This article discusses the nature of, and links between, the academic disciplines of Social Policy and Political Economy. Two core concerns of mainstream Social Policy are identified: firstly, a focus upon the development and operation of the welfare state and, secondly, a concern with concepts such as equity. Political Economy is identified as a discipline based upon the understanding that the production and distribution of wealth can only effectively be studied alongside the operation of power. It is argued that the core concerns of Social Policy are best approached from a Political Economy perspective. Three contemporary trends make this a particularly opportune time to apply the Political Economy approach to the concerns of Social Policy. These are, firstly, the growing importance of processes of ‘globalisation’, secondly, the increasingly explicit linking of economic and social policies by governments and, thirdly, the emergence of new actors in the social welfare field, particularly for-profit corporations.

This article reflects on research undertaken with low income households over a 12 month period following the ‘credit crunch’, a period characterised by rapid change to the financial landscape in the UK. It argues that people living on persistent low incomes were casualties of the economic ‘boom’ as they did not benefit from economic growth and of the ‘bust’ in that they most keenly felt the impact of the recession and the reaction of financial institutions to the new financial landscape. It concludes by arguing that, reflecting on the complexity of people's lives, addressing indebtedness requires a multi-faceted approach.

Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is a highly effective model of employment support for individuals with severe mental health conditions. Its potential modification for new settings and larger cohorts is of keen interest across advanced economies given shared health-related (un)employment challenges. Despite mushrooming policy interest and activity around modified IPS a significant barrier and risk at present is the absence of a well-considered analytical framework to enable structured critical reflection about the effective translation of IPS principles and fidelity into modified IPS services. This article fills this void through the presentation for the first time in the literature of such an analytical framework, unpacking as it does so a set of key original analytical distinctions that are unhelpfully homogenised in current literature and policy thinking and highlighting the wider potential of IPS principles and models to the nature of good employment support for other individuals with health conditions and disabilities.

The creation of a ‘regional’ legislature for Wales in 1999 presents the opportunity to evaluate the promotion of equality and human rights in the context of multi-level governance in the UK. A decade on, positive aspects include the political reprioritisation of equalities in policy and law and new forms of representative and discursive politics. However, significant shortcomings are also evident. Overall, the Wales case study suggests that sub-unitary-state legislatures have the potential to tailor equalities policies to meet local needs more effectively, yet progress may be arrested by context-specific factors, as well as those that resonate with the international literature on mainstreaming equalities in the work of government.

There is a considerable body of research that demonstrates the positive impact of involving children's families and networks in designing and developing the services children need. This paper – using empirical evidence from evaluations conducted in the UK, USA and New Zealand – suggests professionals are struggling to promote participative practice. The paper explores this apparent resistance and raises some questions about the understandings held by professionals about children and families who take up child welfare services that enable traditional exclusive forms of practice to be sustained.

Discovering a theory of change for health promotion in small- and medium-sized enterprises highlights important lessons about how successful workplace health interventions work and the conditions conducive to positive outcomes for ‘hard to reach groups’. In the evaluation of targeted health promotion initiatives carried out by the Workwell project in Sandwell, a theory of change has emerged that indicates the need for a sensitive understanding of the contexts of interventions and the importance of developing mechanisms appropriate to local conditions and stakeholder expectations.

COVID-19 triggers urgent questions about the social, political and ethical implications of care markets, practices and relations. This article presents analysis of the Houses of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response exposing current discourses about care in Ireland. Utilising the Trace analysis method (Sevenhuijsen, 2004), grounded in feminist care ethics, reveals a state accountability exercise grappling with the failures of the care market and the inhumanity of congregated settings. Care discourses were constrained by a focus on the formal health system, normalisation of binary care giver and care receiver categorisations and a lack of recognition of gendered inequalities of care in homes and workplaces. Public discourse and feminist analysis revealed unreasonable labour conditions for women working in health and social care and a silencing of the voices of those with care needs. The article contributes to a reconceptualisation of care in post-pandemic futures and urges societal co-responsibility for ‘universal care’.

