Based on a mixed methods approach, this article describes the prevalence of different levels of food budget restraints in a sample of 1,650 Danish households, and explores different types of coping strategies to deal with such restraints. Strategies concerned cooking, eating and buying food. A deeper knowledge of coping strategies was obtained by analysing qualitative data from interviews with thirty families who have experienced food budget restraints. Results revealed that more than 40 per cent reported some level of restraint on their food budget, while about 20 per cent experienced more substantial food budget restraints or food insecurity. Single parent households were at significantly greater risk of experiencing restraint than others. An investigation of coping strategies showed that some strategies, for example, using leftovers and cooking seasonal products, were common across all levels of budget restraint, while strategies affecting social life and taste preferences negatively were mostly applied when restraint was more severe. The qualitative analysis explored how the various strategies involved the potential for both positive and negative experiences for the individual, depending on the wider context surrounding the need to reduce household food budgets. Results from this study may be important for developing adequate measures to influence food purchases and eating practices in specific groups in situations of widespread economic turbulence in welfare societies.

Increasingly, social policies combine to intensify old risks and create new social risks with unequal consequences for men and women. These risks include those created by changing normative expectations and the resulting tensions between social policy, paid employment and family life. Policy reliance on highly aggregated standardised outcome data and generalised models of autonomous rational action result in policies that lack an understanding of the rationales that structure everyday life. Drawing on two Australian studies, we illustrate the importance of attending to the intersections and collisions of social change and normative policy frameworks from the perspective of individual ‘lived lives’.

We revise Atkinson’s concept of a ‘participation income’ (PI), repositioning it as a form of green conditional basic income that is anchored in a capabilities-oriented eco-social policy framework. This framework combines the capability approach with an ‘ethics of care’ to re-shape the focus of social policy on individuals’ capability to ‘take care of the world’, thus shifting the emphasis from economic production to social reproduction and environmental reparation. In developing this proposal, we seek to address key questions about the feasibility of implementing PI schemes: including their administrative complexity and the criticism that a PI constitutes either an arbitrary and confusing, or invasive and stigmatising, form of basic income. To address these concerns, we argue for an enabling approach to incentivising participation whereby participation pathways are co-created with citizens on the basis of opportunities they recognise as meaningful rather than enforced through strict monitoring and sanctions.

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.

Using a rigorous, evidence-focused review method, this literature review found eleven relevant studies that directly compare the impacts of cash transfers and remittances on a range indicators of poverty at the household level. The evidence base is small and highly context specific. The external and internal validity of most studies are limited, so the conclusions that can be drawn from this review are tentative. However, in the majority of studies both cash transfers and remittances are shown to have positive impacts on reducing poverty. Overall, remittances seem to have stronger poverty-reducing impacts. There are a number of factors that seem to explain why remittances have a greater effect. In the studies reviewed here, remittances appear to reach both a greater share of the overall population than cash transfers and a greater share of poorer households. Furthermore, remittances were higher in value in the majority of studies reviewed. Further high-quality research is needed.

Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). According to Headey et al. (1997: 332), it has become a canon in comparative social policy against which any subsequent work must situate itself. Abrahamson (1999) notes that, since the publication of the book, every welfare state scholar has referred to Esping-Andersen's tripolar scheme. Scruggs and Allen (2006: 55, 69) remark that it ‘is difficult to find an article comparing welfare states in advanced democratic countries (or a syllabus on social policy) that does not refer to this seminal work’, and ‘it is hard to overstate the significance of the impact of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC) on comparative studies of the welfare state’. Its seminal status is evidenced by the extent to which it continues to be cited in articles on comparative welfare states. It also remains required reading for most (graduate) students of comparative political economy and social policy (Scruggs and Allen, 2008). Kröger (2011) claims that, with few exceptions, comparative social policy research is shaped by welfare regime analysis. Arts and Gelissen conclude that TWWC is a defining influence upon the whole field of comparative welfare state research (2010: 569). Danforth (2014) writes that the ‘three worlds’ typology has become one of the principal heuristics for examining modern welfare states. In short, TWWC is a ‘modern classic’ (Arts and Gelissen, 2002).

The focus of this article is on the ways in which emotions are engaged in the discursive construction and treatment of disabled people in receipt of social security benefits. The article draws upon the literature related to the social importance of emotions and that concerned with moral boundary drawing. It argues that the evocation of emotional reactions is crucial in understanding the ways in which changes to out-of-work benefits for disabled people (the development of Employment and Support Allowance) have recently been effected and the ways in which this has reflected a desire to more closely denote those judged able and not able to work in a redrawing of the ‘disability category’. While this has been done in the name of ‘inclusion’, the article concludes that its consequences are, in various ways, the ‘exclusion’ and stigmatisation of disabled people.

