This article considers changing perceptions of adult ageing and their interpretation in social policy. Once wider international trends are outlined, Australian policy is used as a case example. It is argued that a mismatch between policy initiatives and personal change is a new social risk associated with demographic and socio-cultural development, having implications for the way in which social ageism and age discrimination should be considered. The article concludes with a consideration of new directions that a critical, life course sensitised approach to social policy might take.

This article traces the trajectory of UK government social policy since World War Two, with particular reference to the shifts in the past 10 to 15 years towards concepts such as multi-level governance, localism, the Third Way and the Big Society. It describes the shifting relationships between institutional religion and the State during that period, tracking the ‘return of faith’ in government policy and social welfare as it seeks to address a number of intractable social and economic issues related to cohesion and inequality, as well as a perceived absence of moral and ethical norms within public life. The article proposes a set of new analytical concepts (based on recent empirical research from the US and the UK) which seek to describe and evaluate this new ‘post-secular’ relationship between faith and government. The article concludes that the new ‘post-welfare’ landscape will continue to play well to the existing strengths and positionalities of religion, faith and spirituality in the UK as the twenty-first century moves into its second decade.

For older Australians being dependent on the private rental market is usually associated with serious financial hardship and insecurity. The article examines the housing careers of older Australians who are dependent on the private rental market. After sketching the policy context, it uses in-depth interviews and a biographical approach to explore their trajectory into the private rental market. Divorce, separation and widowhood were key factors, especially for women, as were poor employment histories and ill-health. The crucial factor was an inability to access social housing. The neglect of this housing tenure has meant that supply is very limited and it is reserved primarily for people with complex needs.

This article is based on research into early intervention and safeguarding work with young fathers. It draws on a study of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP), a home visitation service in the UK that is offered to vulnerable teenage mothers. The research investigated whether and how such early intervention work was done with the fathers of these babies. Three broad patterns of engagement emerged from the research: (1) where fathers were fully engaged with the service straightaway and the relationship with the family nurse deepened over time; (2) where fathers were partially engaged with the service; and (3) where fathers were resentful at the outset and never stopped being resistant and sometimes hostile towards intervention. Within these broad patterns several nuanced aspects of professional-father relationships are identified, which are the product of the interaction of several factors. Some general implications for early intervention and safeguarding work with fathers and their babies are drawn out.

The article reviews the limited existing social policy literature on taxation and sets out a case for the incorporation of the study of taxation into the accepted remit of social policy. Social policy has historically been concerned with the services and benefits which flow from public expenditure, and people’s experiences of them, rather than with taxation, and the contributions by individual researchers have tended to remain marginal to the main focus of social policy. The article offers a speculative account as to why taxation has remained peripheral to social policy and presents three arguments for the mainstreaming of tax in social policy’s domain of study. These concern the role of taxation in shaping the distribution of resources, a fundamental pre-occupation of social policy; the contribution social policy scholars can make to shaping a new discourse surrounding taxation, foregrounding issues of equity and need; and how social policy’s engagement with taxation can influence the politics of the welfare state.

Intended to simplify the benefit system and ’make work pay’, Universal Credit (UC) is the UK’s first ‘digital by design’ benefit. Proponents of UC highlight the greater efficiency and effectiveness of digitalisation, while critics point to costly IT write-offs and the ‘digital divide’ between people with the skills and resources to access digital technologies, and those without. Less attention has been paid to automation in UC and its effects on the people subject to these rapidly developing technologies. Findings from research exploring couples’ experiences of claiming UC suggest that automated processes for assessing entitlement and calculating payment may be creating additional administrative burdens for some claimants. Rigid design parameters built into UC’s digital architecture may also restrict options for policy reform. The article calls for a broadening of thinking and research about digitalisation in welfare systems to include questions of administrative burden and the wider effects and impacts on claimants.

One of the central lessons taken from the work of Michael Lipsky on street level bureaucracies is that street level bureaucrats make policy. Two resulting broad public policy concerns are the impact of street level decision making on public policy and the impact on citizens’ access to public services. This article reports on a study of the views of Ontario Works’ case managers on the nature of bureaucratic discretion in the setting of a highly rule bound provincial income assistance programme in Canada. The focus of this article is on case managers’ interaction with contradictory and complex policy directives. An argument is developed that in such a restrictive policy setting, meeting the goals of unswerving policy implementation and citizen access to public services may work at cross purposes.

