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.

The post-war ‘consensus’ on welfare was based largely in the perceived agreement of leading politicians of Conservative and Labour parties on the role of the mixed economy and the welfare state. However, from the late 1970s economic and demographic pressures and ideological challenges, particularly from the New Right, led to cuts in spending on welfare, increased private involvement and an emphasis on more individualistic and selectivist approaches to provision. Recently some scholars have begun to discuss the emergence of a ‘new liberal consensus’ around welfare provision. Drawing upon interviews with 10 per cent of the House of Commons, this article examines the extent to which a new political consensus upon welfare can be identified. In addition to analysing responses to questions on welfare issues, it considers the extent to which MPs themselves believe there to be some degree of consensus in approaches to welfare. It also considers whether any consensus exists merely in the political language used in relation to welfare issues, or whether there is a more substantive convergence.

Since coming to power in May 1997, New Labour has been criticised by many Party traditionalists for failing to follow the democratic socialist path laid out by the Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan governments. However, New Labour believes that adherence to a doctrinaire political philosophy is ill suited to contemporary economic and social realities. Accordingly, they have opted to govern on a ‘non-ideological’ pragmatic basis. To this end, they have sought to ensure that the welfare state operates in a way that complements, rather than conflicts with, economic imperatives. While New Labour continues to maintain that the welfare state should be used to tackle opportunity barriers, it no longer believes that the task of the welfare state is to extend opportunities for selflessness, enhance social solidarity or deliver greater equality of outcome.

This article shows how a conditional approach to rights dominates New Labour's perspective, not only in the delivery of welfare for full citizens but also in relation to immigration, where rights are a privilege to be earned by meeting labour market needs. This approach does not readily address the position of asylum seekers, who are claiming an absolute right of protection, but an erosion of entitlement during status determination has been used as a means of deterrence and control. The article applies a civic stratification perspective to these developments, as a means of bringing together the operation of rights with the practice of governance, and highlighting the ethical issues at play.

The distribution of economic resources in society is a central concern for social policy. But research in this area has primarily concentrated on the bottom of the economic distribution, namely ‘the poor’. In this article, we argue that it is time for social policy to move away from a narrow focus on poverty to consider the broader issue of inequality between different groups in the economic distribution and, by implication, the position of better-off citizens. This raises a number of conceptual challenges due to the current lack of consideration of wealth and inequality at a political, theoretical or empirical level. The article discusses the challenges and concludes by outlining a possible research agenda. However, the underpinning argument is that social policy needs to develop a broader understanding of the economic distribution.

The faltering emergence of new ‘mental health’ legislation in England and Wales between 1998 and 2005 is described. The slow progress largely reflected widespread opposition to the content of the government's plans to replace the Mental Health Act of 1983. That opposition was formalised in the Mental Health Alliance, an umbrella organisation which included user and professional groups as well as voluntary sector bodies. This article highlights the main points of dispute between the government and its opponents. In particular, concerns about compulsion and the duty of the state to guarantee good quality care in every locality divided the government and its critics. The implications of these disputes are discussed, along with some questions about interest work within the Alliance.

Direct payments have moved to the heart of the government's drive for increased user choice. At the same time, implementation has remained disappointing. This article explores the demand, supply and related factors associated with patterns of local variability in uptake and intensity of care package provision. Statistical analyses are conducted for key client groups – people with physical disabilities, older people, people with learning disabilities and people who use mental health services – using data for England from 2000–01 to 2002–03. The results suggest that direct payments variability reflects a complex array of factors, both within and beyond the control of local public actors. In particular, while local policy preferences appear to shape the extent of direct payments growth, the results also demonstrate that understanding levels of activity requires attention to local circumstances.

I see direct payments, personal cash budgets, and other ways of extending choice and control as key to developing social care for the twenty-first century (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Community Care, Department of Health, 2004).

This article argues that to provide adequate historical explanations for the maltreatment of children in institutional care it is necessary to ground the analysis fully in the context of the concept of child abuse and definition of childhood that existed at the time, something that many studies fail to do. Drawing primarily on the experience of the Irish industrial schools prior to the 1970s, while most commentators suggest that children were removed into care and treated cruelly because they were poor, there were also many children who entered the industrial schools who had been abused by their parents and welcomed being protected, and the community played a key role in supporting such actions. Children were treated harshly in the industrial schools not only due to their poverty but because they were victims of parental cruelty, which was perceived to have ‘contaminated’ their childhood ‘innocence’. They were treated as the moral dirt of a social order determined to prove its purity and subjected to ethnic cleansing. Prevention of such abuse today requires a radical reconstruction of the traditional status of children in care, while justice and healing for survivors necessitates full remembrance of the totality of the abuse they experienced, and that those responsible are made fully accountable.

In transition societies such as contemporary Bulgaria, the legacy of the communist past in childcare policy is reflected in the state-centred mentality of officials, the tendency towards over-regulation and the complex and inefficient relations among multiple state actors. The traditional approach to children as objects of protection rather than as subjects of rights still prevails. Efforts to modernise legislation and to introduce innovative childcare schemes lack provision of implementation mechanisms. Such efforts are often driven more by the government's need to show progress to international and EU agencies than by commitment to a rights-based approach in childcare. Bulgarian and international NGOs gradually assume a more decisive role in childcare. Reform is needed in institutional care, legislation, administrative structures of childcare, training of professionals and the mentality of care providers, politicians, bureaucrats and the wider public. However, reforms depend on genuine political will to change and implement policies, allocation of funds and change in attitudes.