Research on the processes underpinning the contemporary growth in the commoditisation of domestic labour focuses on feminised areas of work, such as cleaning and care. Yet research examining trends in domestic outsourcing highlights how men's, as well as women's, household work is subject to increased commoditisation. Through a qualitative enquiry of households which outsource stereotypically male domestic chores – essentially, household and garden repair and maintenance – and men who do such work for pay, we seek to understand the processes underpinning its outsourcing. In doing so, we adopt a framework which treats the paid domestic-work sector as a critical nexus at which gendered care and migration regimes intersect. The focus on male domestic chores, however, requires that we broaden that framework in ways which can more fully illuminate men's positions within it.

This article reviews the different forms of legal interventions which may be available to address parent abuse. It seeks to examine the evidence as to which are actually used currently and the problems which are inherent in them. We do this both by examining the statutory basis of the existing potential legal remedies and reported cases relating to those provisions, and by drawing on evidence from a small-scale study of relevant professional workers in one city. We conclude that while recourse to the police, and hence potentially the criminal justice system, is most frequent in practice, the criminal justice system is not suited to tackling the issue. Other interventions, such as anti-social behaviour orders and injunctions, also reveal problems. Law struggles to find an effective response to such a complex problem. Notwithstanding the acknowledged limits of law in changing behaviour, we argue that law could be used more effectively to reduce the incidence and impact of parent abuse.

Improvements in offender healthcare are key to the current UK Government's reform of the criminal justice system and the aims of reducing reoffending and protecting the public. Current approaches to offender health care emphasise the importance of ‘continuity of care’. Reference to the ‘offender health pathway’ suggests the existence of seamless delivery and experience of care; however, evidence suggests these remain some way off. This research explores prison health discharge planning in four North East prisons and uncovers elements of good practice, but also a number of challenges the prisons continue to face in their attempts to improve clinical pathways for prisoners being released or transferred, including institutional, staffing and prisoner issues. These challenges need to be acknowledged and addressed if robust discharge planning and continuity of care at the end of the offender health pathway is to be achieved.

During the early 2000s governments in Russia, Poland and Hungary declared demographic crises and adopted pro-natalist programmes to increase fertility, as well as policies to support families with children. Our article compares their ‘flagship’ pro-natalist programmes: Russia’s Maternity Capital, Poland’s Family 500+, and Hungary’s enhanced earned income tax credit, all framed by governments’ neo-familialist discourses. We confirm these policies had limited impacts on fertility, finding that their most significant and disparate effects were instead on childhood poverty. Provision of preschool public childcare and parental leaves with levels of mothers’ employment across the cases were compared. We find no relationship between coverage of childcare institutions and employment rates of mothers with young children. Data show a weak relationship between length and compensation for parental leaves and maternal employment. We conclude that post-communist governments’ flagship pro-natalist incentives, family policies and traditionalist rhetoric have had limited effects in reversing demographic decline or in re-traditionalising contemporary women’s lives.

Traditional interpretations of homelessness focus on people living on the streets or in shelters. However, homelessness encompasses many more living situations. This article reports on a scoping review of studies on hidden homelessness. A systematic search in scientific databanks was combined with an exploration of Google Scholar. The results of the review reveal a lack of consensus regarding the definition of the concept. Moreover, since most studies focus on a certain subgroup in the population, it is hard to compare profile characteristics of people living in different forms of homelessness. The applied research methods prove to be valuable, although they often underestimate the number and/or character of the phenomena. Very little longitudinal research on hidden homelessness seems to be available. Based on the findings of the scoping review, the article draws up an agenda for further research in order to capture the complex reality of contemporary forms of homelessness.

During 2011, the UK Government introduced the Mandatory Work Activity scheme, which requires JSA claimants to work in order to continue receiving benefit. Workfare has been viewed as a radical departure in the evolution of British labour market policy. However, an historical review of workfare in inter-war Britain reveals that the most recent proposals merely resuscitate a heritage of compelling the long-term unemployed to work for their benefit. Both then and now workfare has flourished in times of economic crisis, and particularly where Governments have pursued economic theories which exalt the market. Historical analysis reveals important continuities and changes in the nature of contemporary workfare.

The major reform package adopted by the Swedish Government in the late 1990s to counteract men's violence against women has now been evaluated seven years on. The original reform included legislative changes, as well as assignments to public authorities with an emphasis on improving encounters between abused women and representatives of the various authorities. The evaluation inquiry has identified pervasive shortcomings in the implementation of the reform package. Areas of special concern include the low priority given to the issue and the lack of guidelines, of continuity, of adequate resources, and, not least, of a ‘shared perspective’ on the causes and impact of men's violence against women. Future discussions and efforts will also be informed by, yet another, and slightly more recent government commissioned report on gender equality that includes an extensive discussion about men's violence against women and advocates a more eclectic approach than advocated by the evaluation inquiry.

