In contrast to the majority of research on the relationship between women and the state which bases its findings on nationally aggregated data and concentrates its analysis on the forces which shape national policy concerning gender, this article adopts a micro-social approach to this question. Based on the findings from an in-depth qualitative cross-national study of the child care strategies of 112 mothers working in secretarial or clerical occupations in two countries with very different configurations of ‘political motherhood’, namely, France and Britain, the article assesses the impact of these varying policy environments on the construction of mothering in the everyday lives of employed women. It finds that different configurations of political motherhood have a significant impact on the practical aspects of these women's child care strategies but less impact on their fundamental conceptions of the duties and responsibilities of mothering. It concludes by considering the significance of these findings for current debates concerning the role of the state in perpetuating or combating unequal gender relations.

In the United Kingdom a range of services for elderly people in the community has developed that is delivered by a variety of professionals and administered within different organisations. This has resulted in a problem of co-ordinating services to meet the individual needs of the most frail elderly people. In the United States ‘case management’ has been introduced as a way of improving the co-ordination of care. Despite structural differences in the provision of health and social services between the United States and the United Kingdom, the concept of case management has influenced the design of a number of innovatory schemes in the United Kingdom, including the Gloucester Care for Elderly People at Home project (CEPH). These innovatory schemes have demonstrated the need for a ‘keyworker’ and clarified the tasks that are involved in taking responsibility for co-ordinating services to meet the needs of elderly people at risk of failing to cope at home. There is, however, a danger of proliferating the complexity of service provision by creating a new breed of professional; an alternative might be to alter the responsibilities, attitudes and team orientation of existing professional workers so as to include taking on the key worker role for some of their clients.

The article discusses the role of Scandinavian local governments in providing welfare state services. Wide-ranging social care services are probably the most distinctive feature of the Scandinavian welfare societies. These services, in the main, have been financed publicly and provided by local government. The traditional principle of Scandinavian local self-government, requiring local autonomy, and the goal of a welfare state providing a uniformly equal service to all is, however, a contradiction in terms. How have the Scandinavian countries dealt with this dilemma? This question is discussed by an examination of the day-care service policies in the four Scandinavian countries. Two distinct Scandinavian policy-models seem to emerge, one that primarily respects the local discretion of municipalities and the other that favours a more centralised approach. Norway represents the local autonomy model, Sweden and Finland exemplify the centrally directed model, while Denmark displays features from both models. During the 1990s, the main responsibility for social services has been decentralized also in Sweden and Finland. At the same time, Scandinavian local government action has turned to a more liberal direction.

Welfare institutions have long been set up in most European countries in ways oriented towards the family as the one basic principle. Reforms in recent times however have fundamentally changed the conception of the social citizen. Yet social rights are still mainly conceptualised in the literature in terms of employee rights, and family elements are often interpreted as a kind of vestige of the traditional welfare-state policies of industrial societies.

In this paper we develop a formula for making the weight of the family in social security visible and comparing it through the evaluation of cross-country levels of institutional individualisation. We deliver original theoretical, conceptual and empirical insights into the welfare-institutional order with the aim of furthering the understanding of the current social constitution of European societies. The findings show that there is considerable variation in the degree to which welfare institutions treat the social citizen as an individual and that the results do not correspond to common welfare categorisations.

The article explores factors mediating the relationship between carers and service provision, exploring the judgements and expectations that lie behind the complex and sometimes seemingly inconsistent pattern of provision for carers. The article which is based on an empirical study teases out a series of factors that structure responses in this area covering: the attitude adopted by the carer to his or her caring role; the views of the cared-for person and other kin; the impact of different relationships, of what we term ‘moral status’, and of the existence or otherwise of a separate future for the cared-for person, as well as more social structural factors such as gender, age, class and race. The significance of these is explored through their impact on the assumptions of both service providers and carers.

This article reviews the issues involved in policy choices with respect to universality and selectivity in income support to older people. It considers four questions: the practical meaning of universality and selectivity in the income support systems of various countries, the effectiveness of universal and selective arrangements in the alleviation of poverty among this group, the role of universal and selective arrangements in redistributing income among elderly people and the relative generosity of universal and selective arrangements. The article draws on data from the ‘second wave’ of the Luxembourg Income Study for six countries: Australia, (West) Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, concerning the incomes of elderly couples and single (non-married) women. It concludes that while selective income support arrangements achieve greater redistribution in favour of low income elderly people for the same expenditure than do universal ones, selective arrangements do not necessarily perform better in other respects, and, in particular, are associated with low levels of benefit income.

Across industrialised countries, men contribute one-third of the household time in domestic tasks despite women's rising labour force participation. Like a Russian doll, however, the private sphere of the household nests within broader socio-political institutions. Proposed here is a relative gender power model incorporating both individual and policy-derived resources to explain differences in the division of household tasks. The sensitivity of the model to state-level policy differences is tested using data from the second wave of the US National Survey of Families and Households. After controlling for women's individual resources, laws and policies enhancing women's economic circumstances in the event of a divorce such as receipt of transfers, child support and property settlement predict that men in couples perform a greater share of domestic tasks. This evidence confirms that the state can ameliorate gender hierarchies and inequality.

