Cross-sector co-production involving voluntary organisations in the production and delivery of social services has been adopted across many welfare states. Economic and demographic changes have led to increased involvement of volunteer initiatives in different welfare policy fields. How different field properties enable, constrain, and shape co-production practices remains, however, under researched. In this article, we address this shortcoming in a comparative case design exploring the practices of co-production within the two fields of elderly services and refugee services. We develop a conceptual framework and demonstrate that differential distribution of resources leads to diverging outcomes and perspectives for co-production. Based on a two-year in-depth study of one large Danish municipality, we find two forms of co-production practices, which reflect different field conditions. In the field of elderly services, co-production takes the form of ‘embedded’ practices, and in the field of refugee services co-production takes the form of ‘exterior’ practices. We demonstrate that each of these co-production forms entail ambiguous outcomes and antagonistic positions for voluntary and public sector actors, depending on the policy field.

While the recent Coalition government committed to some initiatives supporting the role of parents, relationships and the early years, there remains a lack of focus on fathers as a distinct policy area. This is reflected at local government level, as lead professionals for young fathers are rare and data on the number of young fathers in each local area are not routinely collected. Barnardo's was funded by the Department for Education in 2012, as part of the Family Strategic Partnership, to highlight the needs and experiences of young fathers in England, and the joint role of statutory and voluntary services in supporting them (fully reported by Barnardo's in Cundy, 2012). Based on selected case studies drawn from research and a range of practice organisations, this article presents the journeys of five young fathers and their experience of maternity services, children's centres, schools, housing services and the secure estate.

As Japan faces the challenge of the increasing demand for home care from its ageing population in an era of economic constraints, the expectation has evolved that the voluntary sector will fill the shortfall in statutory provision through semi-volunteers providing affordable home care. Drawing on qualitative interviews with managers from 15 voluntary organisations, this article explores their experiences in trying to meet this expectation. Even though most organisations provided supplementary home-care services, the empirical evidence indicates a limited capacity to deliver this expectation, with respondents aware of the deteriorating situation. It has been ascertained that supply mechanisms differ between the traditional voluntary – and the new hybrid – organisations. The former employ ‘cost-efficient’ labour such as ‘paid volunteers’ on below minimum pay rates. In contrast, the ‘hybrids’ use paid employees at regular pay rates, a finding that contradicts optimistic assumptions about the ideological role of ‘traditional’ voluntary organisations. This article suggests the importance of acknowledging diverse responses from the voluntary sector, including the new hybrids with their acknowledgement of voluntary and commercial imperatives. Open mindedness and a preparedness to revise interpretations of the earlier ‘models’ of the voluntary sector are essential. The conclusion proposes that the best strategy to unlock the voluntary sector's full potential to deliver supplementary home care is a multi-platformed approach, with adequate public purse funding, which pragmatically maximises resources.

This article calls for a more nuanced understanding of the links between the motivations, trajectories and policy environments of community asset organisations and the geographies of their social impact. While potential for the ownership of physical assets by place-based community organisations can be found in new localism powers in all four jurisdictions of the UK, there may be differences in policy articulation and implementation that enable or limit the social benefits community asset organisations are thought to deliver. Furthermore, community assets are premised on their intrinsic tie and value to place, with social cohesion, communal mobilisation and identification of mutual interest thought to be at their heart. This article reviews research in this field set in relation to recent policy developments, and identifies an important need to better understand how the personal and social geographies of impact are delivered in, and influenced by, different spatial contexts and political frameworks.

The role of religion in social welfare provision, and more broadly in shaping the development of state social policy in the UK, has become an issue of increasing prominence in the last decade raising both new challenges and opportunities. This article brings together new and existing research in the field of religion and social action/welfare in the British context to present a preliminary discussion of how and why religion, as a source of social identity and moral values, matters for social policy. The key argument is that religious welfare provision goes beyond the mixed economy of welfare paradigm and has the capacity to challenge the Utilitarian underpinnings of mainstream social policy thinking by giving more relative importance to ethical issues such as self-knowledge and morality, in addition to the more conventional concepts of wellbeing or happiness. The article proposes the concept of ways of being in order to bring together these moral ideational factors that underpin social welfare.

