Over the last 30 or so years the problem of violence against women and how states should respond to it, in its myriad of forms, has become increasingly prevalent in academic and policy debates at both the national and international level. An active international women's movement, spanning Europe, the United States and many parts of the Southern hemisphere, including in particular Latin America and South Asia, has facilitated this growing awareness of gendered violence as a social problem requiring intervention. In a separate, but ultimately related, development there has been a growing global concern with extending human rights protection to women as a distinct group with specific concerns and needs. As a consequence of these twin developments, the tendency for gendered violence to be seen as an essentially private affair requiring limited state interfe-rence has slowly, but increasingly, been superseded by the recognition that the state has been failing victims.

This article reports the findings from a qualitative study in Scotland, UK, which explored, in some depth, older employees' preferences and expectations regarding work and retirement. Many expected to continue working, but various barriers frustrated those expectations, especially over-rigidity in employers' approaches. The research highlighted the diversity of factors that played a part, including gender, size of employing organisation, and health. The potentially minimal impact of the forthcoming Employment Equality (Age) Regulations is explored, and a holistic approach to the employment of workers – whether younger or older – is urged.

This paper discusses and compares the origin and development of the health care systems of South Korea and the UK from the end of WW2 and endeavours to compare outcomes. The paper emphasises the importance of war as a stimulus to the development of national health services in both countries and argues that there is convergence between the UK's nationalised NHS and South Korea's US-modelled capitalist system. Overall, we conclude that there is a possibility not only that the financing and nature of the Korean and UK health care delivery systems may show convergence, but it is not impossible that they will ‘change places’ with the UK system dominated by private provision and South Korea's by public provision.

The issue of ‘joined up’ governance and partnership working (between statutory partners, between the state and the voluntary sector and between the state and the private sector) is one which currently occupies the attention of policy makers and academics across mixed-liberal welfare states such as the European Union, Nordic, Commonwealth and North American welfare regimes (Geddes and Benington, 2001; Considine and Lewis, 2003; Bradford, 2003; Ovretveit, 2003). Many of these states, the UK included, are attempting to tackle the issues of growing demands for services, the perceived ineffectiveness and inefficiency of governments in responding to welfare need and the ‘hollowing out’ of the state that is a feature of modern mixed-liberal welfare states, particularly those which are attempting to find a ‘Third Way’ between socialist bureaucracies and market-driven liberalism (Giddens, 1998). The policy response, both in the UK and internationally, has been to encourage ‘partnership’ working between the various arms of the state, and between the state and the private and voluntary sector, as well as emphasizing ‘partnership’ working between the state and local users and communities.

Social enterprise has become an important component of governmental social and economic policy in both the UK and South Korea over the last decade. Both countries have experienced a growth in social businesses, with the UK recently adopting targets for the number of social enterprises established. Whilst the emphasis in the UK has been on their role in developing mixed economies of care and building entrepreneurial skills in deprived communities, the South Korean model has been more closely allied to US ‘welfare to work’ strategies. The paper explores these differences and critically examines the capacity of social enterprises to meet wider social and economic objectives.

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.

The reforms to children's services in the UK brought in by the Every Child Matters Green Paper and the subsequent Children Act 2004 represent the most significant change in this area of social policy since 1948. The policy approach has two distinguishing features – an ‘outcomes led’ approach rooted in the views of children and young people about what constitutes ‘wellbeing’ in their lives, and a partnership approach that recognises these outcomes can only be achieved through high levels of inter-agency and inter-professional working. This article suggests that the two features may be in tension, and that during the process of implementation there is a danger that user defined outcomes will be re-interpreted to fit in with other organisational and professional agendas. The analysis draws upon Rick Matland's framework for exploring the impact of conflict and ambiguity respectively upon the implementation process.

Traditionally the factors affecting retirement are correlated with individual difference variables such as level of income, health issues and caring responsibilities. Studies have shown how these factors interact to predict the individual retirement process. However, the demand-side factors which structure opportunities for older workers have been somewhat less studied. This paper explores the employer role in retirement. By investigating the experience of employees and retirees from three organisations this article demonstrates that the employing organisation's policies and practices are key to understanding retirement transitions. In the conclusion the impact of forthcoming age discrimination legislation is considered.

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.

Mental health is a good example of a field where imperatives for partnership or collaborative working can be in tension with those for client confidentiality. Both imperatives have been reinforced by additional regulation in recent years, in response to major inquiries. Professionals face the dilemma that either sharing clients' or patients' information or not sharing it could lead to outcomes for which they might be blamed; any rule adopted risks one or other type of error. This article examines two cases from a larger interview-based study of how local organisations are trying practically to reconcile these competing pressures.

