This paper examines how ‘welfare state’ and ‘welfare’ have been displaced by a ‘social development’ agenda within New Zealand. The discussion outlines a growing attention to language and the place of vocabulary and discourse as a valid research agenda. The paper then traces the end of welfare and the rise of ‘social development’, assessing the impact on citizenship debates. It suggests reasons why ‘social development’ must be handled carefully given its assumptions around temporality, its elevation of the market, the diminishing of the social, the stunted vision of development and its peculiar view of progress.

Children's lives have been transformed over the past century. Family incomes have increased, children lead lives that are more solitary, attitudes to childhood have changed, new products have been developed and commercial pressures on children have increased. The importance of these commercial pressures is analysed. Do children understand advertising? How is child poverty affected? How does increased materialism affect psychological well-being? The issues raised for public policy are discussed in terms of children's freedom.

This study examines the conceptualisation of family in key social legislative documents guiding social workers in two European countries, whose welfare systems have previously been labelled as re-familialised (Lithuania) or de-familialised (Sweden). The focus is on the concept of family as delineated on three legislative levels: the constitutional level, the general family policy level, and the child welfare policy level. ‘Family’ is explicit in Lithuanian law, and the regulation of family formation and responsibility is imperative, while this is much less so in Swedish law. The analysis reveals how general welfare systems (regime-types) are linked to legislative frameworks, which, in turn, provide fundamentally different conditions for social work in different contexts.

An ageing population in Europe is currently putting pressure on long-term care services, creating demand for foreign workers. Using a life-course perspective, this article aims to contribute to the understanding of how life trajectories shape decisions about migration and employment in social care. Based on fifty-one life story interviews with migrant care workers in Norway and UK, two typologies are found: a Norwegian migrant life trajectory of downwards social mobility combined with settlement and a British trajectory combining stronger downwards social mobility with further migration. The article contributes to the discussion of contextualised migratory lives involving care work.

This article focuses on the escalating shift in power from the centre to ‘community’ with specific regard to the local governance of street sex work. With reference to reforms in local governance and sex work policy, we question what localism may mean for street sex workers as both vulnerable members of the community and also anti-social subjects. Our critical examination suggests that street sex workers are susceptible to increasing marginalisation and social exclusion. To counter this, it is argued that there needs to be greater attention and investment towards improving community cohesion and democracy for ‘all’ within the localist agenda.

Drawing on a case study generated as part of a larger evaluation, this article explores engagement between one family and an ‘edge of care’ intensive family support service, within a cold climate of public spending cuts and rising numbers of children in care. The focus on engagement in the case study illustrates theories about relationship building at the ‘edge of care’: the importance of an empathic relationship; harnessing parents’ agency for change while raising child welfare concerns; allowing parents space to maintain a positive self-conception of parenthood while supporting improvements; and engagement with family practices. The case study highlights that, despite the potential disciplinary aspects of intensive family support, the parents valued the ‘edge of care’ service because it provided them with the help they felt they needed, contrasting with their prior experience of statutory child welfare agency practice.

The idea of ‘co-production’ has been promoted by both New Labour and Coalition governments as a means to help ‘transform’ adult social care. With its emphasis on active citizenship, community support networks, voluntary effort and power sharing, the idea might have been expected to have been received more enthusiastically by those expected to put it into practice and benefit from it. However, unlike other ‘big ideas’ intended to ‘transform’ adult social care, such as ‘personal budgets’, co-production has gained comparatively little traction with either local authorities or service users. Despite the publication of much promotional literature in recent years, co-production has not yet become a significant part of either official or lay discourse on adult social care. It is concluded that apart from definitional problems and conceptual ambiguity, the inability of successive governments to effectively deploy common techniques of meta-governance might also be contributory factors to its sluggish take up.

Dominant social norms relating to families shape the lives of all people. This can have negative effects upon non-traditional families. This is especially the case in terms of adoption, where a focus solely on the adoptive family can often result in the ‘disappearance’ of the birth family. This paper explores the location of birth families in relation to adoptive families by examining a sample of children's storybooks aimed at adoptive children living with lesbian or gay parents as but one example of how policy makers may come to identify dominant cultural norms that circulate about birth families in the context of intercountry adoption. A number of key tropes are identified across these books, namely the ghostly presence of birth families, and the representation of birth parents as deviant (thus warranting the removal of their children).

Most countries in Latin America have implemented human development conditional income transfer programmes to address intergenerational persistence of poverty. Typically, these programmes provide income transfers to households in poverty, conditional on children attending school and on household members attending health clinics. Evaluations have established that programmes reach their explicit short- and medium-term objectives, especially as regards nutrition, children's schooling and improved health care utilisation. It is too early to say whether they will be successful in reducing the intergenerational persistence of poverty. Crucially, this will depend on whether they contribute to the economic and political inclusion of groups in poverty. This article reviews the available literature and finds that participation in human development conditional income transfer programmes leads to improvements in productive capacity, but that favourable labour market conditions will be needed to guarantee economic inclusion. Improved political participation associated with programme participation raises the prospects for greater political inclusion.

In this paper we describe regional differences in partnering and parenting within Britain, using indices of the ‘Motherhood Employment Effect’ to indicate different geographical levels of adherence to the ‘traditional’ male breadwinner/female homemaker family, and of ‘Family Conventionality’ to indicate geographical differences in ‘good-enough parenting’. The geography of family formations thus described does not follow the better known ‘north–south’ or ‘urban–rural’ geographies of economic performance and prosperity, and we speculate as to how this relatively unfamiliar family geography may be related to the existence of regional gender cultures.

