The pressing issue of homelessness in Australia is largely caused by a shortage of affordable accommodation. Unexpected results from a study into the experiences of homeless families, however, revealed that many people held the perception that asylum seekers, refugees and migrants are given greater priority by welfare agencies for housing assistance. Analysis of the interview data is used to illustrate how public and political discourses circulating at the time of the interviews may have contributed to these views. The article also discusses the extent to which xenophobia in the Australian community has links with feelings of economic insecurity.

Since coming to office, New Labour has made much of a ‘public philosophy’ that stresses the importance of equal access to opportunities. This article does not so much criticise this fairly modest understanding of social justice as ask whether the kind of social policies that New Labour has devised are capable of delivering ‘opportunity for all’. The suggestion is that, because ‘targeted’ policies – Labour's local regeneration initiatives are the example taken here – face intrinsic difficulties as vehicles for social inclusion and thus greater equality of access to opportunity, they need to be supported by a wider commitment to distributive justice.

This paper critically examines the development of recent policy and theoretical issues concerning the ‘extension of working lives’ for older people in the United Kingdom. It grounds its analysis in ideas from the ‘risk society’ thesis (Beck, 1992) to explore how the matrix of population ageing, job and pension changes impinge on the shifting emphasis on increasing the retirement age, coupled with individualising pensions from state provision to a focus on self-responsibility via private provision. This neo-liberal re-positioning of extending work and pension policy has implications for the management of risk for older people in the UK. The paper explores the impact of population ageing on government ideas associated with social policy relating to extending working lives. It concludes with an assessment on the lessons policy makers and social policy analysts can learn from such shifts and the impact on the social construction of age.

This article contributes to the literature on engaging employers in activation policies. It focuses on a specific policy aimed at promoting the labour-market participation of people with disabilities. Unlike many activation policies, this policy recognises that the engagement of employers and the human resource management practices in their organisations are crucial factors for the policy’s success. The article reports on a study among employers participating in this policy. It focuses on the challenges employers experience in placing people with disabilities in their organisations, and on the public support they expect in dealing with these challenges. The article concludes that as promoting the labour-market participation of groups remote from the labour market requires social policy interventions as well as interventions in organisational human resource management, it poses challenges for policy makers, agencies providing employment services, and employers and their organisations.

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted manifold social policy responses all around the world. This article presents the findings of a meta-analysis of thirty-six in-depth country reports on early Covid-19 social policy responses in the Global South. The analysis shows that social policy responses during the early phase of the pandemic have been predominantly focused on expanding temporary and targeted benefits. In terms of policy areas, next to labour market and social assistance measures, the focus has also been on unconventional social policy instruments. The social policy responses of developing economies were often rudimentary, focusing on cash transfers and food relief, and heavily relied on external funding. In contrast, many emerging economies introduced a much broader array of social policies and were less reliant on external support.

This article examines the extent to which Gough and Woodʼs (2004) classification of most sub-Saharan African nations as insecurity regimes is still relevant by analysing public responses and attitudes towards general and specific (healthcare) welfare policies in Ghana, using a mixed-method design. Ghana presents a fascinating case study not only due to the changing socio-economic landscape but also because of the prevailing socio-political stability. The research findings demonstrate that most participants wanted more welfare spending (including on healthcare) but remained reluctant to rely on government provisions due to distrust and perceived inefficiencies in the public sector. The findings also depict the continuing reliance on family and social networks as safety nets and sometimes in preference to state arrangements. The article argues that Ghanaʼs welfare regime may be gradually shifting from the classic insecurity regime (albeit still relevant) to one resembling the less effective informal security regime – at least from the publicʼs experiences – and demands a careful integration of individual, familial, and community networks in current and future formal welfare arrangements.

Throughout the years, social policy scholars have advanced a multi-level perspective of non-take-up, viewing it as is a complex process shaped by a broad range of interacting barriers and actors. However, a comparatively small amount of that scholarship has addressed the key role of take-up agents: professionals or semi-professionals who actively help clients realise their welfare rights. Moreover, most of this scant literature has tended to focus on the agents’ impact rather than on their role and practices. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Israeli take-up agents from the public, business, and non-profit sectors, this study seeks to understand better the work of take-up agents in realising their clients’ welfare rights. Our findings show that in order to pass their clients through the gateways of welfare, agents use four keys: knowledge, networking, emotions, and power. The meaning of these keys and related practices is discussed.