South Korea is rapidly becoming an aged society and with changing family structures there is increasing concern about the care of older people. This paper considers the well being of family carers of older people who suffer from dementia or a stroke. One hundred and sixty eight family caregivers, who were caring for elderly relatives, were selected and the major factors affecting their psychological well-being and proposals to improve their quality of life are identified and discussed.

This article explores the process of attrition, where domestic violence cases fail to make it through the criminal justice system and do not result in criminal conviction. The article draws on the hitherto most detailed study of such attrition in the UK. The research, carried out across the Northumbria Police Force area, explored the quantitative attrition of domestic violence cases, from reporting to the police to final court outcome, contextualising this via the experiences of individuals (mainly women) victimised by domestic violence as well as the perspectives and practices of the police, prosecutors, the courts and non-criminal justice agencies.

This article is a contribution by a Jobcentre practitioner. The focus is first upon the context for government policies. The policies themselves are next outlined, and some problematic issues are then considered. The author's two case studies are based upon personal experience, and point up the importance of local initiatives within the national framework. Other key aspects include assessing and meeting individuals' needs, whether among the younger or older out-of-work; encouraging older persons to change expectations about themselves; and a measure of age diversity in training provision.

If the main aim of civil law is to regulate and improve matters for the future, by, for example, making orders about the future behaviour of parties rather than punishing past behaviour (criminal law), then a fundamental question is whether the civil law is adequately fulfilling these requirements regarding domestic violence. This is a particularly pertinent question given the implementation of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. This article will examine whether the Government's reforms offer protection to all victims of domestic violence as proposed in the Consultation Paper ‘Safety and Justice’ and will suggest that instead of achieving a clear coherent framework for dealing with domestic violence, the Act has taken a step towards blurring the boundaries between the criminal and civil law.

A key characteristic of the English and Welsh system of care provision is that the supply function is divided between two types of organisation: the National Health Service (NHS) and local authorities. These inter-organisational and the related inter-professional divides have long been recognised as problematic from a user and carer viewpoint; and various policy changes have attempted to address them. This paper draws on three different research projects to describe practical experiences of user and carer involvement in this context (a) the Evaluation of the 1999 Health Act Section 31 flexibilities encouraging more effective service delivery partnerships between the NHS and local authorities in England; (b) a Baseline Study of Partnership Working and Flexibilities Use in Wales; and (c) the Evaluation of the NHS Changing Workforce Programme, which implemented new ways of working to improve patient care across health and social care in England. In synthesising the studies' findings, the paper also begins to explore relationships between involvement effectiveness and different types of NHS–local authority partnership as they seek to introduce change and deliver more effective services.

From the 1960s onwards opportunities for employment for disabled people have been promoted by the South Korean government and recent research has focused on the achievements of policies in this area. However people with learning disabilities have largely been ignored in this research. The paper draws on a study which used research methods designed explicitly to enable people with learning disabilities to participate and their voices to be heard. The findings highlight the failure of current policies to provide suitable employment opportunities for people with learning disabilities and the paper concludes with some recommendations.

South Korea is a leading country in the use of computers and broadband. The paper will show how young Koreans, who have been brought up within a hierarchical, family focused society, now find that they are able to create and have power within ‘their own world’ using information technology. Parents, government and IT companies have encouraged the use of IT by young people but there is now concern about ‘internet addiction’. The paper considers the changing power relationships and discusses the policy and practice changes required to ensure a more balanced use of the internet.

This article reviews the research on Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) services for older workers in England. It sets out the arguments for targeting IAG services at older people in the context of extended working lives. It reviews the evidence on how to provide services which meet the specific needs of older workers, whilst recognising the diversity of the 50+ age group, and provides a case study of an age-sensitive IAG project. It concludes that demand for IAG from older workers needs to be stimulated and that the role of IAG in helping older adults to work and learn deserves greater recognition.

This article analyses the specific ways in which Latin American countries have judicialised domestic violence over the last decade. In particular, it highlights the new definitions of spousal abuse and procedures adopted in both criminal and non-criminal courts. The region has seen two countervailing tendencies, the first to criminalise, through penal code definitions and higher penalties, the second to divert this offence into legal arenas that tend, either implicitly or explicitly, towards effective decriminalisation and downgrading of this form of social violence due to their emphasis on conciliation and transactional procedures. This has resulted, in many cases, in a two-track, hybridised treatment of domestic violence that is ultimately unsatisfactory in meeting the various needs of women victims.

The increasing emphasis on community participation across the globe is well-documented. In the UK, it has been a central theme in neighbourhood renewal policy, where communities are expected to engage not only at neighbourhood level but also to take their place alongside public and private sector players in local strategic partnerships at city- or district-wide levels. Engaging communities beyond the neighbourhood poses particular challenges for the voluntary and community sector infrastructure. This article draws on an evaluation of the UK government's Community Participation Programmes to identify the challenges of scaling up to these levels and how these can be addressed.