The marketisation of disability support driven by individualised funding brings new dilemmas for multi-agency collaboration, in particular how to provide personalised supports while remaining commercially viable. This article explores the challenges, risks and adaptations of organisations to navigate the tensions of personalisation and collaboration. Framed by street-level research and using the context of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), this article draws on interviews with twenty-eight organisational managers. Multi-agency challenges are highlighted when several providers are delivering parts of a NDIS participant’s plan, blurring organisational responsibilities and accountabilities. Interviews also revealed the paradox of organisational disconnection and organisational dependence concerning quality support provision and described the collaborative responses organisations implement to ensure their sustainability. There is commitment among organisations to build a trusted ecosystem of providers, but this is largely discretionary and there is a need for further policy mechanisms to enable organisations to negotiate a way through multi-agency dilemmas.

This article is based on a qualitative study exploring reasons for ill-being and well-being among twenty participants in a Norwegian activation programme. The Qualification Programme aims to enhance participants’ overall life situations and employability by offering work training to long-term social assistance recipients, among other things. As an analytic framework for discussing ill-being and well-being, this article employs Amartya Sen's capability approach, which assesses the individual's ability to live a good life, and Martha Nussbaum's conceptualisation of that approach. The findings indicate that hardship was demonstrated in the respondents’ lives: participants could not cope financially and suffered from mental and physical health problems, while shame worsened their circumstances. However, participants also showed signs of enhanced well-being as they experienced increased individual agency. The study indicated a disparity between the intended and the actual direction of change in the lives of programme participants.

Social housing is at the intersection of two policy agendas, namely anti-social behaviour and community care. This means that tenants with mental ill-health might at once be defined as vulnerable and in need of support to enable them to live independently, but simultaneously their behaviour may be viewed as a threat to the safety of others serving to legitimatise disciplinary and punitive forms of intervention on the grounds of ‘difference’. This paper focuses on the role of housing professionals in the management of cases of ASB involving people with mental ill-health. It argues that housing practitioners are not adequately equipped to make judgements on the culpability of ‘perpetrators’ who have mental ill-health and ensure their response is appropriate. This raises questions about the training housing officers recieve, and more broadly, whether the competing policy aims of community care and ASB can be reconciled.

This article reflects on the contribution of qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to understandings of homeless peoples’ experiences of support service interventions in an era of austerity in the UK. It brings into ‘analytic conversation’ data from qualitative longitudinal evaluations of homeless support projects operated by voluntary sector organisations in Scotland. With fieldwork spanning 2014-2019, the analysis expands the analytical potential of pooling small-scale studies through an interrogation of individuals’ ‘journeys’ through homelessness services and their rough path to ‘home’. By reflecting on our substantive findings, the article explores the added value and challenges of a longitudinal approach. It concludes that while QLR can deliver deep insight into lives lived by vulnerable populations and potentially reduce the distance between policy makers and those affected, its benefits must be balanced against pragmatism and the ethical responsibilities associated with the method.

Addressing anti-social behaviour (ASB) has been a major policy priority of New Labour since it came to power in 1997. This is reflected in a series of legislative powers enabling a range of agencies to take legal action to tackle ASB (e.g. Crime and Disorder Act 1998; Police Reform Act 2002; Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003; Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005) and in a number of national policy initiatives (e.g. the Home Office ‘Together’ Campaign, 2003; the Respect Action Plan, 2006; the Youth Task Force Action Plan, 2007). These developments are the subject of a growing body of academic analysis and critique, much of which has focused on the use of the ASB powers in the regulation of particular neighbourhoods and communities, especially social housing areas of predominantly White working-class residents (Burney, 2005; Flint, 2006), and of young people, again mostly White and working class (Squires and Stephen, 2005). Specific service or practice developments arising out of ASB policy have also been analysed, for example, Family Intervention Projects (Nixon et al., 2006, 2008), Anti-Social Behaviour Teams (Prior et al., 2006), and the use of ASBOs (Squires, 2006; Matthews et al., 2007) and Dispersal Orders (Crawford and Lister, 2007).

