Family policy now has greater prominence in UK politics than ever before. These policies are developing in the context of major constitutional change across the UK, which has the potential for significant policy divergence. Devolution has generated greater interest in Scottish family policy, and how its policy processes have been reconfigured. New Scottish legal and policy initiatives with a family focus have emerged from both Westminster and Holyrood. This paper reviews the present context for family policy in Scotland, some recent family policy developments at both UK and Scottish levels of government, and identifies key issues these raise.

The evidence-based policy approach – the view that social policy ought to be based upon supporting evidence that the policy works (and why it works) – is currently in vogue. In this article we reflect upon one aspect of the evidence-based approach: the use of quantitative evidence in health care decision-making. In particular, we discuss both the potential usefulness of quantitative evidence in this context, and the barriers to the appropriate use of such evidence at the decision-making level.

In recent years neuroscience has increasingly been drawn on to focus attention on the significance of early childhood years for healthy brain development. However an examination of the literature suggests that brain science has little specific to offer parents. In spite of this, a belief that these first years are a critical period for child development has provided the impetus for the introduction of early intervention programmes targeting groups who are considered to be ‘at risk’. The literature indicates that the assumptions underpinning this notion are problematic and may have implications for the success of such interventions. The factors impacting on childhood outcomes are complex and cannot be reduced solely to biomedical explanations. A more effective way to tackle child health and welfare problems would involve a multidimensional approach and include the elimination of poverty and the scrutiny of all public policy.

The starting point of this paper is that the shift from a producer to a consumer society necessitates that social exclusion is investigated not only in relation to production but also consumption. To do this, case study evidence from interviews with 350 households in rural England is reported. This reveals that people define themselves as excluded from mainstream consumption not only when they are unable to acquire goods but also when they rely on informal and second-hand channels (e.g., car boot sales, second-hand shops) to obtain them. Social exclusion in consumer society is thus found to relate to not only non-possession but also exclusion from mainstream modes of goods acquisition.

The concept of evidence-based policy and practice has many origins but its relation to the growth of the social sciences is arguably the most important. The uses of the social sciences for both understanding and transforming social policies and political systems has come to be assumed – complex and problematic though these may be. The concept is also closely linked with the concepts of globalisation, technological developments, and the ‘knowledge economy’. Thus the notions of ‘evidence’ and social science research have often been elided with political movements for social and economic change. In other contexts, these notions have been contextualised, so that ‘evidence’ and research are not deemed to be the same. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the notion of legal ‘evidence’ illustrates just how ideological it can be, how it can be used to marshal particular arguments and sustain a specific case rather than present it in a dispassionate manner.

There is a growing interest in ‘evidence-based policy making’ in the UK. However, there remains some confusion about what evidence-based policy making actually means. This paper outlines some of the models used to understand how evidence is thought to shape or inform policy in order to explore the assumptions underlying ‘evidence-based policy making.’ By way of example, it considers the process of evidence seeking and in particular the systematic review as a presumed ‘gold standard’ of the EBP movement. It highlights some of the opportunities and challenges represented in this approach for policy research. The final part of the paper outlines some questions of capacity that need to be addressed if the social sciences are to make a more effective contribution to policy debate in Britain.

Issues surrounding the role and provision of evidence to inform policy and practice have become topical and problematic. The context of these controversies is discussed, with particular emphasis on systematic approaches to synthesising research evidence. We contrast the ‘positivist’ emphasis with interpretative qualitative synthesis, and suggest that many of the viewpoints have become unnecessarily and unhelpfully polarised. The methods for systematic research syntheses will vary as they depend on the question being asked. The process is transparent, allowing readers to see how conclusions have been reached, and forms the basis of reviews which can be updated to help provide sustainable and relevant evidence.

This paper provides an analysis of the New Community Schools (NCS) initiative as developed in Scotland. As our analysis makes clear the evidential base of this development was, at the outset, extremely slender. From that base, however, NCS has migrated to diverse localities within which it has had significant impact while itself being impacted upon by local conditions and contexts. We are particularly interested in the democratic potential of this process of migration: the extent to which, and ways in which, localities can speak back to the centralising sources of power through the mediation of policy. Our analysis focuses on NCS from inception, through formal announcement by the then Scottish Office, to the first year of implementation within a particular local authority in central Scotland. The paper is organised around what we see as three major shifts in the migration of NCS during this early period of its development. We argue that evidence of how, why, and to what effect policy ‘travels’ is crucial not only for the purposes of academic analysis, but also to the effective implementation of policy at the local level. Our central concern is with the self-reflexive development of policy through the formative analysis of evidence relating to its mediation.

In Sweden, youth matters increasingly form a political field of their own. Youth politics may be related to governance and policy research on the one hand, and research on young people's lives on the other. Both have been influenced by similar questions, concerning the freedom of actors and the power of structures. Research specifically on youth politics is however scanty, in Sweden and internationally. The article analyses recent Swedish youth politics, based on interviews with local politicians and officials. Questions posed are: Which youth matters are prioritised at the local political agenda, and why? How is the division of responsibilities in youth matters between different actors perceived? Which importance and functions are attributed to local youth projects? To what extent do recent youth politics mirror late-modern assumptions of self-governance, individual choice and risk-taking? To what extent do they reflect assumptions of an earlier dominant social welfare paradigm? It is concluded that local youth politics in general contain elements of collectivist welfare thinking, and a neo-liberal or post-modern ideology is barely visible. Nevertheless, flexibility, autonomy and decentralisation assumptions about local authorities and young people become more prominent around youth projects. The municipality is also more likely to be identified as a strategic, risk-taking actor here.

Recent texts on globalisation and education policy refer to the rapid flow of education policy texts producing or responding to common trends across nation states with the emergence of new knowledge economies. These educational policies are shaping what counts as research and the dynamics between research, policy, and practice in schools, creating new types of relationships between universities, the public, the professions, government, and industry. The trend to evidence-based policy and practice in Australian schools is used to identify key issues within wider debates about the ‘usefulness’ of educational research and the role of universities and university-based research in education in new knowledge economies.

The drive in the late 1990s for an evidence-based approach to both policy and practice throughout public services has been encoded in a range of articles, operationalised in funded organisations, and implemented through government policy. This paper intends to review some of those articles, organizations and education policies to give an overview of the way in which the approach has been constructed and to make problematic some of the underlying assumptions.