This paper argues for a transformation of arrangements for accessing and allocating public resources for long-term care in the UK. Currently these arrangements are fragmented, inequitable and not always well targeted. While not necessarily advocating a social insurance approach, the experience of Germany nevertheless shows how simplicity, transparency and equity of access can be combined with strong cost control levers and political sustainability. An opportunity to transform ways of accessing and distributing public resources for long-term care arises with the piloting of ‘individual budgets’ in 13 English local authorities from 2006. The paper argues that the principles underpinning individual budgets should be extended, with the UK government taking a strong national lead.

This paper reviews the development and nature of one of the two components of the UK's equality regime – equality law. The origins of equality law lie in the postwar consensus on non-discrimination. The paper reviews the limitations of non-discrimination or negative equality duties. It documents the expansion of equality law at the turn of the twentieth/twenty-first century, when seven UK Acts and two European Directives introduced additional negative equality duties, provided for a new enforcement authority and introduced positive equality duties in respect of some social statuses. Many of these duties were introduced as part of devolution arrangements. UK equality law leads the field in European terms. The nature of positive equality duties and New Labour's approach to equality in general are also critiqued.

Choice is central to developments in many areas of welfare. Making choices, for example about health, social care, employment and housing, can be very emotional. This article draws on theories from experimental psychology and behavioural economics to analyse empirical evidence from a longitudinal, qualitative study of support-related choices. It argues that if people are expected to make emotion-laden choices, and to minimise negative aspects associated with the process of making a choice, they need to be supported in doing so. It contributes to the limited evidence and debate to date about the process costs to individuals of choice.

Rod Rhodes (1997) Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability, Open University Press 1997.

Gerry Stoker (1998) ‘Governance as theory: five propositions’, International Journal of Social Sciences 50, 1, 17–28.

Helen Sullivan and Chris Skelcher (2002) Working across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services, Palgrave.

Janet Newman, Marion Barnes, Helen Sullivan, and A. Knops (2004) ‘Public participation and collaborative governance’, Journal of Social Policy 33, 203–223.

From a term used largely within political science in the mid-1990s, ‘governance’ has become a key conceptual and analytical convention adopted by social policy, largely because of its usefulness in examining questions that are key to the discipline: citizenship; welfare rights and responsibilities; accountability; legitimacy and partnership working. Clarence and Painter (1998) have constructed a useful characterisation of public policy, identifying a shift in emphasis from hierarchies, to markets and now to collaboration. Networks, ‘joined up’ governance and partnership working are now central in both policy practice and analysis. These processes are not new, but New Labour have clearly expanded and accelerated them. For New Labour, collaborative working is now perceived as central in their response to key policy challenges: improving public services, tackling social exclusion and revitalising local democracy. These processes are now evident at all levels of policy making from supranational organisations such as the European Union down to neighbourhood-based initiatives. It appears that we are moving from the closed, unitary system of government of the Westminster model to a more open, decentralised system of governance. Our conceptions of citizenship have accordingly shifted, from one based on representation to one based on active participation, particularly within local communities. Governance is an issue which concerns all levels of government and citizen participation, from international-level World Bank concerns about commitment to efficiency and accountable government, to highly devolved localised urban regeneration partnerships.

This article examines how jobcentre advisors judge the individual deservingness of their clients and investigates what role these judgements play in translating activation policies into practice. The analysis draws on qualitative data gathered in a research project on back-to-work agreements that involved several German jobcentres. It is shown that advisors vary the intensity of ‘demand’ depending on whether benefit recipients fulfil reciprocity expectations and are deemed to have control over the unemployment situation. Whether or not they choose an enabling, supporting approach, and the extent to which they do so, depends on judgements about the client’s amenability to change and the presumed outcome of labour market policy instruments. Moreover, the analysis indicates that frontline workers use experiential cues such as appearance and self-presentation in the face-to-face encounters in order to interpret the client. The findings highlight the relevance of the normative dimension of frontline work.

