Building on Stimson's (2000) analysis, this paper examines the shift from a focus on health towards one of crime within UK drug policy. The increased use of coerced or compulsory treatment of drug users is discussed with reference to harm reduction theory and the question of whose harm is prioritised in shaping drug services. We also identify mechanisms by which the efficacy of treatment approaches based on coercion may be lessened or reduce the efficacy of other existing services. Failure to consider these may be an important omission in any appraisal of the impact of policies that increasingly prioritise crime prevention and coercion over heath and voluntarism.

Third sector or civil society organisations are seen by many as important routes through which citizens contribute to the development and implementation of public policy and to the democratic process. This contribution has been acknowledged in the UK in the requirement for their participation across a range of new government policies and programmes. But how far are these claims justified? This paper explores, through a case study approach focusing on issues relating to older people, how voluntary and community organisations input to the policy process. It argues for a clearer balance between state and voluntary sector, based around ‘creative tension’.

Declining state provision, low levels of financial capability (FSA/DTI, 2002), and, it must be added, regulation on savings and investments have impacted severely on the ability of some sections of the UK population to purchase life assurance and savings products. In addition, according to a report submitted to the Treasury, ‘there is a wide consensus that the UK population is not saving enough for retirement. Savings levels are 20 per cent or more below what they should be. The problem appears to be particularly acute amongst the less affluent, where insufficient levels of saving are likely to have a more serious impact’ (Sandler, 2002: 2). This is due in no small part to current banking and insurance practices that have excluded many of the least affluent customers from essential financial services (Kempson and Whyley, 1998; Kempson et al., 2000; NCC, 1997), that afford them the protection of:

[bull ] Financial security for a rainy day;

[bull ] Greater comfort during retirement and old age;

[bull ] Access to greater independence and opportunity throughout their lives; (HM Treasury, 2001b)

Ideally for less affluent consumers, product design should incorporate simplicity and transparency, preferably offer automatic savings of small amounts weekly or fortnightly and be flexible enough for payments to be suspended during times of financial hardship without incurring penalties (Kempson and Whyley, 1998: 50–51).

This study explores issues about securing quality of provision in social care using evidence from research into training in the adult care sector in two English local authorities. It shows that progress towards securing a trained workforce is slow and explores reasons for this. It argues that since the government is making particular efforts to increase training in this sector, these data provide a good test case of the problems about using regulation to raise care standards. It concludes that significant progress is unlikely to be made in respect of training unless the impact of other factors, such as the occupational segregation of the workforce and contracting out, are also taken into account.

The relationship between research, policy and practice remains a contested area. This article explores pressures for researchers to make their work more useful and relevant to policy and practice, and for practitioners to undertake research. Whilst there are clearly areas of mutual interest and benefit, we argue that the research, policy and practice communities also have distinct traditions, skills and obligations which should be recognised and valued rather than artificially suppressed. Narrow conceptions of research utility constrain the debate about what each community has to offer and how best to communicate with each other across borders.

The papers in the themed section emerge from the work of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA), based at the University of Leeds. CAVA was funded from 1999 to undertake a five-year programme of research into changes in parenting and partnering in Britain and their implications for future social policies. At the heart of CAVA's research is an investigation into the values that people attach to their parenting and partnering activities. We are interested in ‘what matters’ to people in their family lives and personal relationships, especially as they undergo change. This question lay at the centre of our core empirical projects, all of which were based on in-depth qualitative research. (An account of our methodology may be found in the Appendix to this Introduction). The projects focused on different aspects of change: motherhood, care and employment; kin relationships after divorce; care and commitments in transnational families; practices of care and intimacy amongst those who live without a co-resident partner; and collective values of care and support in self-help groups, voluntary organisations and trade unions. Each of these projects is represented in the following collection.

