challenges of implementing such initiatives for voluntary sector intermediary bodies involved in delivering them and for the voluntary and community organisations intended as the main beneficiaries. We conclude with a discussion about the implications for policy implementation.

This article aims to assess ways in which different justice schemes may operate together for an improved legal and political response to victims of sexual crimes in the aftermath of armed conflicts. The article will briefly present the problem of sexual violence against women in armed conflict. It will then consider the evolution of criminal justice in regard to this crime, the results of recent attempts to implement truth and reconciliation processes, as well as briefly assess reparation schemes. Finally it will suggest a series of measures for coordinating the various schemes of justice in a way that guarantees women's rights in the aftermath of a conflict.

There is an extensive body of literature on the ways in which the family home is often a site of conflict and discord rather than security and safety. Much of this work has focussed on the problem of domestic violence perpetrated by adults and how the state should respond to it (Home Office, 2009). Another form of family violence however, that of the abuse of parents (or those occupying a parental role) by their adolescent children, has not received such public (or academic) recognition (Hunter et al., 2010). In the UK, the issue of parent abuse remains one of the most unacknowledged and under-researched form of family violence.