The Social Policy Digest is a major online resource providing up-to-date listings of developments across the whole range of social policy issues – including links to source materials and related commentaries. The Digest is published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Policy Association.

The paper examines the structure of selection that determines migrants’ welfare rights. Using illustrations from the UK, it confirms that migrants’ welfare rights are stratified by, and dependent on, immigration status. It describes the outcome of this structure and shows why welfare policies need to reclaim independence from immigration policies to which they have become tied. Using terms from Walzer (1983), an argument is made for ‘autonomy’ in these different ‘spheres’.

An alternative approach is suggested in which access to welfare provisions for migrants is made regardless of immigration status and is based instead on equal treatment and non-discrimination between migrants and nationals of the receiving country. Nationals are seen to be migrants’ comparators, and unequal treatment between them constitutes discrimination. Alternative approaches to migrants’ welfare include reliance on universal international human rights law, and approaches that take into account more radical, substantive equality values than equal treatment. We argue, however, that amongst the advantages of an equal treatment policy are the rights retained by national governments to exercise sovereignty in determining the shape of their welfare provisions whilst also engaging international law on human rights.

Based on participant observation in a team of British policy-making civil servants carried out in 2009, this article examines the use that is made of evidence in making policy. It shows that these civil servants displayed a high level of commitment to the use of evidence. However, their use of evidence was hampered by the huge volume of various kinds of evidence and by the unsuitability of much academic research in answering policy questions. Faced with this deluge of inconclusive information, they used evidence to create persuasive policy stories. These stories were useful both in making acceptable policies and in advancing careers. They often involved the excision of methodological uncertainty and the use of ‘killer charts’ to boost the persuasiveness of the narrative. In telling these stories, social inequality was ‘silently silenced’ in favour of promoting policies which were ‘totemically’ tough. The article concludes that this selective, narrative use of evidence is ideological in that it supports systematically asymmetrical relations of power.

This article aims to explore the concept of choice in public service policy in England, illustrated through findings of the Individual Budgets (IB) evaluation. The evaluation tested the impact of IBs as a mechanism to increase choice of access to and commissioning of social care services around the individual through a randomised trial and explored the experiences and perspectives of key groups through a large set of interviews. The article presents a re-examination of these interview data, using three ‘antagonisms of choice’ proposed in the literature – choice and power relations, choice and equity, and choice and the public nature of decisions – as organising themes. The randomised trial found that IB holders perceived they had more control over their lives and appreciated the extra choice over use of services, albeit with variations by user group. However, problems of power relations, equity and the constraints implied by the public nature of decision-making were complicating and limiting factors in producing the benefits envisaged. The focus on choice in policy, especially as implemented by IBs, emphasises an individualistic approach. The findings suggest that addressing broader issues relating to power, equity and an understanding of the public nature of choice will be of value in realising more of the benefits of the policy.

Welfare-to-work policy in the UK sees ‘choice’ regarding lone parents’ employment decisions increasingly defined in terms of powers of selection between options within active labour market programmes, with constraints on the option of non-market activity progressively tightened. In this paper, we examine the wider choice agenda in public services in relation to lone-parent employment, focusing on the period following the 2007 Freud Review of welfare provision. (Freud, 2007) Survey data are used to estimate the extent to which recent policies promoting compulsory job search by youngest dependent child age map onto lone parents' own stated decision-making regarding if and when to enter the labour market. The findings indicate a substantial proportion of lone parents targeted by policy reform currently do not want a job and that their main reported reason is that they are looking after their children. Economically inactive lone mothers also remain more likely to have other chronic employment barriers, which traverse dependent child age categories. Some problems, such as poor health, sickness or disability, are particularly acute among those with older dependent children who are the target of recent activation policy.

A system of devolved welfare governance, it is argued, increases participation in welfare services. However, limited empirical evidence has been reported on how it influences welfare reform. This paper draws upon evidence from the mental health system in Spain, where health care is devolved to the regional states (autonomous communities), to examine whether policy reform of neglected policy areas may be triggered through heightened policy awareness and better participation of interested stakeholders. We find that regional devolution has helped to scale up mental health in some of Spain's autonomous regions relative to support for other services. Evidence suggests that whilst fragmentation and certain historical legacies remain path dependent, regional devolution has indeed enhanced experimentation, reform and policy innovation in mental health care. However, the expansion of mental health care coverage has been constrained by the lack of a clear definition of public coverage, as well as the need to meet the demands of evidence-based policy in an era of cost-containment. Inequalities in access to mental health care remain; they are compounded by the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems, which is a common challenge for all health systems in Europe.