The entry of young people into early parenthood has long been regarded as an issue for social policy and for professional practice in the UK and internationally. Despite a steadily falling trend, most notably since 1998, the UK still has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, concentrated in the most socially disadvantaged areas of the country (Office for National Statistics, 2015). The majority of these pregnancies are unplanned, with about half resulting in the birth of a child, although the extent to which this should be a cause for concern is a contested issue (Duncan et al., 2010). Considerable research evidence exists on the experiences of young mothers, with a range of interventions designed to meet their needs. However, young fathers (defined as those under the age of 25, a quarter of whom are estimated to be in their teens) have, until recently, been neglected in both research and policy. Over the past decade, small pockets of research evidence on the circumstances, practices and values of young fathers have begun to coalesce into a fledgling evidence base. However, the notion of ‘feckless’ young men, who are assumed to be absent, or disinterested in ‘being there’, or, worse, regarded as a potential risk to their children, continues to hold sway, particularly in popular media and some political discourses (Neale and Davies, 2015).

The extent of children's and young people's participation activities has increased considerably among statutory, voluntary and community sector organisations across the UK in recent years. The Children's Fund, a major government initiative launched in 2000, represents a systematic drive towards promoting children and young people's participation in planning, implementing and evaluating preventative services within all 149 local authority areas in England. Based on research carried out by the National Evaluation of the Children's Fund, this paper explores the experience of Children's Fund partnerships of engaging children and young people in strategic processes.

Critics have called for more attention to be paid to the health impacts of the economic downturn and policy responses to it. Other research has reported that, without any protective measures, deprived communities will be badly hit by austerity. This article uses evidence from fifteen deprived communities to look at the changing incidence of financial difficulties among key at-risk groups, and their associations with mental health, from the pre- to the mid-recession period. High and increasing rates of affordability difficulty were found in respect of the costs of fuel, council tax and clothes, particularly among households with disabled adults, under-occupiers and families with part-time workers. Moreover, increased affordability difficulties were consistently associated with a decline in mental health, at all time periods and for all items of expenditure. The evidence supports a policy counter-narrative focussed on preserving and enhancing mental wellbeing for all rather than the current ‘austerity hegemon’.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, UK policy and practice has become increasingly overt in its concern with families. In January 2010, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF, 2010) launched the Support for All: The Families and Relationships Green Paper. In its Foreword, Ed Balls, the then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, presented ‘Strong, stable families’ as ‘the bedrock of our society’, positioning the Green Paper as ‘supporting families to help themselves’, whilst ‘ensuring that all public services play their part in supporting strong and resilient family relationships’ (DCSF, 2010: 3). The Centre for Social Justice offered an immediate response with its own Green Paper on the Family, emphasising the role of ‘family breakdown’ as ‘the root’ of ‘pathways to poverty’ for many, as well as a barrier to appropriate childhood development and positive ‘future life outcomes’ (Centre for Social Justice, 2010: 4).

This article examines the relationship in the UK between asylum-seeking and the labour market. Since 2002, asylum-seekers have not been allowed to work unless they have waited over twelve months for an initial decision on their asylum claim. This policy change occurred as employment was considered a ‘pull factor’ encouraging unfounded asylum claims. Despite not having the right to work, asylum-seekers – and especially those whose applications for refugee status have been refused by the UK government – interact with the labour market in manifold ways. Drawing on an ESRC-funded study in the UK's Yorkshire and Humber region and related studies, this article argues that both asylum-seekers and refused asylum-seekers form a hyper-exploitable pool of ‘illegalised’ and unprotected workers. As a vital part of their survival terrain, work is largely experienced as for-cash labouring in low-paid labour market sectors where the spectre of exploitation and even ‘modern slavery’ are perpetual threats. Recent policy shifts are deepening such threats through creating increasingly ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘hostile’ environments for certain categories of migrants.

There has been exhaustive scrutiny of the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations Population Fund. UNICEF, despite a prominent role in agenda setting for children's welfare in developing countries, has not been subject to comparable scrutiny. This paper argues that the Country Programmes promulgated by UNICEF to improve children's welfare reflect ethnocentric conceptualisations of the family. As a case study, Ghana's Country Programme 2001–2005 is considered in detail. Anthropological studies are adduced to highlight underlying ethnocentric assumptions around social organisation. The ramifications of these assumptions are then considered.