Welfare states increasingly activate citizens in the provision of care and welfare services, expecting them to take over certain parts of professional work. The consequences of this ‘volunteer responsibilisation’ for front-line workers’ professionalism have not been studied extensively. Professionalism may be pointed in another direction, from professional self-control or organisational forms of control based on management criteria toward forms of embedded control in which professional work is defined in interaction with all kinds of ‘outsiders’, including volunteers. In this paper we analyse how front-line workers cope with such shifts in care and welfare provision. We find that they move away from frail volunteers, move toward vigorous volunteers, and move against policy makers.

There is a large consensus among international organisations (e.g., United Nations and the World Bank) in considering Early Childhood Care and Education a prominent policy to equalise opportunities. Moreover, it is common opinion that interventions in early childhood aiming at equalising ‘opportunities’ rather than ‘outcomes’ will overcome political dissent. These two claims draw upon a particular interpretation of the work of contemporary egalitarian philosophers, as well as a number of studies in both developed and developing countries, finding higher benefits for disadvantaged children. Despite the tradition of analysing welfare provision from an equality perspective, the shift towards early childhood education as an equality policy has not yet fully been analysed. We critically examine the consensus advocated by international organisations regarding Early Childhood Care and Education as key to ‘levelling the playing field’ and suggest that the first claim (early childhood as greatest equaliser) should be considered with caution. We also argue that the alleged consensus on this claim may lead to a depoliticisation of social policy.

The potential of non-governmental agencies as providers of welfare services is increasingly recognised but little attention has been given to the welfare-providing role of religious congregations. This article draws on four case studies to describe and analyse the range of congregational welfare activities. Six types of welfare work are distinguished: welfare projects, indirect welfare work, informal care, informal care in an organised framework, mutual aid and social integration. Distinctive features of congregational welfare work are identified. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and considering whether there is scope for expanding the contribution of congregations to the mixed economy of welfare.

This paper reviews the Reagan administration's attack on the US welfare system during the 1980s. The paper considers the origins, provisions and impact of Reagan's three major pieces of retrenchment legislation: the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, the Social Security Amendments of 1983, and the Family Support Act of 1988. It is argued that Reagan's record in retrenching welfare was limited in budgetary terms, but was successful in making welfare programmes more restrictive. Reagan's welfare legacy is assessed in terms of his attempts at restructuring social provision and shifting the welfare debate to the right. The paper concludes by asserting that Reagan's critique of, and attack on, social provision was accepted by his presidential successors, George Bush and Bill Clinton.

The aim of this article is to present a less negative and more rounded analysis of the potential contribution of postmodernism to social policy than that presented by Taylor-Gooby (1994) in this journal entitled ‘Postmodernism: A Great Leap Backwards?’. It covers four major themes. First, it examines Foucault's ideas on power/knowledge, the body, discipline and surveillance. Second, the article explores the connections between feminism, postmodernism and social policy. Third, it analyses theories of the poststructural state. Fourth, it considers a neglected topic in the subject of space and assesses the contribution of postmodern discourses of spatiality and their relevance to social policy. The article acknowledges the contradiction arising from post-modernism's critique of meta-theory and mainstream social policy's commitment to universalism, but concludes that the answer does not lie in the universal rejection of postmodernism but in the use of the ideas and insights to move the discipline in new directions.

The availability of childcare is an important factor in enabling motherhood to be combined with paid employment. This article uses evidence from the fifth sweep of the National Child Development Study to analyse the use of childcare by a cohort of employed women who were aged 33 in 1991. There is a heavy reliance on informal care by women in partnerships and also by lone mothers. Formal care is most heavily used by women whose youngest child is under five, especially if the woman works full-time. Reported costs of childcare represent nearly a quarter of net weekly earnings for mothers with a child under five. Formal childcare is shown to play an important role in facilitating women's full-time employment. Full-time employment is the route by which women achieve financial independence from their partner. It also increases the likelihood of contributing to an occupational pension which, in turn, has implications for financial independence in later life. However, the majority of women in this cohort do not take the full-time route. For these women, low earnings potential and part-time working make paid childcare uneconomic and reinforces both their role as minor financial contributors within the family and their lack of pension provision in later life.