This article aims to enrich the current limited body of knowledge regarding social work professional discourse. More specifically, it seeks to examine the extent and ways in which the social work intra-profession discourse, as it is manifested in formal job descriptions of social workers in Israel, reflects the commitment to working with people living in poverty and to confronting poverty. We provide a brief review of the concept of professional discourse and the role of formal job descriptions in this discourse in general, and in Israel in particular. ‘Poverty-aware social work’ is then conceptualised. Against this background, we analysed 75 job descriptions in order to ascertain whether, and in what ways, references to poverty appear in defining client populations, in directions for assessing their situation, and in defining the goals and methods of professional intervention. The research findings reflect a textual silence in relation to poverty issues in job descriptions. The analysis of poverty-related sub-topics in these documents suggests that job descriptions offer, and simultaneously reproduce a conservative and a-political perspective on poverty and on social work practice with people living in poverty.

Those without housing often use public space differently than those who are housed. This can cause dilemmas for and conflicts among public officials as guardians of public space and goods. In this paper, we look at one such utilisation of space from the perspective of those who board 24-hour public transportation routes and ride the bus all night for shelter. We describe the results of a preliminary survey, observations and informal conversations with unhoused riders on the bus over three nights in one county in the United States. We found that a substantial number of the unhoused riders we surveyed used the bus as their main form of night-time shelter throughout the year, and that some have ridden the bus for shelter for many years. Men were more likely to say that they used the bus to sleep, while women rode the bus for safety. While some unhoused riders also utilised shelters or did not know about other shelter options, many actively choose the bus over emergency shelters. The potential implications of the study for service providers, researchers and policy-makers are addressed.

Several countries, including Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom, have enacted asset-based policies for children in recent years. The premise underlying these policies is that increases in assets lead to improvement in various child outcomes over time. But little existing research examines this premise from a dynamic perspective. Using data from the NLSY79 mother and child datasets, two parallel process latent growth curve models are estimated to examine the effects of parental asset accumulation on changes in children's achievements over six years during middle childhood. Results indicate that the initial level of assets is positively associated with math scores, but not reading scores, while faster asset accumulation is associated with changes in reading scores, but not in math scores. Overall, the results suggest that the relationship between assets and various child outcomes may not be straight-forward. Different dimensions of the asset experience may lead to different outcomes, and the same dimension may also have different effects. Implications for future research and for asset-based policies are discussed.

A major shortcoming in the existing literature on welfare state legitimacy is that it cannot explain when social policy designs follow public preferences and when public opinion follows existing policy designs and why. Scholars examining the influence of public opinion on welfare policies, as well as scholars investigating institutional influences on individual welfare attitudes, find empirical evidence to support both relationships. While a relationship in both directions is plausible, scholars have yet to thoroughly investigate the mutual relationship between these two. Consequently, we still do not know under which circumstances welfare institutions invoke public approval of welfare policies and under which circumstances public opinion drives welfare policy. Taking a quantitative approach to public opinion and welfare state policies in the Netherlands, this paper addresses this issue in an attempt to increase our understanding of welfare state legitimacy. The results show that individual opinions influence relatively new policies, policies which are not yet fully established and where policy designs are still evolving and developing. Social policy, on the other hand, is found to influence individual opinions on established and highly institutionalised policies, but does not influence individual opinions in relatively new areas of social policy.

Northern Ireland has been dubbed by the media as the ‘race hate capital of Europe’ and attracted recent international criticism after one hundred Roma families were forced to flee their homes following racist attacks. This paper examines the problem of racism in Northern Ireland from a number of perspectives. First, it considers the effectiveness of the Government's response to racism against its Racial Equality Strategy 2005–10 using performance criteria designed to track the implementation of the strategy. Second, it considers and empirically tests the assertion in the literature that sectarianism shapes the way in which racism is reproduced and experienced. Third, it explores racism at the level of the individual – which factors influence people in Northern Ireland to exhibit racist behaviour. Finally, the paper considers the likely policy implications of the research findings in the context of devolved government where addressing racism is part of a wider political imbroglio which has gridlocked decision-making within the power-sharing Executive of Northern Ireland.