A decade of austerity has amplified concern about who gets what from public services. The article considers the socio-economic and gendered impacts of cuts to local environmental services which have increased the need for citizens to report service needs and effectively ‘co-produce’ services. Via a case study of a UK council’s decade of administrative data on citizen requests and service responses, the article provides one of the first detailed analyses of the unfolding impact of austerity cuts over time on public service provision. It demonstrates the impact of austerity across the social gradient, but disproportionately on the least affluent, especially women. The article argues for the importance of detailed empirical examination of administrative data for making visible, and potentially tackling, long standing inequalities in public service provision.

At the same time as failures to adequately protect ‘the most vulnerable’ seem to have become a pervasive feature of the political landscape, policies which seek to address vulnerability have proliferated. Government actors, public officers, researchers, media commentators, charities and members of the public alike use vulnerability to articulate an array of personal and political troubles, yet alongside this seemingly shared narrative a multitude of ideologically inclined assumptions and agendas operate by stealth. How vulnerability is drawn upon to frame social issues reworks and reconfigures long-running contestations related to moral dimensions of the welfare subject, understandings of the ‘self’ and wider beliefs about human behaviour. At a time when the pressures of contemporary life increasingly find release through aggression against the socially marginalised (see Wacquant, 2009; Harrison and Sanders, 2014; Atkinson, 2015), vulnerability has become a key concept for social policy research. As I have argued elsewhere, the concept of vulnerability appears to be something of a zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the time’ (Brown, 2014a, 2014b,2015), extending into and shaping responses to a vast array of policy matters.

This article discusses the grounds on which those who provide informal social care for dependent adults and children can be held to warrant public support, and what obligations they should accept in return. It outlines two interpretations of the rights and responsibilities of such care workers: Stuart White's notion of care as civic labour and Eva Feder Kittay's principle of doulia. It shows that these interpretations reflect different understandings of the self and of reciprocity. The conclusion is that Kittay's writings better reflect the relationality of care, but that it is still possible to justify some forms of welfare conditionality.

Ten years have passed since devolution was implemented for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This anniversary is worthy of note for all scholars of UK social welfare, not just those with a specialist interest in political reform or the ‘Celtic’ nations, because reflection on the first decade of devolution inspires a rethink of some of the basic working assumptions of social policy analysis (see below, also Mooney et al., 2006), for example the extent to which the notion of a UK welfare state remains meaningful (cf. McEwen and Parry, 2005). This themed section provides an opportunity to consider the impact of devolution on broader understandings of polity, policy and practice as well as pointing to further possible divergences in and across the UK. These are explored in relation to key areas of social welfare intervention in Scotland, focussing particularly on poverty, inequality and social justice; immigration and the experiences of labour migrants in rural areas; the use of private finance; key literature and useful sources.

Risks of youth poverty in relation to employment have largely been overlooked both internationally and locally, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving beyond the concepts of income, economic factors and in-work poverty as applied to the general population, we examine the multi-scalar employment risk confronting highly educated working youth (aged eighteen to twenty-nine) in Hong Kong by assessing the intersection of precarious employment and in-work poverty, which is crucial to understanding youth poverty. Drawing on in-depth interview research on creative workers, this study calls for the reconceptualisation of in-work poverty through the lens of precarious employment, which is not viewed as a separate economic entity, but as an organic whole encompassing a multi-scalar risk in economic, social, psychological and political terrains generating an existential problem shaping young people’s sense of future and work-life meaning. This article sheds light on the policy implications of high-educated youth suffering from in-work poverty in the creative industry.

This article is based on a case study of women apprentices and workers in a ‘non-traditional’ occupation for women, engineering construction. The article argues that the concept of ‘employability’ is not gender neutral, and that gendered assumptions about who is and is not ‘employable’ for particular work can disadvantage women seeking training and work in non-traditional industries or dissuade them from applying to do so. Approaches to employability which emphasise individual attributes underplay the significance of gender inequalities and wider discourses of gender.

