Job search is a central element of activation policies, which aim to transform unemployed people into active jobseekers who are subject to checks. We examine a neglected aspect of activation: sanctions. To do so we analyse, through biographical interviews with formerly-unemployed people whose benefit payments have been stopped, what it means when a job search is deemed insufficient. Although these formerly-unemployed people have failed to present enough written and tangible evidence of their job search during checks, they have pursued a different type of job search comprising more informal activities that are difficult to convert into written documents. So, we identify a twin-stranded job search – prescribed and alternative. We also point out that the gap between institutionally-framed job search and experience-based job search widens among unemployed people having low employability attributes, so that ever-stricter checks penalize those who are most vulnerable.

The on-going rise in demand experienced by voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) providing emergency food aid has been described as a sign of a social and public health crisis in the UK (Loopstra, 2018; Lambie-Mumford, 2019), compounded since 2020 by the impact of (and responses to) Covid 19 (Power et al., 2020). In this article we adopted a social practice approach to understanding the work of food bank volunteering. We identify how ‘helping others’, ‘deploying coping strategies’ and ‘creating atmospheres’ are key specific (and connected) forms of shared social practice. Further, these practices are sometimes suffused by faith-based practice. The analysis offers insights into how such spaces of care and encounter (Williams et al., 2016; Cloke et al., 2017) function, considers the implications for these distinctive organisational forms (the growth of which has been subject to justified critique) and suggests avenues for future research.

Social policy research examining citizens’ welfare knowledge, which offers a gateway to their understanding of the policy context, has remained limited. Adapting the opportunity–motivation–ability framework borrowed from the literature on political knowledge to welfare knowledge, this article offers an analysis of new data from a nationwide survey to explore Turkish society’s knowledge of the composition of public social spending. Corroborating earlier findings in the literature, the article maintains that most people in Turkey overestimate the relative size of social assistance spending for the poor. However, different from previous findings, the majority and most pensioners are also ill-informed about the rank of public spending on old-age pensions, the most widely used social benefit absorbing the largest share of welfare spending. The article provides evidence of the social division of welfare knowledge in Turkish society based mostly on three opportunity-related variables: city of residence, gender and income.

Responses to hate crimes, hate incidents and hate speech are characterised by an exceptional fragmentation in terminology and lack of coordination among governmental and non-governmental organisations. This article proposes a new conceptual framework to map the diversity of responses to hate crime, hate incidents and hate speech, with the aim of assessing gaps and needs in this important policy area. Using Australia as a case study, we create and analyse a database of 222 organisations running activities focusing on tackling hate against different target groups. The results highlight an uneven distribution of efforts across different geographical areas, types of activities and target groups. The majority of anti-hate efforts, especially by government organisations, focus on awareness raising and education rather than victim support and data collection. Racial and religious hate are the main foci of anti-hate efforts, compared to other forms of hate, such as anti-LGBTIQ+ and disablist hate.

This article assesses, using a framework derived from lesson-drawing, policy transfer and crisis research, the lessons offered by the media from abroad and from the past in the UK COVID-19 pandemic. The lesson-drawing literature focuses on a series of steps and questions associated with the ‘fungibility’ of lessons, and the crisis literature, with its constituent elements of threat, uncertainty and between ‘routine’ and ‘non-routine’ or ‘less routine’ crises. The article utilises the LexisNexis Database1 in order to provide a content analysis of newspaper coverage of lessons offered, giving analysis in ‘real time’ of the source of potential lessons (e.g. past pandemics or other nations), and the type of lessons (e.g. copying or instruments). Its analysis highlights the complexity of lesson-drawing in ‘real time’ in a period of considerable uncertainty, where knowledge is contested, and is subject to change over time.

Countries adopted a variety of social policy responses to reduce the social risks exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which in some cases took the form of institutional reforms. The study of the institutionalisation of emergency responses is relevant to understanding if and how a critical juncture, like the one opened by the pandemic, can generate path dependencies or changes that expand or retrench social protection. This state-of-the-art article offers an overview of how social policy responses to the pandemic have translated to institutional reform across the globe under various types of welfare systems. By conducting a systematic literature review of thirty-nine peer-reviewed journal articles in two leading bibliographic databases (Scopus and Web of Science), this article reviews the available evidence on the responses to the pandemic and their institutional consequences. We find four underlying research clusters regarding the degree of institutionalisation of the social policy responses implemented during the pandemic.

This article investigates the delay in implementation and inadequacy of specific policy actions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in nursing homes. The analysis focuses on Lombardy and Madrid, the two wealthiest regions in Italy and Spain. These were the most severely affected by the onset of the pandemic, both country-wise and at the European level. We compare the chronology of policy decisions that affected nursing homes against the broader policy responses related to the health crisis. We look at structural factors that reveal policy legacy effects. Our analysis shows that key emergency interventions arrived late, especially when compared to similar actions taken by the national health services. Weak institutional embedding of nursing homes within the welfare state in terms of ownership, allocation of resources, regulation and coordination hindered a swift response to the onset of the crisis.

Governments across the world have been slow in reacting to meeting the needs of disabled people during the pandemic. This has exposed existing inequalities in social policies, as well as new support barriers. Debates over social care have focused on Covid-19's impact on those living in residential care. Little is known about the experiences of disabled people who rely on daily support in their homes.

This article reports on a year-long study examining the experiences of disabled people during the pandemic in England and Scotland. It focuses on the crisis in social care and offers evidence of how lives have been disrupted. For many, this resulted in a sudden loss of services, delayed assessments and break down of routines and communities. Findings underline the weakness of social care in its wider relationship with the NHS and show how the social care crisis has challenged the goal of independent living.

The pandemic declared in 2020 has implied extreme transformations. In the Argentine case, measures were announced to provide relief to the sectors defined as the most affected, within which the so-called emergency family income (EFI) was established. The EFI’s management, implementation, access and collection method underwent a digitalisation process, enabling access through official and nonofficial channels. The nonofficial channels include Facebook Groups, where the recipients of social policies exchange information, doubts and advice. This article, based on virtual ethnography, aims to explore the emotions linked to the management and perception of EFI. In particular, we address a practice that has become relevant in the aforementioned context: waiting. It has been observed that the barriers between registration and access to the EFI transfer have implied different types of waiting on the part of the receiving population. We conclude that waiting has become an operative element in the implementation of social policies.

The food bank has become a charitable safety-net for those who have been failed by the social security system in times of austerity and during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article we evidence the rise of food banking in the context of declining social security, examining the decade of austerity in the UK and the Covid-19 period. We also contextualise the process of normalisation of food banks as a new safety-net in a reduced welfare state. We argue that the welfare state has failed to address a fundamental ‘Want’ – namely, food security.

Social policy represents a critical dimension of the governmental response to COVID-19. This article analyses the Australian response, which was radical in that it signalled an unprecedented policy turnaround towards welfare generosity and the almost total relaxation of conditionality. It was also surprising because it was introduced by a conservative, anti-welfarist government. The principal argument is that, though the generosity was temporary, it should be understood simultaneously by reference to institutional change and institutional tradition. The ‘change’ element was shaped by the urgency and scale of the crisis, which indicated an institutional ‘critical juncture’. This provided a ‘window of opportunity’ for reform, which would otherwise be closed. ‘Tradition’ was reflected in the nation’s federalist conventions, which partially steered the response. The central implication for other countries is that, amid the uncertainty of a crisis, governments need to consider change within the bounds of their traditional institutions when introducing welfare reform.