Rights problems such as debt, employment, welfare benefits and family problems are widespread. They are problems of everyday life, affecting many people and many aspects of people's lives and are now well documented. In contrast, there has been little research on the role of family and friends when experiencing a problem and seeking advice. Drawing on comprehensive qualitative research, this article explores how people seeking advice for their rights problems rely on family and friends for help in the advice-seeking process. The research shows that help lies on a continuum from encouraging people to seek advice to assistance with the tasks necessary for problem resolution. The implications of this for service design are considered.

A. Hall and J. Midgely (2004), Social Policy for Development, Sage, London, 288 pages.

I. Gough and G. Wood (2004), Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Cambrdige University Press, Cambridge, 363 pages.

E. Rieger and S. Leibfried (2003), Limits to Globalization, Blackwell, Oxford, 402 pages.

This themed section focuses on parenting support as a social policy phenomenon within and across the five Nordic Countries of Europe: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. As in other parts of Europe, parenting support has received increased attention in social policy making in the Nordic region. In reviewing developments in the Nordic countries, the themed section seeks to identify and discuss similarities and differences between parenting support policies in the North versus other parts of Europe. It considers whether the aims and the provision of parenting support in the Nordic countries differ significantly from those identified in studies of parenting support policies in other European countries.

Little research has been conducted exploring the relationship between public-sector accountability and the law. This is a significant oversight given the potential for this relationship to cause unintended consequences around issues of liability, especially in the context of a growing litigation culture. The purpose of the current research is to explore this relationship, using qualitative studies of public-sector professionals in England. The findings of the study suggest that increasing emphasis on accountability has led to a growing magnification of legal risk in the public sector, with consequences for the ways public-sector professionals perceive their relationships with the public.

Qualitative longitudinal research can make a distinctive contribution to policy discussions and to the assessment of outcomes. This article draws on research with lone-parent families over fifteen years to illustrate how change and continuity can look different over shorter and longer time periods, to discuss presenting longitudinal qualitative evidence through the selection of case studies, and to explore some of the challenges of engaging in policy debates with qualitative data.

In most democratic countries people with intellectual impairments are denied the right to vote in national elections. One important reason for this is that they are perceived as incapable of making independent political judgements and may thus fail to vote on the basis of their own preferences. Their exclusion is consequently defended by appeal to the need to protect the ‘integrity’ of democratic elections. In this article, this assertion is critically examined. The conclusion is that this argument does not hold sway once the connections between political equality and democratic elections have been clarified. Whilst political equality requires that elections are fair in the sense that everyone's preferences are given equal weight, fundamentally political equality also requires that everyone's opportunity to vote securely and without undue interference from others is recognised. Hence, as long as such opportunities have not been granted to people with intellectual impairments, they cannot consistently be excluded by appeal to the values of political equality.

The provision of services in the contractual welfare state is conditional. If one wants to receive a service, one has to comply with the demands of the provider. If one fails to do so, the organisation threatens to terminate its services, and indeed often does so. There are, however, people who breach their contracts time after time, falling back into the same dire situation that prompted them to ask for help in the first place. Social workers must then visit these people to help them re-enter the contract. This article draws on an in-depth analysis of such ‘behind the front door’ policies, focussing on single mothers on welfare. It argues that for many single mothers on welfare, social security fails to provide emotional and relational security, which undermines their ability to fulfil the terms of the contract. So long as the welfare state is based on the idea of (material) social security, ‘behind the front door’ workers remain urgently needed.

Drawing on an ESRC funded qualitative longitudinal study of young fatherhood, this article explores the experiences of young offender fathers, the complex intersection of offender and fatherhood pathways for young men and the impact of professional support and tailored intervention programmes on these processes. The article challenges the axiom of young offender fathers as inherently ‘risky’, and suggests the utility of a dynamic, life course approach to criminal policy and practice that recognises the fluidity of their life journeys, and brings ideas of redemption more centrally into the picture.

This article contributes to the search for suitable approaches to combat social exclusion faced by disabled people in capitalist wage labour markets. Referring to policy and service examples in Hong Kong, it reviews four social exclusion approaches – the Moral Underclass (MUD), Social Integrationist (SID), Redistributive (RED) and Collective Production (COP) approaches. These approaches are explored in relation to three key issues: (1) the diverse preferences of disabled people; (2) the myth of infeasibility regarding unconventional approaches and (3) the defects of the medical model of disability. The article argues that the MUD and SID approaches are more associated with the medical model of disability and emphasise individual changes. The RED and COP approaches contain more features of the social model of disability and are in favour of social and structural changes. The COP approach stresses the diverse preferences of disabled people and supports innovative services to combat social exclusion.

The provision of taxation relief to support pension savings has become a large and expensive aspect of the welfare state in many countries. Among OECD member states this exceeds $200 billion in revenue forgone each year. Previous research has consistently found this fiscal welfare to have pronounced regressive distributive outcomes. However, little is known about the gendered impact of these fiscal welfare supports, a void this article addresses. Using data for Ireland the article finds that the current structure of fiscal welfare supports notably favours males over females. Nominal contribution levels are higher among males, and males are more likely to be active contributors to pension savings. The associated tax supports are consequently skewed, with two-thirds received by men and one-third by women. This outcome suggests a continuation of the gender earnings gap into retirement and a discontinuity between longevity expectations and tax policy supports for pension provision.

