This article draws on findings from a study of a specialised tenancy support service for homeless substance users in a Midlands city, and contributes to debates about what makes solutions to homelessness sustainable. Two approaches to tenancy support are examined: first, a resettlement model based on risk management; and, second, a restorative model which prioritises support that enables people to rebuild their lives in a more holistic sense. Conclusions point to a need for a broader training for tenancy support workers and a funding level that enables them to stay with their clients long enough to facilitate this fuller restoration.

In the UK, there has been a re-awakening of interest in the ‘co-production’ approach to involve service users in modernised public services. Within this context, Sure Start Children's Centres are being created to address child poverty and social exclusion, with an emphasis on participatory approaches. This paper considers the engagement of users in service delivery, service planning and in monitoring and evaluation activities for Children's Centres in Greater Merseyside. Research findings indicate that a lack of time to implement (and develop trust within) the new arrangements, a lack of awareness by users to participate and a broader thematic (employment and education) and geographical remit for Children's Centres is impacting upon the greater involvement of users in all aspects of co-production. Without such participation it is concluded that there is a real risk that the current needs of those most disadvantaged will not be adequately addressed.

In the last decade, the UK New Labour government has emphasised tenant participation in housing policy. Consequently, those individuals who decide to opt out of participation processes have been problematised as ‘apathetic’, and identified as needing to be ‘empowered’ through professional interventions. Drawing on research about community ownership in Glasgow, this paper argues that tenants' reasons for not getting involved are more than simply lack of interest. Tenants articulated an instrumental approach to participation, and rejected the conflation of tenant participation with tenant management. Practical barriers also obstructed their latent motivation.

Exploring the five principles of the newly enacted Mental Capacity Act 2005, this article sets these in the context of day-to-day decisions over care and treatment. These areas figure strongly in the lives of people who have problems making decisions, but there is little consideration of them in contrast to major decisions about financial planning, deprivation of liberty, and healthcare and treatment. Social policy has often found it difficult to encroach upon areas covering intimate and family-based care relationships or the private domain of care at home. This legislation touches on this controversial area.

This article sets out to explore the relationship between civil society, social policy and participatory democracy, challenging the paternalistic and egoistic tradition of charity and the voluntary sector as its defining paradigm. Civil society is linked to the right to associate for social and political purposes. Radical and liberal traditions of civil society are compared and contrasted. It is suggested that historically participatory democracy can be viewed as a Social Left that embraces the politics of difference (recognition/respect) and equality (social justice/redistribution) through the mobilisation of the poor and excluded. The emphasis is on the activist citizen (new social movements) as opposed to the traditional active citizen (charity). It is concluded that this version of civil society potentially offers a new political and cultural grammar for the discourse of social policy – that is reflexive, inclusive and democratic.

Resilience and social exclusion are both slippery concepts. Attempting to explore the relationship between them – the challenge set for contributors to this themed section – might therefore be considered a rash undertaking. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned – theoretically, empirically and in terms of policy implications – from bringing together these two areas of investigation which have developed hitherto largely in isolation from each other.

The emphasis of this literature review is on conceptual issues rather than a review of empirical studies. The paper starts by addressing the question why the concept of resilience is particular and what value is added if such a perspective is adopted. Next, the historical context and evolvement of the research on resilience are briefly reviewed with a short overview of the range of research topics in the area. The third section discusses the definition of resilience and its main elements. Section four addresses the main criticisms of the resilience concept. Section five identifies areas for further research.

In the context of risk and resilience, the paper attempts to integrate three strands of research: genetic and mental-health factors, the findings of cohort studies and those of other investigations of educational outcomes. A very wide range of factors, many of them related to disadvantage, bear on such outcomes, but none deterministically. Intelligence, conduct and emotional disorders are all found to influence academic achievement to varying degrees, as do a number of aspects of family, school and the wider social environment. Aspects that contribute to resilience are identified, and the paper concludes with a discussion of interventions to enhance resilience.

This paper introduces and illustrates the value of a classification trees approach in the study of resilience. The inherently interactive nature of the resilience construct makes this approach useful. Classification trees are a person-centred approach to data analysis, which successively split the sample into pairs of increasingly homogeneous groups of individuals. We outline the approach and then illustrate using adult educational outcomes for children in the British Cohort Study of 1970 who had experienced foster care. The insights gained from the classification tree approach are contrasted with those obtained from standard regression approaches.

The study examines whether social capital fosters resilience among individuals who are at a high risk of developing mental distress in adulthood. Results suggest that social capital is not associated with a reduction in the probability that high-risk individuals will experience mental distress, while one form of social capital, membership in groups and associations, appears to play a protective role among low-risk individuals. Overall, our research suggests that policies aimed at increasing social capital would not be able to reduce the gap in mental health between disadvantaged individuals and the rest of the population.

This paper attempts to contribute to understandings of the role of resilience as a process enabling individuals to steer a positive course in their lives by drawing on longitudinal qualitative data collected from six case study individuals, drawn from a wider study of one hundred families over a seven-year period. It is shown how respondents construct their own life trajectories, specifically reflecting on the changes and challenges they face. Additionally, this work offers a policy perspective to the debate on resilience, examining the interplay between recent government initiatives and their potential role in fostering resilience.

This paper explores the role of conditionality in policies targeting the poor. By requiring beneficiaries to send their children to school and to undertake regular health visits, proponents argue, conditionalities improve human capital outcomes, promoting resilience. This widespread perception has led to the adoption of conditional cash transfers in many countries. Yet policy debate on conditionality does not always reflect a full appreciation of how behavioural, administrative and political economy variables influence outcomes. This paper identifies the multiple channels through which conditionality determines human capital outcomes and reviews the evidence on linkages between conditionality and processes of resilience.

The following list of sources presents a brief overview of resilience research, listing publications, research centres, projects and training programmes on resilience.