Diversion services for adult mentally disordered offenders are back in the limelight twenty years after their original development. This article argues there are a number of important lessons to be learnt. Services of this kind ‘process’ different people in different ways with different outcomes. Current developments therefore need to provide an holistic, patient-centred approach across the whole offender pathway, which meets the needs of different groups of people. What works for some might not work for others, but patterns can be mapped and good and bad pathways identified and used to inform good practice and service improvement.

In this ‘state of the art’ review, we draw on the Irish and UK context to ask ‘what can welfare stigma do?’ Our question provokes thinking about welfare stigma not as an inevitable ‘cost’ of the structure of welfare provision, but as something that does socio-political work and which may be deliberately mobilised to do so. This, we argue, is a particularly pertinent question to ask in the Irish and UK contexts, bound together by some shared liberal welfare regime characteristics that are particularly associated with welfare stigma and by the effects of a period of austerity capitalism that continues to re-shape the meaning and experience of welfare. Yet, going beyond welfare stigma as inherently negative, we highlight a limited literature on resistance that suggests the potentialities of welfare stigma in the service of positive social change toward a new welfare imaginary.

This article analyses two cases of populist mobilisation – namely, one against a primary school entry-age reform and another against WHO sexuality education and the concept of gender – that took place in Poland between 2008 and 2019. Both campaigns had a populist character and were oriented towards restoring social justice taken away from ‘the people’ by a morally corrupted ‘elite’. There are differences between the cases that can be analytically delineated by assessing whether a religious mobilisation has an overt or a covert character. While the series of protests against the school-age reform represents a case of mobilisation with covert religious symbolism, the campaigns against sexuality education and the use of the concept of gender are characterised by overt religious populism. To characterise the dynamics of the two campaigns, the study uses the concept of a moral panic, emphasising the importance of moral entrepreneurs waging ideological war against the government and/or liberal experts conceived of as ‘folk devils’.

Coronaviruses have emerged as a potential disruptive force in policymaking. Using a comparative case study method, we examine two social policy responses in Jakarta, Indonesia: the Social Safety Nets (SSN) programme and the health policy. Such examples demonstrate an aggressive change in policy direction from means-tested systems and government-centred approaches to a total relaxation of conditions with the involvement of non-state actors in the provision of services. Our study analyses the ideational dimensions of the policy process that produces abrupt and radical change. From our analysis, the policy change may be explained by the emergence of a new policy paradigm created through the emulation-contextual process – an alternative model of policy learning. The theoretical implication of our research is that policy response in this study cannot be viewed in a completely path-dependent process. Instead, we propose a ‘path-creation accelerator,’ which represents an infrequent instance of policy change.

Underpinning Labour's welfare-to-work policies is an assumption that employment will benefit disadvantaged children and their families. However, the effect of low-income and unstable employment on lone mothers and their children is uncertain. This article draws on interviews with children drawn from a qualitative, longitudinal study of low-income working family life, to explore the accounts of those children whose mother's entry into the labour market was unsuccessful. The article examines how children experienced their mother's employment and the impact of ‘failed’ work transitions on their well-being and their perceptions of the value of work for them and their families.

Policy debates on commercial sex services provide increasingly complex insights into work on the street and in large commercial sex premises, yet remain largely silent on the contribution of the domestic realm to commercial sex, despite estimates that it accounts for a significant proportion of all commercial sex transactions. Policies that affect home-based sex work are ambiguous and at times contradictory, veering from the promotion of working from home to anxieties about the assumed offensiveness of sex work. These policies have been often developed without direct consideration of home-based sex work and in the absence of evidence. Remedying this silence, this article analyses policy development for, and the experiences of, home-based sex workers in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The article concludes that working from home provides sex workers with opportunities for autonomy and wellbeing that are not available in other sex service environments, with minimal amenity impacts to the community.