This paper evaluates the current attempt to develop local ‘compacts’ between local government and the voluntary and community sector, as an example of a relational contracting approach to structuring the evolving relationships between these sectors. It is structured in four parts. The first part charts briefly local government – voluntary sector (LG – VS) relationships in England over the period 1979-2000. It draws examples in particular from experience in the field of area regeneration. The second part introduces the concept of the Voluntary Sector Compact (VSC), and argues that it is central to the approach of the current Labour government to these relationships. It differentiates this approach from that of the previous government, denoted here as the service agency model, and situates it within the meta-paradigm of community governance. The third part explores the implementation of the Compact in England at both the national and local level. The final part draws out key lessons from this for the future of LG – VS relationships in England, situating these within an emerging model of LG – VS relationships.

Loneliness and isolation can be a major cause of unhappiness and can contribute towards depression and mental illness in older age. These associations are recognised by academics, policy makers and older people's representative organisations alike in several countries, and many corrective ad hoc and country-specific initiatives have been supported. This study examines the opinions of the users of a local home-visiting befriending service in the United Kingdom. The befrienders are volunteers, and most users were introduced to the service by female relatives or health service professionals. Positive opinions of the service predominated, and users placed a high value on the reliability of their befrienders. The service provided the users with an opportunity to develop a new bond, and many reported friendly reciprocity, which they recognised as an ingredient of ‘real’ friendship. These friendships sometimes developed beyond the agreed rules and remits of the ‘formal’ service, and incorporated various forms of supplementary assistance and social activities. The paper demonstrates the value of befriending services and examines carefully the aspects of their implementation that required exceptional sensitivity.

Recent debates within social and political theory, and within the public sphere more generally, reveal growing concern with issues of ‘trust’. While forms of voluntary association frequently are cited as prime examples of trust relations, they rarely provide a focus for such debates. In this paper we examine current developments within the voluntary sector in Britain, arguing that the relation of voluntary organisations to questions of trust is increasingly problematic. In particular a tension exists between trust relations based on principles of voluntarism and linked to shared values, and relations of confidence that are mediated by institutional and contractual forms. After surveying recent theoretical accounts of trust and confidence, we consider the relevance of these debates to the British voluntary sector. We then draw on a range of quantitative and qualitative research on the voluntary sector to examine how trust and confidence are negotiated with a number of key constituencies: the general public; government and institutional funders; business; and users or beneficiaries. Our argument is that, while resources of trust are linked to their core values, voluntary organisations are increasingly governed by formal measures designed to promote confidence.

We reflect upon the practices of two projects working with older people – one involving health promotion and the other arts – in terms of the discourses deployed in their work. The material discussed is drawn from evaluations which, through their use of feminist and critical methodologies, were committed to revealing and challenging the layers of inequality often present in practice with older people. The familiar notions of friendship and conversation are shown to be useful in conceptualising the work of these projects. It is argued that the discourses within which these ideas are embedded offer the basis of progressive practice with older people even in routine settings such as housing, social care, recreation and social work. These concepts offer the possibility of thinking of older people as active subjects within, rather than passive objects of, practice and of challenging inequalities through reframing more functional discourses.

Objective: Community organisations provide care for psychiatric patients at multiple levels. With increasing emphasis on joint planning and purchasing of care it is important to ascertain the views of such organisations towards statutory organisations and services the latter provide.

Method: All community organisations working within one inner city catchment area in London were approached in order to obtain their views and experiences on the mental health services provided by the secondary care services. This was a postal survey and non-responders were contacted by personal calls.

Results: Sixty organisations out of a total of 100 in the database responded. More than half had experiences of statutory services and these were generally negative. The services provided were perceived as being rigid and inflexible. A large majority of the organisations wished services to be more flexible as well as provide more training for voluntary organisations.

Conclusion: The survey suggests that the perceptions of the statutory services and co-working with voluntary organisations can succeed only if the two groups work together closely to make good quality community care possible.