In 1982 Julian Le Grand in his text, The Strategy of Equality delivered the message that ‘almost all public expenditure on the social services in Britain benefits the better off to a greater extent than the poor’. This has been developed into the conventional wisdom, that the welfare state has failed to achieve equality. However, this pessimistic verdict may be challenged on a number of grounds. First, it is debatable to what extent the welfare state was intended to achieve the types of equality defined by Le Grand. Second, it is possible to arrive at a less pessimistic conclusion both by re-examining Le Grand's original evidence and by examining subsequent evidence on the extent of equality achieved by the welfare state. This article examines the pessimistic thesis on both conceptual and empirical grounds, with a specific focus on the National Health Service. It is concluded that reports of the failure of the welfare state may be premature.

One of the consequences of the post-2008 global economic crisis is that it has thrust into the public spotlight the issue of state provision for corporations, putting paid to the myth that capitalism and businesses could ultimately be more profitable, more efficient and more competitive without state interference and direct support. The reality is that corporations of every size and within every sector depend on government support in some way. Hence, while the measures taken by governments in response to the global crisis have been exceptional in their scale, they are not exceptional by design. Rather, direct and indirect state support to corporations – referred to here as corporate welfare – is commonplace and is deeply embedded within the state's operations with various forms of assistance being delivered through social policies. In such an environment, the fact that social policy has very little to say about ‘corporate welfare’ is a serious omission. Bringing corporate welfare into social policy analysis reinforces the potential defence of the welfare state and, at the same time, increases our understanding of how best to balance the needs of private businesses with those of citizens on the one hand, and the burden of paying for welfare on the other. To this end, this paper argues for a deeper recognition, understanding, consideration and embedding of corporate welfare in social policy analysis. The first half of the paper advances conceptually the analysis of corporate welfare, mapping corporate and social welfare along a continuum. The second half provides some empirical evidence of the relative size of corporate and social welfare provision in a number of OECD countries.

Within the political arena, most sharply articulated by the new Right, the family and welfare state have been counterposed as ideological opposites with implications for the relative responsibility each should be accorded in respect of a policy of community care. On the basis of evidence from a survey conducted in three locations in Scotland, this paper examines the extent to which the ideological positions of Left and Right are reflected in public attitudes towards these issues. The results show that with the exception of certain groups of ‘ideologues’, individual citizens tend not to structure their attitudes in accordance with overarching ideologies, nor are their attitudes in any consistent way organized along partisan lines. In respect of the family/state polarity, there is only a faint echo of the broad rhetoric of political parties and on more concrete issues like care for dependent persons none at all. The overall picture supports the view that the family and welfare state as they are confronted by people in their everyday lives are much less ideological opposites than intermeshed in an overlapping complex of values, needs and interests.

The literature on policy implementation is divided with regards to the impact of street-level bureaucrats on the implementation of public policies. In this paper, we aim to add to and nuance these debates by focusing on ‘institutional work’ – i.e. the creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions – undertaken by central authorities and street-level bureaucrats during public reform processes. On the basis of a case study of the organisational implementation of a retirement pension reform in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, we argue that institutional work is a useful heuristic device for conceptualising the variety of responses available to street-level bureaucrats during public reforms. We also argue that the responses demonstrate the impact of street-level bureaucrats in these reforms in the context of managerial control and regulation. Finally, we argue that the effectiveness of policy change is dependent on the institutional work of street-level bureaucrats and, in particular, on institutional work that supports the institutions created by politicians and public administrations.

Between 1955–7 welfare expenditure in Britain came under serious attack. The main protagonist was the Treasury and its chosen implement a five-year review of the social services, to be presided over by a ministerial Social Services Committee. The attack rebounded, for the Committee provided the opportunity for the consolidation of the defence of welfare expenditure and for a frontal attack on Treasury assumptions. This neglected episode in Conservative government social policy places in historical context the early defeat of monetarism (with Thorneycroft's resignation in 1958) and provides the background to the establishment of the Plowden Committee and of the Public Expenditure Survey Committee. It also raises questions about the degree of post-war consensus and the failure to make the constructive development of the welfare state an objective of ‘conviction’ politics.