This article examines the saving behaviour of ethnic minorities in the UK. Within the context of pension planning, we investigate saving for retirement patterns in relation to ethnicity, gender and age. We use data from the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to analyse employment status, income, saving types and levels. Although we find profound heterogeneity, ethnic minorities show higher levels of unemployment, lower income and consistently lower levels of saving for retirement compared to our white control group. Disadvantages of ethnic minorities during their working life persist, especially for women, although to a lesser extent than in the past, and continue to affect private savings and prospective retirement income. Indian and Chinese men have experienced the greatest improvements in terms of employment status and income and this is reflected in higher levels of saving for retirement since the mid 1990s.

Food bank use in Great Britain has risen substantially over the last decade. The considerable socioeconomic disadvantage of the food bank user population has been documented, but little research has examined whether housing problems intersect with insecure food access. Using data from 598 households accessing assistance from twenty-four food banks operating in Great Britain in 2016–2017, we found that nearly 18 per cent of households were homeless, with more having experienced homelessness in the past twelve months. Renters from both the private and social rented sectors were also overrepresented in the sample. Households in both private and social rented housing reported high rates of rent arrears and poor conditions; those in private housing were also more likely to live in homes with damp, to have moved in past year, and to be worried about a forced move in future. Overall, housing problems are widespread among food bank users; policy interventions are needed.

Large representative surveys have become a valuable resource to inform public policy in an increasingly complex modern world. They provide authority to policy since they are considered objective, neutral and scientific. In contrast, this article conceives the production of knowledge as an interactive process. We argue that the conduct of large social surveys tends to reinforce existing world views, power relations and a narrow construction of social issues. To illustrate this, we draw on a small exploratory study which examined the experience of responding to selected survey questions of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia study (HILDA). We suggest that while more open approaches are required to capture the complexities of everyday life, these are unlikely to be implemented given the dominance of particular forms of knowledge.

Increasing and widening participation have been at the heart of New Labour's higher education initiatives since they came to power. This article argues that their 1998 reforms of student financial support were inconsistent with their commitment to widening access and fairness in educational opportunities, and their desire for higher education to contribute to greater social cohesion. The article examines this policy contradiction. It explores how the 1998 reforms came about, and the effects of the reforms. It traces briefly the development of student funding policies under the Conservatives, and under New Labour. Next, is assesses New Labour's policies and policy objectives, drawing upon the findings of a major survey on students' income and expenditure. So, it explores some of the effects and consequences, both intended and unintended, of the 1998 reforms.

Domestic abuse policy increasingly uses language which indicates that abuse is patterned according to structural factors. However, practicing according to these structural accounts of abuse is problematic because of the policy and organisational contexts that practitioners work within and, we argue, because the implications of the structured nature of victims’ experiences is not fully understood by all practitioners.

We ask whether women's differential use and experiences of services with a remit to address abuse can be illuminated using two theoretical perspectives – ‘candidacy’ and intersectionality. We report the findings of a literature synthesis that investigates how these improve our understanding of women's help-seeking and service utilisation and of the responses that they receive. Both concepts were highly congruent with the literature and we conclude that, together, candidacy and intersectionality offer a means of enhancing knowledge of how the political becomes enacted in the personal. Embedding such knowledge within practice repertoires offers the potential to develop more nuanced structural understandings of women's experiences and constraints.

For a long time, the discussion about the impact of economic globalisation on the full employment/generous welfare state policies pursued by social democratic governments was characterised by doom and gloom. Glib neo-liberal arguments about the impossibility of maintaining social democratic policies, that were presumably hindering competitiveness through excessive wages and taxes in the new international environment were difficult to counter, because social democrats could not resort to an equally elaborate and internally consistent economic doctrine that could substitute for evidence, and the evidence was not yet in to counter these arguments on empirical grounds. Recently, careful and comprehensive comparative studies have provided evidence that, despite undeniable problems posed by economic internationalisation, social democratic welfare states and employment regimes have proven to be highly resilient (Scharpf and Schmidt, 2000; Huber and Stephens, 2001). Indeed, some kinds of traditional social democratic policy, such as an emphasis on labour mobilisation through active labour market policy and social services that make it possible to combine labour force participation with raising children, and an emphasis on human capital formation have facilitated adaptation to the new economic conditions. Moreover, newly available data on skill distribution (OECD/HRDC, 2000) and income distribution (LIS) suggest that the egalitarian thrust characteristic of social democratic policy has made an important contribution to raising literacy skills at the bottom, which in turn facilitates the integration of the entire labour force into productive activities that are competitive in high-quality markets.