This article provides an analysis of the Scottish Government's approach to the use of private finance in public services. It examines the budgetary drivers behind the policy in Scotland and assesses its cost-efficiency. In doing so, it considers first the standard private finance initiative (PFI) model, and then turns to the ‘non-profit distributing’ (NPD) model – a variant of PFI developed in Scotland and one that is, at the time of writing, unique to the country. It concludes that, while NPD provides the Government with an important political benefit, in being seen to safeguard the ‘public interest’ while working within UK-wide budgetary constraints, the decision to continue with private finance carries a high economic cost.

The present study was based on data from 100 face-to-face interviews, supplemented by findings from 316 respondents in a national postal survey, and shows that UK Chinese respondents were family-orientated and self-reliant, having low expectations of public welfare. These features challenge the myth of welfare dependency of ethnic minorities. Also, compared with Chinese welfare practices based on strong moral values and duties towards other people, New Labour's welfare culture lacks a solid social and ethical base for nurturing the concepts of duty and self-reliance.

The UK Government's workplace pension reforms introduce major changes to the way in which employees save for retirement. Eligible employees will be automatically enrolled into a workplace-based pension scheme and, for the first time in the UK, employers will be legally required to contribute to employees’ pensions. This article critically examines the evidence from New Zealand and Australia, two countries that have undergone pension reforms similar in some ways to the UK reforms. We assess what we can learn from their experiences in two areas: firstly, how pension schemes are structured and, secondly, the outcomes for individuals. The evidence highlights the potential of automatic enrolment to overcome people's disinterest in pension saving. At the same time, relatively few UK employees are likely to choose where their pension savings are invested. As a result, default funds will play an important role in determining the pension outcomes for individuals.

This article describes the social care funding and delivery arrangements of a varied selection of developed countries, focusing on long-term care of older people. International evidence and latest reforms can inform the debate as countries struggle economically. Some have opted for mandatory social insurance that provides universal coverage. A premium is paid and if the insured individual or relatives require support, they are entitled to it. Others opted for a similar universal system but with earmarked taxation, while others fund their social care entirely from general taxation. Many chose a safety-net system in which benefits are means-tested leaving wealthier individuals to secure private arrangements of care. Within the UK, the level of support varies as Scotland provides personal care free of charge, being more generous than England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is no “one solution”, but understanding different options can help in the discussion of current and future reforms.

Despite their geographical proximity, and similarities in ethnic composition and political contexts, Hong Kong's and Macao's social policies have not been compared in the literature. This article aims to compare the welfare regimes between these two city-states. The comparison involves two dimensions: the pattern of welfare mix, and the modification impact of social policy on the capitalist social structure. It is found that the two states’ patterns of welfare mix have much in common, and their social policies are both marked by a relatively low level of modification impact. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn that Hong Kong and Macao can be grouped into a distinct welfare regime. The major contributions of this study are that it helps add to the understanding of East Asian social policy and suggests a useful framework for comparing welfare regimes.

Social policy and the social sciences more generally, have tended to emphasise links, activities and processes occurring ‘within’ nation states to the neglect of those cutting across them. This ‘methodological nationalism’ is increasingly being questioned as transnational processes, be they ‘from above’ or ‘from below’, institutionalised or non-institutionalised, formal or informal, have become more significant over the last half century. The spread of activities, links and ties beyond national borders has become more extensive and the interactions themselves have become more intensive. In the light of these changes, the aim of this themed section is to draw attention to the transnational dimensions of social policy and advance the study of transnationalism in relation to social policy and welfare.

This article considers the impact, in terms of life and death choices, of the economic exclusion of young people in Australia, where suicide is the leading cause of death by injury. In the two decades from 1980 there was a dramatic increase in suicide rates for young males. Research demonstrates a correlation between youth suicide and unemployment but the complex relationship between the two has not been fully investigated. This article explores the perceptions of young people, parents and service providers of the cultural context of suicide and how it comes to be constructed as an option for young people experiencing economic marginalisation.

A fundamental dyad in public social services is woman to woman. In Israeli public social services, it is often mother to mother. This multi-faceted encounter is complex and in this theoretical article I wish to deconstruct and situate the social worker–mother encounter in a broader context, a social–cultural–national one. Taking a feminist perspective, I will explore how the personal and private social worker–mother encounter is a political and public one. Analysing western ideologies of the ‘Good Mother’ together with those of the Israeli-Jewish mother, this article aims to develop a theoretical understanding of macro mechanisms that shape the social worker–mother encounter. Being conscious about what influences that encounter might benefit social work clients, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.

This paper is concerned with the extent to which the state offers potential for furthering farm women's status and rights. Using case studies of Australia and Northern Ireland, it examines the extent to which the state has intervened to address gender inequality in the agricultural sector. These two locations provide a particularly rich scope for analysis because while Australia has a long history of state feminism and an extensive legislative framework for pursing gender equity, this is not the case with Northern Ireland. At the same time, the restructuring of the state in Northern Ireland, following on from the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and the Northern Ireland Act of 1998, has generated new opportunities for state intervention regarding gender equality. Moreover, while gender is now for the first time being placed on the state agenda in Northern Ireland, gender reform is being wound back in Australia, as equity discourses are subsumed by the hegemonic discourses of neo-liberalism.