A major policy plank in health and social care involves rebalancing ‘skillmix’ or occupational grademix to effect cost efficiency savings. In line with this, there has been a large expansion in recent years in the employment of care assistants/support workers. This article focuses on the largest employment area for these occupations – healthcare. It draws upon commissioned research projects to detail the context for the introduction of these new grades, to highlight issues in practice and usage to date, and to analyse tensions between policy objectives around efficiency and equity in the employment of these workers.

Age discrimination has become a topical issue in Britain, and legislation is promised by the year 2006. It is often viewed as a recent problem, caused by the decline in older men's economic activity rates since the 1970s, by concerns over ageing populations in the future and by the need to extend working lives. Yet it has a long history, going back at least to the 1930s, with much research into older workers being conducted in 1950s Britain. Examination of this history helps us understand some of the difficulties inherent in the concepts of ageism and age discrimination.

Three major emphases in interpretations of the state of contemporary intimate relationships can be broadly characterised. These are (i) breakdown and demoralisation; (ii) individualisation and democratisation; and (iii) a recognition of elements of continuity, particularly around power relations. We consider these three positions, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, relating them to key themes of identities and values, networks and trust and reciprocity, and major theorisations of the concept of social capital. We offer a critique of existing positions and suggestions for the future, cast in the light of potential policy relevance.

There has been little comparative policy research hitherto on the substantial differences in law and order policies between Western industrialised countries. Instead, criminologists have filled this void and used concepts such as Esping-Andersen's worlds of welfare or Lijphart's patterns of democracy to interpret cross-country variation. However, the state of the art has two weaknesses: it almost exclusively relies on imprisonment data as dependent variable and it remains silent as to why welfare state regimes or types of democracy should be responsible for similarities in law and order policies. The present article tackles these shortcomings by (1) examining differences and commonalities in law and order policies in twenty Western industrialised countries and by (2) investigating whether the clustering of countries is associated with features of the welfare state or the political system. We find three distinct clusters and show that their formation is related to the characteristics of the political economy of the countries.

This article focuses on the use of anti-social behavior powers in relation to a group of vulnerable women – street sex workers. It illustrates how the use of legal tools – anti-social behavior orders and public nuisance injunctions – against sex workers has been both misplaced and ineffective. The article also considers the use of anti-social powers in light of the government's leaning towards the coercive (or some might argue the compulsory) rehabilitation of sex workers. In doing so, it draws attention to the lack of research on the impact of both exclusion orders and rehabilitation orders for sex workers. Whilst it is important to fill this knowledge gap, it is argued that future investigations in this area would benefit from social network research approaches.

The term vulnerability has little theoretical purchase in social policy. It is used widely as a short-hand phrase to describe deficit. As such, it provides only limited value and has little regard for the wider structures of society that might ameliorate, sustain or exacerbate vulnerability. There is, however, a critical literature that seeks to understand the social, economic and political relationships that produce vulnerability and its potential opposite, flourishing. This article draws on this theoretical literature, focusing particularly on relational accounts of autonomy, capabilities and functioning, and the role of societal institutions. Using cases drawn from empirical research investigating how grandparents care for their grandchildren in relationships characterised by rescue and repair, this article refines a relational model of the longitudinal space of vulnerability. It extends explanation of three dimensions of the model: basic needs, the capacity to be and access to service providers, and elaborates on how these dimensions inter-relate through an investigation of empowerment.

This article examines how Dutch citizens with long-term care needs have used existing legal opportunities to respond to cuts in publicly financed care. Unexpectedly, most did not make use of their right to appeal the reduction or elimination of their previous entitlements, even when this led to marked problems in daily life. Thirty interviews with disabled and elderly persons and their care-givers revealed that specific social norms on how to feel about the cuts inhibited the lodging of appeals. Given the new policy's stated intention of preserving care for the most needy, many affected clients felt they had no right to be angry. Despite their (often objectively warranted) grievances, they did not appeal as breaking with the new moral code would trigger feelings of shame – of not being autonomous, of demanding too much when others are worse off, and of appearing ungrateful.

As a result of the new licensing regime introduced in England and Wales in November 2005, the nature of the town/city centre night-time economy and its future development has become a particularly pressing policy issue for local authorities. Among local authorities and local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, continental-style ‘diversity’ – in the sense of a broader mix of participants and forms of entertainment – has emerged as an ideal to be strived for. This article examines the problems faced by those attempting to create diversity and with it the ‘continentalisation’ of the night-time economy in this country.