During the past decade, expectations placed on child welfare services in the UK have moved away from individualised provision geared to meeting the needs of specific children at risk, to consideration of the broader context for children. The introduction of a series of national programmes aimed at addressing social exclusion and tasked with stimulating new approaches to enabling better outcomes for children formed the background for the recent legislation and guidance for local children's services. The Children's Fund was one of a raft of New Labour social policies promoting partnerships between statutory and voluntary organisations in order to address the cross-cutting issue of social exclusion. It was announced following the UK 2000 Spending Review and drew from the Policy Action Team12 (PAT12) Report, ‘Young People at Risk’ (SEU, 2000). Funding started in January 2001 and continues until 2008 with a total allocation during this period of £960 million. Like most special policy initiatives instigated following 1997, the establishment of the Children's Fund was accompanied by both national and local evaluation requirements. The National Evaluation of the Children's Fund (NECF) was undertaken by a team from the Universities of Birmingham and London and this themed section draws on selected findings from that evaluation. Overall results are reported in Edwards et al., (2006).

The article identifies a resurgence of anti-Travellerism in post-Good Friday Agreement, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland – most obviously signalled by the ongoing Irish Government policy of ‘ethnicity denial’. It provides a comparative analysis of the different trajectories of state reformism with regard to Travellers in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - from the promised ‘final solution’ to the ‘Traveller problem’ of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963 through the high water mark of the 1995 Task Force Report. It finds a disturbing recrudescence of assimilationist, sedentarist and racist ideas and practices in contemporary state policies towards Travellers.

This article examines the institutional arrangements, practices and outcomes related to the recognition of skills, knowledge and competencies (SKC) of non-EU foreign nationals in the Netherlands (commonly referred to as Third Country Nationals (TCNs)) with specific reference to the Dutch healthcare sector. Although the national infrastructure for foreign recognition of educational and professional qualifications is well-developed by international standards, the system has a number of flaws as interviews with TCNs and experts in the field reveal. TCNs often discover that their qualifications are not considered equivalent to the relevant Dutch qualifications. Given the limitations of formally recognising the educational qualifications or work experience of TCNs, Dutch policies have supported other measures, including the accreditation and recognition of prior learning (RPL). However, expert interviews show that it remains a challenge to commit education providers and employers actually to validate these learning experiences. We consider various implications for policy-making and theory from this research.

Children's policy has emerged from the shadows of family and education policy over the last decade throughout the UK. The decade has also seen political and policy transformation, with the change of government from Conservatives to New Labour in 1997 and the latter's delivery on its promise of devolved administrations. Devolution has accompanied claims and attempts to move from ‘government to governance’, to recognise and support partnerships and encourage greater civic engagement.

Scottish children's policy is a prism to review key questions of devolution and its impact on policy change. The article traces and considers policy trends, to conclude that distinctive government structures have interacted with other influences to shape change, allowing more and ‘new’ room for community interests, political parties and distinctive policies.

The recent emergence of the term social capital into the vocabulary of policy makers in the UK is indicative of the community-led model which is currently being championed by New Labour. However, before the practical value (if any) of this particular ‘new’ idea can be realised, ways of measuring social capital which would make it ‘fit for purpose’ in the local policy setting need to be developed. The findings of one project, which set about measuring social capital in four West Midlands boroughs, provides the basis for a preliminary assessment of what a social capital-oriented tool may actually contribute to the development and implementation of policies at the local level.

If we are to be able to reflect the cost implications of changes in the nature, quality and productivity of long-term care interventions in future projections, we need an approach to measurement that reflects the value and quality of care. This paper describes a theoretically based but pragmatic approach to identifying the welfare gain from government expenditure on social care and illustrates an application in projecting the costs of long-term care used in the Wanless review of future needs of social care for older people in England.

This article contributes to debates about agency (meaning the behaviour of individuals) and structure, by drawing on empirical research into personal debt. Consideration of debt allows for debate about agency and structure beyond the narrow confines of welfare, and for the examination of agency in relation to citizens at different points in the broader socio-economic structure, not solely poor people. Based on the research findings, themselves grounded in interviewees' experience, the question of why two people in the same material circumstances will have different experiences becomes reframed as why two people whose exercise of agency is the same, face very different outcomes? It is argued that while the research supports a ‘both-and’ rather than ‘either-or’ approach to understanding agency and structure, a ‘both-and’ approach still does not fully capture the experience of interviewees. The key point is that the exercise of agency is overlaid onto structural inequality, and it is understanding the exercise of ‘agency within structure’ that is critical.

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.

Mexican social policy has been transformed in recent years with the introduction and expansion of social assistance programmes, causing a diversion from the trajectory based on social insurance since the first decades of the twentieth century. This article aims to understand the outcomes of that transformation, by applying welfare regime theory to establish how social policy reforms have affected the distribution of welfare responsibilities among the state, markets and families. The research identifies (de)commodification and (de)familialisation outcomes of policy changes in pensions, healthcare, unemployment and family support. Results suggest that the expansion has not produced significant reductions in decommodification or defamilialisation because of: a) the explicit or implicit role assigned to markets in policy design and implementation, and b) the reliance of the process of economic liberalisation on the welfare role performed by families. The case of Mexico may illustrate the current welfare challenges faced by societies across Latin America.

Performance measurement in social care is now considerably more advanced than previously. However, measurement is criticised on the basis of its presentation as neutral when, in the UK, it is part of the government's regulatory regime. However, measurement is important, especially when alternative methods may bring about different rankings of authorities to those endorsed by the recent system. This paper explores this issue through analyses of cost efficiency in English social services authorities. It concludes that the picture of authorities' performance depends on the method chosen which, it is argued, should stem from the stated aims of performance monitoring.

