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.

Welfare states contribute to people's well-being in many different ways. One way of bringing those contributions under a common metric is in terms of ‘temporal autonomy’: the freedom to spend one's time as one will, outside the necessities of daily life. Using the 1999–2000 Finnish Time Use Survey, we propose ways of operationalising the time that is ‘strictly necessary’ to spend in paid labour, unpaid household labour and personal care; the residual, ‘discretionary time’, represents people's temporal autonomy. We measure the impact on that of Finnish taxes, transfers and child care subsidies. In so doing, we calibrate the contributions of Finland's Nordic welfare regime and of its female-friendly gender regime, in ways that correspond to the lived reality of people's daily lives.

It is increasingly argued that models of Corporate Governance can be seen as an effective substitute for conventional state-centred social policy. This article examines the extent to which these contemporary business-led approaches are successful in remedying the gendered pay gap in the British labour market, using the latest Cabinet Office review on women's employment and pay in Britain: the Kingsmill Review, as its central example. The article outlines Kingsmill's recommendations and then analyses their efficacy by means of a ‘snap-shot’ case study of a large employing organisation which was identified as a ‘model employer’ by the Review and which has adopted many exemplary employment practices: the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The article employs analysis of a major original new data set to establish both the successes and limitations of these recommendations in overcoming the gender pay gap within the BBC.

The UK is distinctive in having the most liberal market-oriented welfare system in the European Union and the most majoritarian governmental system, capable of rapid and decisive action. The 1997 New Labour government abandoned the traditional neo-Keynesian/social democratic approach of the party and embarked on a programme of market-oriented welfare state reform. This reflects many aspects of policy direction (pursued more gradually and under different circumstances) elsewhere in Europe, and advocated in the European Employment Strategy and OECD proposals. The UK is thus a suitable test case to assess the impact of a new departure in welfare policy: welfare ends through market means. This paper shows that New Labour has achieved real successes in mobilising the workforce, broadening opportunities for women and reducing poverty. However, the approach faces intractable problems in stimulating and regulating private providers of welfare, and limitations in the extent to which it is able to reduce poverty among those of working age who are not in the labour market. These result from the incompatibility between welfare and market objectives: secure, adequate incomes for all, and work incentives for citizens and market freedom for providers.

With the introduction of the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Act 2003, delayed discharges from hospital have become a key area of government concern within UK health and social services. Under the Act, social services departments will be fined for any patient who remains in hospital when they are medically fit to leave but are unable to do so due to a delay in arranging a social care package. Against this background, this article reviews the extensive literature on hospital discharge in the UK, identifying key themes within the research evidence and citing examples from relevant studies to illustrate the key issues at stake. This analysis is then used to inform a new framework for understanding and responding to the problems associated with delayed hospital discharge and of partnership working between health and social care more generally.

This article explores the interplay between state formation and voluntary action in order to describe and understand the changing scope and type of voluntary activities and the varying role of the voluntary sector. It does so by following voluntary human service organisations within the sector of social welfare in Denmark over a period of 150 years. Four different phases of voluntary-state relationships are identified. The first phase of liberal social policy supported a dual model with a strong call for self-help and philanthropic initiatives. The next phase, in which social rights and public responsibility gradually were introduced and expanded, supported a collaborative model with a strong public–private partnership. The third phase, in which the idea of a universalistic welfare state dominated, tended to marginalise voluntary service production but strengthen interest representation. Finally, the fourth phase, in which heavy critique was thrust upon the welfare state, opened up new spaces for voluntary organisations to assume civil obligations.

Recent years have seen an explicit focus on parenting as a designated area of policy intervention. Parents are posed as in need of education and advice from ‘experts’, under conditions of social change. This article counterposes norms concerning who parents should turn to for support that government policies aim to inculcate with those held by parents themselves, drawing on a national representative sample of parents of 8–12 year old children. It uses a ‘consensus baseline’ approach to look at parents' perceptions of social change in parenting support, and whether or not they hold norms concerning whom to turn to and for what sort of help in parenting: practical, emotional, behaviour, health and education. Our results indicate that policy-makers have more work to do if they want to achieve a cultural step-change in norms held by parents about who is best placed to help and advice them. Family, followed by friends, are (still) regarded as the people to turn to for most childrearing issues, with ‘experts’ only providing practical help and advice about long institutionalised areas of children's lives. We also show that norms about parenting support are related to parents' differential social positioning regarding gender, class and ethnicity.

Using qualitative interviews with 54 older people, this article explores the changing patterns of the ‘generational contract’ in contemporary Britain and Japan. In particular, this article presents a cross-national comparison concerning the exchange of housing assets and long-term care between older parents and their adult children in the context of different laws, cultures, social policy and housing markets. The concepts of intergenerational solidarity, reciprocity and ambivalence were used to aid the analysis of the household data. The research found there were significant cross-national differences in areas such as autonomy and decision-making process regarding bequests, and choice of beneficiaries. In both societies, however, no strong link was found between bequest motives and family support for long-term care. The model of intergenerational solidarity (willingness to help children) thus appeared to override the reciprocal dimension of the ‘generational contract’.