Vulnerability has become a ubiquitous description in policy and everyday educational settings as well as a foundation for a progressive politics, inside and outside education. Increasingly embedded in apocalyptic discourses about mental health, a psycho-emotional interpretation of vulnerability has elevated its status as a powerful and highly normative cultural metaphor. The article uses a critical realist approach to explore wider developments in ‘therapeutic culture’ that frame the rise of what I call ‘vulnerability creep’ in the education system. Drawing together examples of vulnerability creep in English universities, I argue that the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy is a stark illumination of dangers that arise when educational goals and practices are rooted in images of psycho-emotionally vulnerable human subjects. The phenomena explored in the article raise important social science questions that require further empirical and theoretical study.

This article discusses the use of privacy and freedom of information legislation in relation to the release of care-leavers’ records in the Australian state of Victoria. First, it explains the relevance of privacy and freedom of information legislation to care-leavers’ access to records, that is that the subject of a record is entitled to access information held about them, subject to certain exemptions. Second, based on research interviews with care-leavers and record-holders, the article then discusses how the legislation is understood in practice and the difficulties that arise in determining what information can be released, particularly in relation to ‘third party data’ and ‘unreasonable disclosure’. Finally, the article considers how policy in this area could be improved to enhance the release of records.

The last twenty years have seen major international developments in welfare state support and services for children, parents and families. Increases in provision occurred within established areas such as welfare benefits, family allowances, child welfare services and maternity leave entitlements; and new ‘forms and modalities of provision’ were introduced (Daly et al., 2015: 10), in particular parental and paternity leave entitlements; welfare-to-work programmes and active labour market policies; conditional cash support schemes; in-work subsidies for low income families; childcare and early education services; earlier intervention and prevention programmes; parenting and family support services; and inter-departmental, inter-professional and inter-agency models of service provision (OECD, 2009, 2011).

Research into the application of the ASB powers to various ‘vulnerable’ sections of society is under-developed. This review article discusses recent published research concerning a number of different groups, highlights key emerging themes and identifies some of the research gaps.

Definitions of frailty are much debated. The focus of this article is on the representation of frailty; who employs the terms ‘frail’ or ‘frailty’ in social care, about whom and with what meanings? We report secondary analysis of interview data from two waves of a longitudinal study starting in 2008. Study participants were 240 social care managers/practitioners working in four English localities. Social care managers and practitioners did not talk at length about frailty as characterising the increasing needs of care users. The minority who talked about frailty used the term in three ways: describing a physical state not including dementia; describing a stable state, as distinct from those dying; and as a combination of physical and mental disabilities (i.e. dementia). Differences among the participants in this study about the meaning of frailty could have implications for policy makers and for communication with other staff, health professionals, older people and their relatives.

More and more studies indicate that leisure plays a fundamental role in active ageing. Our study describes the current leisure patterns of older adults, comparing them with other age groups. Consequently, 445 adults, stratified by age (young, middle-aged and older adults), were selected and subsequently administered a set of tests. The results indicate that older people claim having more time for their leisure activities; however, the diversity of activities performed is lower, showing a negative gradient based on age. The leisure patterns of older people reflect a predominance of passive leisure, little cultural leisure time and moderate levels of social and physical leisure activities. Older people’s leisure seems to be influenced by ageist stereotypes and attribution biases. Our findings imply that these results could be used to design and implement programs aimed at promoting leisure styles that contribute to increase active ageing.

Disasters are prevalent with devastating effects on vulnerable populations that include the elderly, disabled, women and children. Historical responses to vulnerable children and families post-disaster raise questions concerning further harms to children rescued by adoption in the aftermath of devastation. This article offers critical and historical perspectives on child removal for adoption in the context of disaster and the psychosocial care of children affected by disaster. It brings into question whether removal, especially permanent removal for adoption, is in their interests. This article concludes that efforts are needed by the international community to ensure that past abuses do not recur.

The current emphasis in European welfare states on ‘activation’ increases the relevance of insight into social assistance dynamics and work–welfare/welfare–work transitions. This article reports on a study that explored the employment, unemployment and social assistance careers of a large group of people who managed to become independent from social assistance by finding a job. Using the databases of social security agencies in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, it investigates the sustainability of social assistance independence and labour market inclusion, and identifies groups that are more or less likely to be confronted with spells of renewed social assistance dependency or unemployment.