This paper explores the strategies of service providers and the benefits reported by disabled children and their parents/carers in three Children's Fund programmes in England. Based on National Evaluation of the Children's Fund research, we discuss how different understandings of ‘inclusion’ informed the diverse strategies and approaches service providers adopted. While disabled children and families perceived the benefits of services predominantly in terms of building individual children's resilience and social networks, the paper highlights the need for holistic approaches which have a broad view of inclusion, support children's networks and tackle disabling barriers within all the spheres of children's lives.

The Finnish pension reform of 2005 introduced the concept of a flexible retirement age. Drawing upon a longitudinal study of older Finnish employees, this article examines the extent to which individual propensity to delay retirement is influenced by choice or by chance, and examines the effects of the interplay between chances and choices in affecting longevity of employment. The results suggest that the flexibility in the organisation of the end of the working life is biased towards the better off. They also show that the interplay of choice and chance in the retirement process is firmly tied to the existing age-arrangements and economic trends. The conclusions examine the implication of these findings for divergent routes towards late retirement.

Rural post office provision is becoming increasingly reliant on alternative delivery models. The effect of change could fall disproportionately on older people as a key customer group of the Post Office, overrepresented in rural areas. There are only very limited polices in this area. The existing literature has not yet examined where compulsory changes have taken place alongside the impact on older people living in the community. This research uses a mixed methods approach, exploring the example of the 2007–9 Post Office Network Change Programme in England and a case study of older people in a community affected by this change. Very rural areas were vulnerable to post office changes; 70 per cent of changes to post office delivery models occurred in these areas. It is important to consider the impacts of changes more broadly, including both direct and indirect outcomes.

People with cognitive impairments are regularly denied access to the vote in democratic nations. At the same time, the accuracy of legal regulations is uncertain due to the variety of legal classifications and the vague administrative procedures envisaged for their implementation. This article offers an extensive analysis of the accuracy of legal restrictions on the vote for people with cognitive impairments in all electoral democracies. The article argues that the prospect of ever regulating the vote accurately, in the sense of avoiding both misclassifications and arbitrary administration of restrictions, is difficult to envisage. In the face of the regulatory problems associated with the attempt to restrict the vote for people with cognitive impairment, it is concluded that enfranchisement of all adult citizens would constitute an improvement.

This article is based on research set up to explore temporal dimensions of loneliness amongst older people in a northern town. As the study progressed, spatial considerations and confinements emerged as a related and equally important feature. The article suggests that the ‘social sphere’ of lived reality, especially reality lived out in one confined space, is a prime candidate for what has been termed ‘de-familiarisation’. Social policy discourses focussed on ‘ageing in place’ can sometimes neglect the realities of older people’s circumstances, daily life and social contact. Central arguments put forward in the article are: that loneliness increases as spatial prospects recede; that ‘home’ can become a source of frustration and negativity rather than a source of solace and comfort; and that expanding and facilitating the social horizons of older people currently ‘confined’ to home should be prioritised within a genuinely age-friendly approach to social policy.

This study examines a recent legislative change in New Zealand social policy that provides for the partners of people engaging in welfare fraud to be prosecuted for the crime and to be jointly liable for the debt generated from the crime. This situation applies where the partner knew, or ought to have known, of the fraud. This approach may be contrasted with the treatment of the partners of those who engage in tax evasion, or other forms of financial crime, who are not liable for prosecution or any debt resulting from the offence.

Discrimination of those on welfare is well-established. The article highlights the extent to which welfare beneficiaries are now targeted for greater punitive measures in New Zealand and the increasing criminalisation of welfare in the country. The practices outlined appear to contravene the New Zealand Human Rights Act. Moreover, these practices are not aligned with the basic provisions of criminal law: that a guilty mind and a positive act are present for a crime to be committed. The study draws attention to issues of equity, knowledge of crime, and the construction of crime and criminals in the New Zealand justice system.

In late 2011, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government announced the launch of a new programme on ‘troubled families’ – a term used to describe the estimated 120,000 most behaviourally anti-social families in England and Wales. To many social scientists, this appeared to be yet another reconstruction of the broad ‘underclass’ concept that has run like a thread of analysis through UK poverty discourses over the last 150 years. The symbolic nature and coded meanings of this particular concept of poverty are very interesting, as is the way it has been reconstructed periodically. This paper summarises these reconstructions, and the analytical issues raised by them: the ‘residuum’ concept of the 1880–1914 period; the ‘social problem group’ of the inter-war years; the ‘problem family’ of the 1940s and 1950s; the ‘cycle of deprivation’ of the 1970s; and the ‘underclass’ of the 1980s and 1990s.

The England and Wales 2001 Census was the first to include ‘Mixed’ categories which have now been adopted across government. The four ‘cultural background’ options were highly prescriptive, specifying combinations of groups. This paper assesses how satisfactorily these analytical categories captured self-ascribed cultural affiliation based on the criteria of validity, reliability and utility of the data for public services. Finally, the paper asks whether we now need a census question on ethnic origin/ancestry in addition to – or instead of – ethnic group or whether multi-ticking or a focus on family origins might give more useful public policy data and better measure the population's ethnic diversity.

Paid work has traditionally been seen as a core element in the construction of masculine identities. Willis (1977) has, for example, linked working-class masculinity to shop floor culture. It is, however, clear that many communities cannot rely on the stable employment around which familiar models of working-class identity were forged. This paper examines how the male residents of a deprived former council estate in the north of England have responded to the loss of traditional employment opportunities. It is argued that paid informal work has become an important way for some working-class men to express their identity.