The Social Policy Digest went online in the summer of 2003. This means that the Digest, which used to be printed as part of the Journal of Social Policy, is now only available via the web.

Comprehensive reviews of the available research are generally considered to be the cornerstone of contemporary efforts to establish ‘evidence-based policy’. This article provides an examination of the potential of this stratagem, using the case study of ‘mentoring’ programmes. Mentoring initiatives (and allied schemes such as ‘coaching’, ‘counselling’, ‘peer education’ and so on) are to be found in every corner of public policy. Researchers have been no less energetic, producing a huge body of evidence on the process and outcomes of such interventions. Reviewers, accordingly, have plenty to get their teeth into and, by now, there are numerous reports offering review-based advice on the benefits of mentoring. The article asks whether the sum total of these efforts, as represented by five contemporary reviews, is a useful tool for guiding policy and practice. Our analysis is a cause for some pessimism. We note a propensity for delivering unequivocal policy verdicts on the basis of ambiguous evidence. Even more disconcertingly, the five reviews head off on different judgemental tangents, one set of recommendations appearing to gainsay the next. The article refrains from recommending the ejection of evidence baby and policy bathwater but suggests that much closer attention needs to be paid to the explanatory scope of systematic reviews.

Welfare state models have focused almost exclusively on the study of cash benefits, and typologies established on this limited basis have been used to generalise about all forms of welfare state provision. This ignores the fact that welfare states are also about the actual delivery of services and/or that countries vary in terms of the relative emphasis that they place upon cash benefits and welfare state services. This article explores the cash and services mix in, and between, welfare states with reference to recent welfare state typologies, most notably Esping-Andersen's decommodification-centred ‘worlds of welfare’. It compares the decommodification levels of the main cash benefits with the main area of service provision: health care. The resulting analysis suggests that when services are added into the comparative analysis of welfare state regimes there are five welfare state clusters: Social Democratic, Liberal, Conservative, and sub-groups within both the Liberal and Conservative regimes. The article concludes that, in order to maintain integrity or generalisability, future welfare state typologies need to reflect more adequately the role of services in welfare state provision.

This article explores the relationship between anti-discrimination policy and existing social policies directed towards disabled people. It proposes a conception of ‘spheres’ of social policy, in which different spheres advance different dimensions of equality. Within each sphere, definitions of disability are based on relevant comparisons which determine who should be recognised as disabled for the purposes of the policy. Examples of definitions are given using material from a cross-national European project. Examples are also given where social policies provide for disabled people without defining a disability category. The implications of these findings for anti-discrimination policy are drawn out, and problems in defining disability for the purposes of ‘fourth generation’ equality rights are identified. It is suggested that there are limitations to the extent that equality policy can be founded on non-discrimination principles, and that a more substantive equality policy for disabled people needs to learn from debates and experiences within social policy.

Selectivity emerged as the core of a new social policy paradigm in Greece when a new ‘modernising’ government took office in 1996. Though it was adopted energetically, its real impact eventually proved negligible, except for an initial flutter of activity. The article argues that its failure as a recipe for welfare reform was inevitable. The nature of social protection arrangements in Greece severely constrained the scope for selectivity, while the particular version pursued was poorly designed and badly administered. Moreover, the elevation of selectivity to the status of a ‘Big Idea’ was an indirect cause of serious lateral damage: while fruitlessly puzzling over the place of selectivity in the ‘new social policy’, the government was losing the crucial battle on the reform of an unviable and inequitable pension system. The article concludes that selectivity has little relevance to the priorities for reform in a welfare state still struggling to cope with its Bismarckian, south European contradictions.

In 2003 the UK government set an objective that in ten years' time Britain's minority ethnic groups should not face disproportionate barriers in the labour market. A key ‘barrier’ is discrimination by employers. This article examines one potential way forward: the use of contract compliance. First, the article presents findings from the authors' study of an innovative use of contract compliance by a group of local authorities in the West Midlands. If contract compliance can be made to work and New Labour is committed to addressing racial inequality in employment, this suggests that contract compliance is an approach that the government should be seeking to develop. The second part of the article therefore considers New Labour's stance on contract compliance, which can be seen to be highly ambiguous. It is argued that if contract compliance is located within the broader context of New Labour policy development, what is apparent is that the professed aspiration for social change is compromised by a dominant commitment to the maintenance of neo-liberal economic policies. The conclusion is that it is likely that only limited progress will be made in achieving racial equality in employment.

It has long been recognised in both the UK and in other countries that society has an obligation to compensate workers who are injured or who suffer ill health through the course of their employment. The most common means of society ensuring this is by government legislation requiring employers to fund a variety of insurance schemes.

This article explores the situation which has recently prevailed in the UK. The system of insurance which has historically dealt with the question of an employer's liability to pay compensation has been in a state of turmoil, and a diverse range of stakeholders have called upon the government to act. The article analyses the various suggestions made, considers the merits of other national systems and evaluates the government's response. It concludes with the view that government inaction is likely to present them with an even greater crisis.

This article discusses the politics of social policy development in Hong Kong following the Asian financial crisis. It examines the cause, mode and political significance of social policy reform in an Asian late industrialiser that has been experiencing the twin pressures of economic globalisation and socio-economic change. Financial austerity has prompted the state to adopt social policy reforms through re-commodification and cost containment, resulting in the retrenchment of the residual welfare state. The state's policy choices are structured by local politics, including the state of political development and the path dependence nature of policy change. The article questions the effectiveness of the social authoritarian approaches adopted by the state in attempting to renegotiate the social pact with its citizens, and contends that progressive development in social policy is inevitably bound to democratisation.