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.

For excellent reasons, in response to pressures from social, economic and political changes, welfare states are undergoing reform. A central theme in the new policies, particularly influential in the UK, is the use of incentives through activation programmes and reforms to public sector management to promote rational responsible choices by both service users and providers. The theoretical underpinning of this approach relies on a model of people as plural in their values, but holding values that are independent from social context and institutional framework. Policy seeks to harness those values to produce desired behaviour. This article focuses on two relevant literatures. Analyses of rational action at an individual level by economic psychologists, evolutionary biologists and game theorists indicate that the context in which choices are framed influences responses. Further work by economic sociologists and social psychologists suggests that the values that guide behaviour have an important social element as normative systems embodied in institutional frameworks. The norms appropriate to market interactions typically differ from welfare norms, so that different value frameworks and responses apply. The implication is that the transition to quasi-market and individualised incentive systems risks damaging the norms that sanction support for distant but vulnerable groups. The article falls into three sections: reviewing the background to reform and the emergence of an emphasis on individualised rational choice, considering each of the literatures mentioned above and discussing policy consequences.

Electronic surveillance has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite this, surveillance practices and their social products are yet to receive serious attention in the academic field of social policy. Extending Titmuss’ classical articulation of the social division of welfare, this article develops the notion of the social division of welfare surveillance to point to the way in which surveillance, compliance burdens and risk management unevenly operate within society. The implications for reinforcing social divisions and critical social policy analysis are discussed.

This article examines the policy detail of welfare state reform agendas in two countries in which self-proclaimed ‘Third Way’ governments have been in power – Germany and the United Kingdom – in order to explore the competing influences on social policy of an ostensibly common set of ideas and contrasting institutionalised policy legacies. In so doing, it assesses the analytic utility of Bevir and Rhodes’ ideationally rooted interpretive approach against institutionally rooted claims of path dependency. It concludes that while the interpretive approach rightly stresses the need for a stronger focus on ideas as an explanation for policy change, the detail of actual Third Way policy reforms can only be understood from within the two nations’ institutionalised policy legacies. In addition, it argues that policy networks have had a considerable influence on reform trajectories too. The article advocates a closer synthesis of perspectives centred around ideas, interests and institutions in order to further our understanding of processes of policy change.

This article aims to examine the relationship between poverty and social exclusion in a dynamic perspective. We look at two dimensions of social exclusion (lack of friendship relationships and lack of participation in civic organisations), and scrutinise two aspects of poverty: poverty duration (that is, ‘previously poor’, ‘recently poor’, ‘recurrent poor’ and ‘permanently poor) and poverty gradation (defined as 50, 60 and 70 per cent of median income). For income, panel data for four waves are used (1997–2000). For the social exclusion indicators, data are available only for one wave, the year 2000. We find that poor people are more likely to see friends regularly than non-poor, but this is primarily caused by some third factor such as work activity or ethnicity, and not by poverty per se. With respect to relationship to civic organisations, the poor are less likely to participate than the non-poor. This occurs regardless of where the poverty line is drawn and the duration of poverty. These results are discussed in light of current anti-poverty policies and recent theories and research on social exclusion and social capital.

The Children's Fund involved the development of partnerships in every local authority in England to prevent the social exclusion of children and young people. This article draws from the national evaluation of this initiative to consider the strategies used to implement the Fund, and reflect on their capacity to address the multiple dimensions of exclusion experienced by marginalised groups of children and young people. It discusses the contested nature of the concept of social exclusion, but argues that this is a useful framework for understanding the processes by which children may become excluded and for assessing the capacity of strategies to address this. It concludes that the Children's Fund is likely to have limited long-term impact in this respect.

In 2004, 9 per cent of female employees took advantage of the system of ‘career break’ or ‘time credit’ in Flanders, compared to only 3 per cent of male workers. Although the number of men taking a career break is increasing, they remain a small group. In this article the time use of men interrupting their careers full-time or part-time is compared to that of full-time working men, using representative time use data from 2004. Analyses show that a career break does not imply a reduced workload. Half of the men interrupting their career full-time do so to try out another job. Men who take part-time leave are mainly motivated by their desire for a better work and family life balance. About 80 per cent of the time they gain by working on a part-time basis is allocated to household and childcare activities. This suggests that encouraging men to work fewer hours could well be the best policy for achieving gender equality.

This article presents findings from a three-year government-funded study of the work and family lives of four important groups within the childcare workforce in England: residential social workers in children's homes, family support workers, foster carers and community childminders. The study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including biographical narrative interviews. The policy context of the Children's Workforce Strategy is discussed, focusing particularly on the government's aim to develop greater integration between different types of work with children and the creation of a more flexible childcare workforce. The article then draws together findings from the study to argue that although the planned integrated qualifications framework may assist mobility within the childcare workforce, other factors also need to be taken into account. The choice to engage in particular types of childcare work is often linked to factors such as life stage, preferred age of child, preferred working environment and the worker's own background and needs. This suggests the need for more targeted recruitment, matching people to type of work, and for more attention to be paid to the connections between work and family life. The study does provide some evidence of transferable skills and movement over time between types of work with children, and demonstrates the importance of seeing the life-course as presenting opportunities for childcare employment rather than being an obstacle.