The assumption of individualised rationality runs through the two dominant theorisations of family behaviour – new household economics and individualisation. We demonstrate the inaccuracy of this assumption, using the results of two CAVA projects into mothers' perceptions and choices in combining mothering with paid work, in allocating tasks with partners, and in choosing childcare. Rather, mothers make such decisions within socially negotiated accounts of what is morally adequate, and we go on to show how these decisions and the values informing them are socially patterned by class and ethnicity. Finally, we consider how both theory and policy can make a ‘rationality mistake’ in neglecting the importance of social ties and moral responsibilities in family life.

This paper addresses the question of how families are changing in the context of transformed policies on divorce in England and Wales. However, rather than painting a picture of change through the use of statistical data, the argument will be based on qualitative data which focuses on the interiority of family and kin relationships and on the principles and reasonings that individuals give for their actions. This provides more of a ground-up perspective on social change, and prioritises the actions of parents, grandparents and children rather than focusing on the consequences of policies. It is argued that we need to recognise that the changing nature of family life pushes people to negotiate new moral codes or principles, and that this in turn is generating new ways of ‘doing’ post-divorce family life.

This paper sets out an argument for the re-imagining of care in social policy on three interrelated grounds: epistemological–theoretical, substantive socio-historical, and normative political–philosophical. It takes up the epistemological challenge offered by queer theory to propose a different gaze be cast on care which recognizes the practices of care which take place outside normative heterosexual couples and families. Following on from this, it suggests that the care that has been the object of study in social policy has failed to keep up with transformations in the realm of sociability which characterize the contemporary world. It outlines findings of research which show the increasing importance of friendship to those at the cutting edge of processes of individualization. Finally, it points to the new and valuable lens that the study of caring practices of friends might cast on the ethics of care, and it ends with some pointers to what it might mean for social policy to take friendship seriously.

This article explores the meaning of ‘the visit’ to Pakistan by a sample of people living in the North of England, with relatives in Pakistan. It argues that the visit has a particular symbolic and practical significance in the maintenance of transnational kin relationships. Visiting involves travelling and ‘co-presence’ with people, as well as in a place – in this case, Pakistan. It is particularly important in the process of ‘knowing’ one's geographically distant relatives, and in ‘doing things together’ and ‘being there at key moments’. These elements are woven together with other ways of keeping in touch in between visits, and help to sustain family narratives of ‘the regular visit’ and the kinship network that is active over distances and over time. The visit was also important in helping to confirm a sense of belonging or affinity with Pakistan, even though for many in the study England was seen as home. However, visiting involves complex and sometimes difficult sets of negotiations and decisions about propriety, morality, exchange, and belonging in transnational kin relationships.

This article examines ‘care’ and ‘values’ in local self-help groups and voluntary organisations which mobilise around partnering and parenting. It finds that a shared identity based upon common experiences of misrecognition and stigma is the most significant element of involvement. This provides the basis for new knowledge, for challenging professional practice, and for alternative practices of care and support based on trust, reciprocity and mutual respect. However, sometimes it also contributes to forms of social closure. The article sets these findings in the context of New Labour policy on voluntary organisations, participation, and parenting and partnering.

Evidence of ‘dissemination’ is now seen as part of research delivery by grant-giving bodies such as the ESRC and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Drawing on the growing body of research into media sources (Manning 2001, Davis, 2000) and relating it to debates on the public sphere (Habermas 1989), the paper will ask what (if anything) researchers have to gain from involvement with the mass media and whether specialised help can assist in bringing social policy research from the margins into the mainstream of media discourse. It will look in particular at the special difficulties of disseminating ‘fuzzy’ qualitative research findings which do not lend themselves to obviously eye-catching headlines. The paper will draw on an ESRC funded experiment at the University of Leeds as a case study with which to explore these issues.

J. Le Grand (2003), Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

R. Lister (2004), Poverty, Polity Books, Cambridge.

L. Mead (2004), Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

The websites listed here provide free access to a large body of information on the ‘state’ of families, care and welfare – working papers, policy position statements, lectures, book excerpts, statistical reviews, press releases, consultation papers, project reports, and findings documents. All websites were visited on 14 May 2004.