This article contributes to the growing literature concerning the necessity and desirability of democratising the UK welfare state. It takes a theoretical approach by exploring some of the key influences on contemporary debates: risk society, governmentality, the new social democracy and associational welfare. The article suggests that none of these supplies the theoretical foundations of a welfare democracy and that another approach must be found. It concludes that only by engaging with the debate concerning deliberative democracy can social policy find a way forward. The key is to emancipate social time through an alternative ethic to that of paid employment.

This article showcases a research, dissemination and impact study on the striptease industry that explores why key stakeholders (dancers) are excluded, and ways that inclusion in policy development is achievable. This form of erotic work has undergone increased attention from policy and regulatory officials in recent years with the introduction of a new licensing process as venues are categorised as Sexual Entertainment Venues. The article will demonstrate how community and campaign group voices were heard over that of the dancers themselves, who were not consulted in the process of the legislative change. However, the article shows how small but significant interventions into policy development by direct work with stakeholders (here Licensing Committees and officers) can make steps towards an inclusion of dancer welfare and safety issues. Finally, we propose a set of principles that can ensure dancer and sex worker voices are included in policy consultation and decision making to ensure evidence-based policy making.

The project that we report here provided free home computers and a one-year broadband subscription to a sample of 108 older people diagnosed with coronary heart disease. The sample was divided at random and the experimental group had ‘facilitated learning’, based on access to a dedicated website, while controls did not. The results suggest that many participants needed to overcome their fear of new technology before they could learn how to use it effectively. Significant differences in computer skills were found between the experimental and control groups after six months of being involved in the project.

This introductory article offers an analytical framework to understand the limits of approaches that stress the diffusion and transfers of international norms within the field of disability policy over the last three decades. It also aims to provide alternative ways to frame some of the important changes that have occurred through the concept of layering, in order to better account for the intricate processes of national translation but also for the contradictions, conflicts, and obstacles that the promotion of disability rights have faced in different countries. Finally, this article serves to introduce the contributions that make up the themed section in this issue of Social Policy and Society.

‘The big society’ was a central theme in the Conservative's 2010 general election campaign. Opinion polls at the time of the election suggested that ‘the big society’ had little resonance with the public. Nevertheless, ‘the big society’ has been the subject of a number of prominent re-launches since the election. It appeared to underpin the Coalition government's policies in a range of areas and the Prime Minister invested considerable personal capital in it. This article examines public attitudes towards ‘the big society’. Drawing on public opinion data, it focuses on public recognition and understanding of ‘the big society’ and more broadly on whether the government's approach to rolling back state provision has prompted an increased public appetite for involvement in the delivery of services.

In discussions about ‘race’, empire, imperialism – and the decolonisation of the curriculum in European universities – the discipline of Romani Studies has, until recently, been relatively quiet. This article seeks to address this silence and offers commentary on the institutional silences, via both disciplinary historical and contemporary country-specific analysis. A case study is investigated to tease out the ontological and epistemological transitions from early 19th Century Gypsylorism to 21st Century Critical Romani Studies: the teaching and learning of Romani Studies at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. We argue that the legacy of Gypsylorism, as much as the political climate in which the teaching and learning of contemporary Romani Studies occurs, are important aspects to consider. In moving forwards, we suggest that the models and pedagogies adopted at CEU since 2015 offer a useful and critical template for other universities and departments to consider adopting in progressing Romani knowledge production.

This critical and empirical article explores contemporary reproduction, experience, and responses to stigma in welfare delivery in Ireland. Combining qualitative data about lone parents (n22) gathered through two different research projects in 2017 and 2018 allows us to interrogate stigma in a multi-dimensional way and as an overarching experience as an ongoing project of neo liberalism. We analyse our findings using Baumberg’s (2016) typology of stigma which differentiates claim making stigma from personal and societal stigma, applying the framework to empirical data concerning lone parents’ recent experiences of Irish labour activation and homeless support services. We find that while behavioural conditionality necessarily frames this experience and constrains claimants, it is not totalising. We conclude by using Tyler’s concept of stigmacraft to situate the context of stigma as part of the political economy of welfare.

The repeated circulation of anti-welfare discourses has served to encourage limited and often incorrect public understandings of issues pertaining to welfare. Central to these processes is the social construction of notions of ‘deservedness’ and ‘undeservedness.’ In this article we examine the 2017 ‘Welfare Cheats, Cheat Us All’ (original emphasis) campaign initiated by the Department of Social Protection in the Republic of Ireland. We present our analysis of the dominant discourses evident in the campaign itself and the in-house discussions in the lead up to the campaign. Our article shows that this Irish campaign rehearses a familiar international discourse which follows distinct patterns or rules, and we evidence, in keeping with other moral panics, the spurious nature of the data being used to exaggerate the scale and extent of welfare ‘fraud’.

An education system that is based on the needs of a sedentary community is inherently exclusionary for mobile young people. However, it is increasingly acknowledged that even Gypsy Traveller pupils who have been ‘settled’ for a number of years have limited engagement with the secondary phase of schooling. This paper provides an overview of developments in educational policy that have impacted on educational access for Travellers and draws upon research data generated from a recent five-year study to highlight potential challenges and barriers that continue to hinder their educational achievement. The findings suggest that experience of racism, the impact of cultural dissonance and low teacher expectations may all be contributory factors that affect Gypsy Traveller students’ educational engagement and achievement.