The optimal balance between central governmental authority and the degree of autonomy of local public bodies is an enduring issue in public policy. The UK National Health Service is no exception, with NHS history, in part at least, a history of repeated cycles of centralisation and decentralisation of decision-making power. Most recently, a significant reorganisation of the NHS in 2012–13 was built around the creation of new and supposedly more autonomous commissioning organisations (Clinical Commissioning Groups – CCGs). Using Bossert's (1998) concept of ‘decision space’, we explored the experiences of local commissioners as they took on their new responsibilities. We interviewed commissioning staff from all of the CCGs in two regional health care ‘economies’, exploring their perceptions of autonomy and their experiences over time. We found significant early enthusiasm for, and perceptions of, increased autonomy tempered in the vertical dimension by increasingly onerous and prescriptive monitoring regimes, and in the horizontal dimension by the proliferation of overlapping networks, inter-organisational groups and relationships. We propose that, whatever the balance between central and local control that is adopted, complex public services require some sort of meso-level oversight from organisations able to ‘hold the ring’ between competing interests and to take a regional view of the needs of the local health system. This suggests that local organisational autonomy in such services will always be constrained.

The Munro Review of Child Protection asserted that the English child protection system had become overly ‘defensive’, ‘bureaucratised’ and ‘standardised’, meaning that social workers were not employing their discretion in the interests of the individual child. This paper reports on the results of an ethnographic case study of one of England’s statutory child protection teams. The research sought to explore the extent of social worker discretion relative to Munro’s call for ‘radical reform’ and a move towards a more ‘child-centred’ system. Employing an iterative mixed methods design – encompassing documentary analysis, observation, focus group, questionnaire, interview and ‘Critical Realist Grounded Theory’ – the study positioned the UK Government’s prolonged policy of ‘austerity’ as a barrier to social worker discretion. This was because the policy was seen to be contributing to an increased demand for child protection services; and a related sense amongst practitioners that they were afforded insufficient time with the child to garner the requisite knowledge, necessary for discretionary behaviour. Ultimately, despite evidence of progress relative to assertions that social worker discretion had been eroded, the paper concludes that there may still be ‘more to do’ if we are to achieve the ‘child-centred’ and ‘effective’ system that Munro advocated.

Peter Taylor-Gooby's recent contribution to the debate on globalisation and the logic of welfare retrenchment with which it has come to be so closely associated (1997), represents a valuable and timely intervention in a debate whose significance can scarcely be over-stated. Our assessment of the extent to which the contours of the contemporary global political economy circumscribe the parameters of the politically and economically possible is crucial to our understanding of the trajectory and future of the welfare state in a post-Keynesian era, as it is to any attempt to reclaim a positive agenda for welfare reform in a context in which social policy is increasingly being subordinated to the perceived imperative(s) of economic competitiveness. Yet, despite its important challenge to the equation of globalisation, ‘new times’ (however labelled) and welfare retrenchment, Taylor-Gooby's intervention is not unproblematic. The counterposing of an ‘old sociology’ concerned with class, capital and the state with a ‘new sociology’ of fragmentation and diversity (a sociology of and for new times) is ultimately unhelpful. It presents an artificially stark choice between a celebration of the novel that threatens to prove complicit with contemporary welfare reform on the one hand, and a reassertion of continuity and the continuing relevance of ‘second-best theory’ on the other. It is the argument of this brief response that is only by rejecting the dualistic pairings of ‘old’ and ‘new’ sociology, ‘old’ and ‘new’ times alike, that we can fashion a sociology and attendant political economy capable of detailing the complex and contingent processes currently restructuring the welfare state and of charting the space for positive alternative trajectories of welfare reform. In so doing we must resist the temptation to make do with second-best.

Developing the equality agenda has been a major preoccupation of policy intervention in Northern Ireland since Direct Rule from London was instituted in 1972. This paper examines how policy has developed and its effectiveness. The paper highlights new developments since the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and examines in particular new attempts to mainstream equality in the policy process. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Northern Ireland experience has much to offer students of social policy elsewhere.

Variable tuition fees and bursaries, funded by higher education institutions, were introduced in England to promote student choice and provider competition, while bursaries would off-set higher fees and safeguard access. Both have been central to government reforms of undergraduate student funding since 2004. This article assesses student perceptions of the impact of bursaries on their higher education decisions and choices, and considers the implications for the 2012/13 National Scholarship Programme. It concludes that most students do not think their choices are affected by bursaries, although those who are cost-conscious, expect to receive higher bursaries, especially of £1,000 or more, and attend Russell Group universities are more likely to think bursaries are influential and important. The reconfiguration of institutional aid from 2012/13 may overcome some perceived barriers to the effectiveness of financial support, but is likely to exacerbate others, and create new impediments and inequalities.