This article examines the policy process in Wales prior to the introduction of a National Assembly for Wales and uses this as a framework for assessing the potential impact of devolution. Health and social services form the largest part of the budget of the National Assembly for Wales and the article focuses on health policy as a key area of interest for Assembly Members. The period 1992 to 1997 demonstrates an emphasis on managing both demand and finances thereby promoting the continued dominance, in terms of both resource allocation and prioritisation, of the acute hospital sector. The article then explores how far this has changed and what potential there is for changing this assumptive reality in a New Labour and devolved NHS.

This paper argues that the study of social policy can be enriched by a greater focus on the dynamics of the policy process itself. Such a focus needs to transcend the usual descriptive accounts of institutions and implementation methods. The paper draws on a range of theoretical approaches that illuminate the shaping and delivery of policy, from classic theories of power and the state to analyses of the micro-dynamics of the policy–action relationship. The paper explores the contribution of recent developments in governance theory, and assesses contemporary debates about the ‘modernisation’ of the policy process and the focus on evaluating ‘what works’ in social policy.

In considering the impact of austerity, much attention has been focused on the immediate effects of public spending cuts and on documenting the resulting increase in hardship and unmet needs. However, in calculating the consequences of austerity for the welfare state, it is its enduring legacy that is equally important. This article examines the proposition that the indirect effects of austerity on social, economic and political relations are as significant for the welfare of future generations as the ‘decade of austerity’ has been for contemporary welfare. The analysis draws on the approach adopted by Paul Wilding (1992) reflecting on the 1980s as the ‘decade of Thatcherism’. Wilding’s ten legacies are recategorised across four dimensions: normalising a non-commitment to welfare, societal scarring, refuelling the race to the bottom and diminishing the political capacity for change. The conclusions suggest that austerity will abide in the social and political relations of welfare long after austerity measures have ceased.

Two recent studies of elder abuse in the UK are located in current policy contexts of adult safeguarding. After describing the studies, the discussion draws out their central messages and identifies the challenges that the studies present to recent policy debates and innovations. These relate to the need to properly integrate both wider older people's issues and issues of racism and ethnicity within developments in adult safeguarding policy as well as social care services as the personalisation agenda advances.

Recognised as a global concern by the UN, and increasingly acknowledged as a gendered crime and welfare issue in such diverse settings as the UK and China, domestic violence provides an important window on the development of policy and action in a global context. Focusing specifically on England and China, and mainly on the latter, the article highlights the need for gender to be an integral aspect of global social policy analysis, examines the impact of international organisations (governmental and non-governmental) on domestic violence policy development, and demonstrates the importance of country context in constructing and implementing global policy frameworks.

This article places the British material on religion and social policy in a comparative perspective. In order to do so, it introduces a recently completed project on welfare and religion in eight European societies, entitled ‘Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective’. Theoretically it draws on the work of two key thinkers: Gøsta Esping-Andersen and David Martin. The third section elaborates the argument: all West European societies are faced with the same dilemmas regarding the provision of welfare and all of them are considering alternatives to the state for the effective delivery of services. These alternatives include the churches.

In December 2017, the House of Commons Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee put out a call for submissions to an Inquiry that would consider the evidence-base for early intervention policies, with a particular focus on ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ or ACEs. This article analyses those submissions and the transcripts of the Inquiry’s oral sessions in the belief that they constitute a useful window through which to explore the types of claims being made in ACEs discourse. Our aim is to assess whether the ACEs phenomenon represents a continuity with what has been termed the ‘first three years movement’ (Thornton, 2011a, 2011b) – social policy and philanthropic activism which focuses on the earliest years of life in the name of preventing social problems ‘down the line’. In particular, we consider constructions of parents as determinate of these social problems through their influence on their children and the ways in which these are gendered in new ways.