Luxembourg introduced a parental leave scheme in 1999 as a policy effort to stimulate equality between men and women with regard to bringing up children and to allow for reconciliation of family and professional life, so that the caring parents do not have to withdraw from the labour market after having a child. The analysis presented in this paper is one of the first systematic attempts to assess the parental leave take up of women in Luxembourg and to analyze it in light of micro-level characteristics of potential beneficiaries. The paper aims to explore the acceptance of parental leave provisions by the population of young women residing in Luxembourg and to examine which of their socio-demographic and labour market characteristics determine hypothetical parental leave take up. Attention is also paid to anticipated labour market strategies of women after parental leave.

During the post-war years many European countries have implemented far-reaching but diverse pension systems with the objective of providing those in retirement with adequate incomes. In this study, we explore the link between pension systems and the adequacy of retirement income. We analyse the mix of public and private pensions and consider the impact of different policies on poverty rates amongst pensioners. We suggest that only a few European countries have been successful in providing combinations of private and public pensions that improve the adequacy of retirement income.

This paper discusses and compares the origin and development of the health care systems of South Korea and the UK from the end of WW2 and endeavours to compare outcomes. The paper emphasises the importance of war as a stimulus to the development of national health services in both countries and argues that there is convergence between the UK's nationalised NHS and South Korea's US-modelled capitalist system. Overall, we conclude that there is a possibility not only that the financing and nature of the Korean and UK health care delivery systems may show convergence, but it is not impossible that they will ‘change places’ with the UK system dominated by private provision and South Korea's by public provision.

Civil renewal is an emerging policy priority for the UK government, aiming to build stronger, more cohesive communities and to encourage individual citizens to be active members of such communities. The promotion of social capital and trust relationships is central to this approach. Strategies to improve community safety and reduce crime and disorder are closely related to the drive for civil renewal, with the two sets of policies seen as mutually supportive. This article shows, however, that many community safety initiatives are founded on relationships of suspicion between citizens. This generates a dynamic of exclusion that is likely to undermine attempts at civil renewal.

The political and economic upheavals of the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe were reflected in socio-demographic changes that presented major challenges for governments. Birth rates fell steeply and social divisions intensified, while population ageing was held in check by low life expectancy. Social protection systems underwent radical reform, as attempts were made to meet criteria for EU membership. This paper examines how socio-demographic change and ensuing social problems were experienced in candidate countries. It analyses the policy responses of governments and explores some of the issues being raised in the context of enlargement for EU member and applicant states.

Since 2000, literature on West (EU15) and East-Central European (EU8) welfare states has focused on a set of ‘new social risks’ including insecure employment and income, population ageing, unsustainable social security systems, and large-scale international immigration. Our State-of-the-Art (SOTA) article brings Russia into the dialogue on ‘new social risks’. We show that broadly similar structural changes in industrial economies, labour markets and demographic patterns ended the post-World-War-Two (WWII) ‘Golden Age’ of welfare expansion in both the EU15 and communist states. Shared new social risks rose to the top of policy agendas. Governments responded mainly, though not exclusively, with liberalising, privatising and exclusionary policies. The SOTA compares their policy responses, specifically pension system reforms, demographic (pro-natalist and family) policies, and integration of immigrants. We find both convergence and divergence based on states’ differing welfare legacies. The conclusion considers path-departing ‘emergency Keynesian’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis, and renewed attention to Beveridge welfare models.

Family relations have for many years been acknowledged as having a protective impact on children's development if positive and as representing a risk factor if negative. Studies based on statistical information have demonstrated an overrepresentation of a number of family problems in low-income families. Does this image change with children themselves as informants on child–parent relationships? The article examines Norwegian children's perception of parental acceptance, support and monitoring in low-income families compared to children living in families from all income groups.