This paper examines the costs of unsustainable home ownership in Britain as manifested through mortgage arrears and possessions. It suggests that there are a widely drawn set of costs that have an impact on a range of different actors and institutions, and offers a simple conceptual framework for developing an analysis of such costs. Further, the paper suggests that an examination of these costs has the potential to contribute to some key debates within social policy, not least to a series of issues about the development and maintenance of social and economic inequality. This claim is illustrated via an analysis of the financial costs of arrears and possession. The paper concludes that the financial losses incurred cannot be regarded as marginal either in terms of the number of people affected, the sums of money involved or the continuing social disadvantages that follow possession. The article concludes with a discussion of whether these issues can be regarded as ‘yesterday's’ problem or whether they should be viewed as a continuing feature of the contemporary social and economic landscape.

The German labour market policy regime constitutes a reliable supporting pillar of the highly productive German employment system. Due to the most recent reforms, its core principle of status protection – a basic norm of the German middle-class-related model of social protection for the population of working age – is losing its formative character. Our analysis focuses on three separate policy principles that form the guiding logic of status centredness, namely the equivalence in security provision, the mechanisms that protect the socio-economic status in the event of unemployment, and the tripartite mode of funding. We argue that the ‘Hartz Reforms’ have reinforced the logic of the legal modifications since the mid-1990s, cumulating now in a shift away from the middle-class-oriented status-centred approach of social security provision.

Using detailed extracts from two life histories, this article examines the nature of the personal identifications that often underpin the commitment of welfare workers to their jobs. We explore the paradox that it is those identifications such as class and gender, mediated through individual biography, that fix the ‘self as object’ and that also provide us with the resources for self-transformation. In this respect, the article not only throws light upon the psychical and emotional roots of commitment to the other, but also upon some of the impasses ‘identity theory’ currently finds itself in.

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.

Whilst studies of employment have fuelled arguments about post-Fordism and questions of flexibility, recent debates about welfare have considered social polarization and the growth of an anti-social, anti-work ‘underclass’. In both cases, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which people in depressed local economies now survive through precarious, marginal and informal work.

This article explores how people deprived of jobs seek to re-create positive working lives for themselves through voluntary work. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with working-class men and women in Teesside, it explores the motivations and meanings of volunteering and the significance that voluntary action has for work and welfare in such communities. State intervention in the voluntary work sphere is assessed and a number of recommendations are made for policy and practice.

This article revisits Titmuss's essay on the Social Divisions of Welfare (SDW) and reflects on its continuing relevance. Titmuss first presented the SDW in an Eleanor Rathbone Memorial lecture at Birmingham University in 1955, but it is best known from his Essays on the Welfare State published in 1958. Titmuss challenged the stereotype of ‘welfare’ as simply public welfare dependency and illustrated the different elements of the SDW. Some limitations of Titmuss's approach are identified, notably in relation to how he saw dependency arising, and revisions offered. The article provides a number of examples from the UK but also highlights some significant parallels with the SDW in the USA and Australia, the so-called ‘liberal welfare regimes’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Finally, it is claimed that 50 years on we need to be reminded of the insights and analytical potential of Titmuss's essay.

Universal Credit is the UK’s globally innovative social security reform that replaces six means tested benefits with one monthly payment for working age claimants - combining social security and tax credit systems. Universal Credit expands welfare conditionality via mandatory job search conditions to enhance ‘progression’ amongst working claimants by requiring extra working hours or multiple jobs. This exposes low paid workers to tough benefit sanctions for non-compliance, which could remove essential income indefinitely or for fixed periods of up to three years. Our unique contribution is to establish how this new regime is experienced at micro level by in-work claimants over time. We present findings from Qualitative Longitudinal Research (141 interviews with 58 claimants, 2014-17), to demonstrate how UC impacts on in-work recipients and how conditionality produces a new coerced worker-claimant model of social support. We identify a series of welfare conditionality mismatches and conclude that conditionality for in-work claimants is largely counterproductive. This implies a redesign of the UK system and serves as an international warning to potential policy emulators.