The experience of homelessness not only affects physical health, but can also constrain access to required health care. In a number of European countries, national strategies to tackle homelessness have sought to deliver integrated solutions across housing, health and other social policy areas. This article examines approaches to meeting the health care needs of homeless people in relation to such strategies, drawing upon recent research in Norway and Scotland. The article presents a comparative analysis of approaches to service provision in relation to welfare models and the concepts of universal and specialist provision. The analysis suggests a cross-national shift in the conceptualisation of appropriate responses to the health care needs of those who experience homelessness. The provision of some specialist health services, while reflecting a selective model of welfare, need not be solely interpreted as conflicting with a more universal model of ensuring access to mainstream services. Rather, the challenge is to recognise the need for a process approach which supports an effective transition from the (sometimes necessary) use of specialist services for this group, towards (the ideal of) full integration into mainstream health care.

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.

This article is concerned with explaining the relatively disappointing results of the Labour government's National Childcare Strategy to date, with particular emphasis on the role of the EYDCPs (Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships). After briefly describing and assessing childcare policy under Labour, it suggests that limited outcomes partly reflect the constraining legacy of previous policy and provision, but must also be related to the way childcare has fitted into the wider government agenda, and ‘third way’ discourse. This has affected not only policy content but the chosen means of implementation. In this context the article focuses in particular on the local EYDCPs: both their rationale and the part they have played in practice.

The devolved government in Northern Ireland set about the task of putting in place ‘a modern and effective system of public administration that can deliver high quality public services to our citizens’. It did so through a review of public administration launched in June 2002. This article offers a formative evaluation of the quest to improve the quality of public services, now being taken forward by a British minister since the suspension of devolution. It argues that the review is being driven by institutional concerns and is devoid of a public service modernising agenda. Additionally, it contends that how people in Northern Ireland perceive public services is contingent on their views on its constitutional status (Direct Rule or devolved government) which, in turn, is linked to their support for the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, rather than the performance of public bodies. As a consequence, the reforms may result in little more than institutional tinkering with doubtful impact on the quality of public services.

Many of the difficulties of implementing the new community care policy arise from the fact that local authorities are being asked to make substantial changes on a large number of fronts. However, studies to date have tended to concentrate on only single areas of change. This article aims to provide a wide-ranging discussion of the new policy and its implementation, drawing on empirical research for illustration.

The article suggests first that it is important to situate the difficulties local authorities are experiencing in implementing the changes in the context of the unresolved tensions contained within the objectives of the reforms. The problems these issues raise for implementation are then examined in relation to two main areas: care management and assessment, and enabling, drawing on a two-year monitoring project (from mid-1992 to mid-1994) in one shire county, one inner London borough and three outer London boroughs. The article concludes by speculating on what the changes will mean for the future of social service provision.

At the same time as the number of lone mother families has been increasing, education policy has demanded more involvement in children's schooling from ‘parents’ (i.e., mothers). Social policy in this area is inherently contradictory, encouraging lone mothers into paid employment on the one hand, whilst imploring mothers to ‘help’ in (and out of) the classroom on the other. Whilst lone mothers become scapegoats for all societal ills, parental involvement schemes are seen to solve society's ‘problems’. Drawing on data from a research project, this article begins to examine the contradictions within and between these policies for low income lone mothers.

In countries that have experienced decentralisation processes, the role that central and sub-national authorities play in the governance of some social policies may vary considerably across regions. In Italy, for instance, whereas some regions (and municipalities) have been very active in financing social assistance programmes, others still overwhelmingly rely on resources directly allocated by the central government. This indicates that, in a ‘regionalised’ system, the development of a sub-national social dimension is not a territorially homogeneous phenomenon. Interestingly, cross-regional variation is mainly explained by differences in the strength of regionalist parties. The share of total social assistance spending allocated by sub-national authorities has increased significantly in those areas of the country where regionalist parties are stronger and does not seem to depend on ideological shifts on the left-right spectrum. Surprisingly, the positive effect of regional economic development on sub-national spending is not as strong as expected. On the other hand, female employment and population ageing seem to explain part of territorial divergence, the former having a positive effect and the latter a negative one on the dependent variable.

Differentials in unemployment among young adult males are shown to be particularly associated with two factors: housing tenure and early childbearing. Even after controlling for factors such as social class and area of residence, local authority tenants have unemployment rates two or three times as high as owner-occupiers of a similar age. For movers between tenures these differentials are even greater; movers from owner-occupation to local authority tenancy have four times the unemployment rate of those moving in the opposite direction. Large differentials by the family situation of young people are also found, with childless married couples having particularly low unemployment rates. These two aspects are connected by the effect of childbearing filtering couples into different tenures. Finally, the implications for increased social polarization between the two major tenures, and the likely effect on future tenure levels, are discussed.