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 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.

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.

Several studies have shown that attitudes toward social policy are influenced by expectations of social mobility at the individual level and perceptions of social fluidity at the aggregate level. If individuals think of inequalities as the result of inherited disadvantages, they will be more willing to distribute resources from the rich to the poor. However, one important question remains open: How do individuals perceive the distribution of opportunities in society? In this paper we argue that individuals believe a society to be fair if opportunities for reaching the top of the social ladder are equally distributed among the population. That is, the distribution of resources is fair to the extent that individual outcomes do not depend on social origins. To address this issue, we asked a representative sample of individuals in the Spanish region of Andalusia what they think the chances are for persons of different social origins to achieve a high social status. We have found that those who think the chances for reaching the top are unequally distributed are those who support greater government responsibility and oppose meritocracy and competition, as they believe the initial distribution of opportunities to be unfair.

Britain's stance towards ethnic minorities has been janus-faced: developing an increasingly repressive and restrictive stance towards immigration, and – supported by a strident media – portraying minorities and migrants as undermining British culture and values, ‘sponging’ on the welfare state. Immigrants have been characterised as ‘cunning’, ‘loathsome’, ‘unprincipled’ and likely to ‘swamp’ British culture. Domestic policies of successive governments apparently balanced this stance with ‘community’-based initiatives, from race relations policies, community relations policies to present community cohesion policies. These have not fundamentally addressed the racism inherent in immigration policy and practice. The consequence is that the welfare of Britain's minorities – measured by outcomes in every branch of welfare provision – has largely been disregarded by the British state. Despite some liberal initiatives aimed at improving the lot of Britain's minorities, the racism inherent in policy and practice persists.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the last five years, the Chinese government has begun to encourage the development of non-government organisations (NGO) to increase the supply of social support. Although changes in the NGO sector in China are well researched, questions remain about the barriers to increasing the supply of social services from registered NGOs. We use Mattei's managerial and democratic accountability framework to examine empirical data about the relationship between the way NGO disability services in Beijing are organised and barriers to improving the type, quantity and quality of their social services. Barriers include limited NGO management capacity and underdeveloped government relations. When viewed through the multidimensional accountability framework, the barriers are not surprising. The NGOs' understanding and application of accountability processes are rudimentary. We conclude that government policy to encourage the development of accountability practices of NGOs in China will be critical if it needs NGOs to supply quality social services.

Active labour market policy (ALMP) is a well-established strategy but one aspect is greatly neglected – employer participation – about which there is a lack of systematic evidence. The question of why and how employers participate in ALMP, and whether there may be some shift from employers solely being passive recipients of job-ready candidates to having a more proactive and strategic role, is addressed by drawing on new research into Talent Match, a contemporary UK employability programme which places particular emphasis on employer involvement. The research findings point to a conceptual distinction between employers’ roles as being reactive gatekeepers to jobs and/or being proactive strategic partners, with both evident. It is argued that the Talent Match programme demonstrates potential to benefit employers, jobseekers and programme providers, with devolution of policy to the local level a possible way forward. The conclusion, however, is that the barrier to wider replication is not necessarily a problem of practice but of centralised control of policy and, in particular, commitment to a supply-side approach. Empirical, conceptual and policy contributions are made to this under-researched topic.

The voluntary and community sector in England is playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of public services to older adults and in doing so they rely on unpaid volunteers. In this article, we draw on the findings of a recent qualitative study of the impact on the voluntary and community sector of delivering ‘low-level’ public services that promote independent living and wellbeing in old age. The fieldwork focused on services that help older adults aged 70+ living in remote rural communities across three English regions. Those charged with service delivery, which is increasingly the voluntary and community sector, face particular challenges, such as uncertain funding regimes and reliance on volunteer labour.

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 prolonged and pervasive recession in the UK property market has produced significant numbees of households with unsecured housing debt – negative equity. These homeowners are typically recent, first-time buyers and are concentrated in the southern core regions of Britain. Various aggregate estimates exist of the numbers of households with unsecured debt and the amounts of money involved; little is known, however, about individual experiences of negative equity. Here, in-depth interview data are drawn on to explore the different strategies adopted by households in varying social and financial circumstances. Findings are related to more general changes in housing market behaviour and to broader theoretical debates about the growth of home ownership.

‘Elder abuse’ has recently emerged as an important phenomenon, with implications for social policy and professional practices. In this article it is argued that responses must be based on a more thorough definition. of ‘elder abuse’. A distinction between acts which can be regarded as ‘abuse’ and those which could be seen as ‘criminal’ is seen to be necessary for the development of policy and practice, recognising that these two ideas are grounded in competing discourses. The concept of an ‘obligation of care’ between perpetrator and elderly person is proposed as the basis for establishing a boundary between the two discourses and their policy implications. It is argued that this concept will enable a more focused definition of ‘elder abuse’ to be developed which will provide a more effective foundation for policies and subsequent social responses.

The distribution of wealth is widening in many countries and with it the growing importance of inherited wealth. In 1974, a Labour Government came to power in the United Kingdom committed to introducing an annual wealth tax. It left office without doing so. Using the official archives of the time and those of a key advisor this paper traces both the origins of the policy and its fate at the hands of the civil service. It explores two related questions. What does this experience tell us about the role of the civil service in the policy process in the UK and what lessons might be learned by those wishing to tackle the issue of widening wealth disparities today?

During the 1980s, about 30 per cent of the council housing stock of Great Britain was sold to sitting tenants. The popular areas for purchase and the popular types of property were semi-detached and terraced houses rather than flats or maisonettes, away from the large conurbations. The types of household most likely to buy were married couples with adult children in skilled occupations. This large scale selling of council housing led to the fear of a residual poor population, living in flats in inner cities. Since nearly half of Afro Caribbean households were living in council housing and since their pattern of housing was the obverse of the types that sold in large numbers, it was thought that they would be among the residualised households. The paper reports on field survey and special GHS data which show that Afro Caribbeans are more rather than less willing to buy their council homes, once property type has been controlled for. It also argues that, in some circumstances, the right to buy may act against residualisation. However, a particularly residualised group appears to be Caribbean single mothers in high rise blocks.

Since the early 1970s British and American feminists have developed a comprehensive critique of the dominant doctor/patient relationship within mainstream health care services. In Britain, activists in the women's health movement have struggled to put into practice a model of health care delivery based on feminist principles, within which the doctor/patient relationship is radically redesigned. This paper will explore the principles and practice of this feminist health care model. It will then attempt to evaluate alternative strategies for strengthening and expanding feminist health care within the NHS. The paper will draw on data gathered by the author in 1987 through a series of unstructured interviews with feminist health care providers who were working within a variety of NHS settings in the North West of England.

Governments are increasingly implementing policies that encourage early father-infant bonding. However, to date, research has not systematically examined fathers’ perspectives and experiences of early bonding. Using a social constructionist embodiment perspective we argue that paternal bonding is best conceived as a process of repeated, embodied performances that are shaped by gendered parenting discourses. Drawing on 100 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of Australian fathers of young infants, we argue that most men believe they are capable of developing early strong bonds. They assume that bonding is a product of spending sufficient time with a child, irrespective of the parent's gender. In contrast, a sizable minority of fathers assert that physiology means fathers are ‘largely useless’ to very young infants, and tend to remain distant in the early months. We conclude that social policies promoting early paternal bonding must engage with and challenge gendered/physiological discourses.