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).

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.

Despite an ageing work force and the impending retirement of millions of baby boomers that could lead to serious labour, skills, and occupational shortages, older workers are not high on the policy agenda in the United States. Nonetheless, labour force participation rates for the older population have been rising, and public opinion polls reveal a sizeable demand for post-retirement employment. The challenge lies in meeting that demand and fostering longer worklives on the part of even more older Americans. A substantial public policy response is by no means certain, although raising the retirement age is likely to feature prominently in the debate on Social Security reform.

This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of the impact of government coalfield regeneration policy on the Nottinghamshire ex-mining community of Warsop Vale, whose colliery closed in 1989. Based on interviews with local residents, community development workers and representatives of regeneration agencies, the study highlights tangible improvements in community resources and the recent introduction of an innovative new housing scheme as evidence of a positive impact of government measures. Particular importance is attached to the key role of local government, the voluntary sector and regeneration agencies in carefully cultivating the local social capital and raising Warsop Vale's political profile since 1989, enabling it to seize the opportunities inherent in New Labour's coalfield policy.

There is growing concern surrounding the retraction of disability social provisioning measures across the western world, with state fiscal policy trends foregrounding austerity as a central principle of welfare provisioning. This is occurring within many of the nation-states that have ratified and legislated rights enshrined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This article undertakes a critical analysis of disability income retraction in Australia since the early 2000s and examines these changes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living with disability by focusing on Article 20 of the CRPD, the right to personal mobility, a core right for people with disabilities and Indigenous peoples. Beyond economic inequality, the article illustrates that the various administrative processes attached to welfare retraction have implications for the realisation of mobility practices that are critical for individual cultural identity and wellbeing. Disability austerity has resulted in a new form of Indigenous containment, fixing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities in a cyclical motion of poverty management.

This article examines both the place of the social dimension in past and on-going debates about the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and the reciprocal influence of EU and UK institutions on developments in the social policy field. It explores fluctuations in the relationship between economic and social policy, the divisiveness within, between and across political parties, the role of key policy actors in shaping the social agenda, and the failure of attempts to harmonise social welfare systems as enlargement intensified their diversity. We argue that, although difficult to predict, the implications of Brexit for future social policy in the UK and EU may not be so far-reaching as in some other policy areas, due largely to the maintenance of unanimous voting and the subsidiarity principle in many social domains, combined with the shift towards soft law and the widespread resistance of member states to tighter social integration.

Devolution presented an opportunity for the Welsh Government to introduce changes to housing and homelessness policy, and the subsequent homelessness reforms are seen as one of the best examples to date of the Welsh Government using its powers. However, devolved governments in small countries face a number of challenges in terms of realising their housing policy ambitions. In this article we argue that there is inevitable dissonance between the policy behind the Welsh Government legislation (prevention) and practice (implementation) associated with structural challenges (for example, austerity and budget restrictions, Welfare Reform and the availability of affordable accommodation). In response we propose a number of actions the Welsh Government might undertake to attempt to mitigate such structural challenges which also resonate in the English context where welfare retrenchment and homelessness prevention policies operate simultaneously.

Labour and Conservatives' claims that welfare conditionality is ‘fair’ rely upon an empirically unsupported assumption that almost-equal opportunities can exist alongside starkly unequal outcomes. Fifty interviews examined in-depth a diverse sample's values, views about work and welfare, and labour market choices. Respondents' views on equality strongly influenced their views on conditionality and what they considered acceptable labour market behaviour. ‘Alternative’ unemployed respondents, who rejected politicians' suggestions they ‘should work’, nevertheless favoured an equal society with work obligations and often undertook voluntary work. The article concludes that policy-makers should be more sensitive to Jobseeker's Allowance claimants' diverse moralities and motivations.

Using an interpretative comparison in search for cross-case similarities and differences, we examine the evolution of equity of access to healthcare during the economic crisis in two potentially vulnerable Eastern and Southern European countries – Lithuania and Spain. While the type of healthcare system may have shown higher resilience, i.e. equity of access to care during the crisis should have been affected more in Lithuania – a relatively immature health insurance system – than in Spain – a consolidated national health service, the intensity and length of the crisis and types of adjustment measures undertaken may have led, in turn, to different results in terms of equity of access. The analysis focuses on the respective institutional designs and healthcare reforms under austerity as well as subjective and objective indicators of access to care. We conclude that the Lithuanian healthcare system, despite potential comparative disadvantage, has shown greater performance than the Spanish one during the crisis.

This article explores the impact of a more individualised public employment service on vulnerable people. It analyses a system Jobcentre Plus implemented in 2008, Accessing Jobcentre Plus Customer Services (AJCS), to improve customer services by minimising ‘footfall’ in local offices, encouraging the use of self-service facilities and targeting service delivery to the requirements of customers. The article shows that certain vulnerable groups, notably people with disabilities, are not necessarily well served by the new system. The article highlights tensions between managing a large and complex service and addressing the individual needs of vulnerable members of society adequately.

Ethnicity and racialised identity have been salient themes in USA research and policy on teenage parenthood, in contrast with the UK context. This article presents findings from interviews with professionals in support services for young parents, with three main conclusions. Firstly, appropriate data collection systems are not in place to establish whether minority young parents face specific barriers in accessing services. Secondly, professionals’ accounts converge with young parents’ accounts, emphasising age rather than ethnicity as shaping patterns of identification and stigmatisation. Lastly, professional ‘ecologies of practice’ exist in some tension with the homogenising emphasis of UK national policy discourses.

Internationally, in-work benefits (IWBs) are widely adopted as a measure to assist parents transitioning to work and to ‘make work pay’ for low-income families. The family income supplement (FIS) is an Irish IWB, introduced at a time of rapid societal change. This article shows how changing family dynamics, and a shift in policy focus towards a ‘work-first’ approach, challenged the original values underlying FIS. We discuss FIS in the context of changes to family life and social policy. We then outline the results of ten interviews with experts using three themes: work-first approach, child poverty and encouraging care. Our analysis shows that policymakers faced new challenges to provide an income support for children while also promoting full-time labour participation. FIS continues to support working families, but in a manner that creates contradictions for the contemporary ‘work-first’ approach. It is necessary to re-examine FIS in relation to its wider policy context and to address requirements for caring.

This article reviews the recommodification of social policy in the context of financialised austerity capitalism and post-crisis welfare states. It sets out an understanding of recommodification as a multiple set of processes that involve the state in labour market-making, by shaping labour’s ‘saleability’. Under conditions of finance-dominated austerity capitalism, the article argues that recent dynamics of recommodification complicate the long established Piersonian observations. For Pierson, recommodification signifies how elements of the welfare state that shelter individuals from market pressures are dismantled and replaced with measures which buffer their labour market participation. This article examines ways in which recent policy trends in recommodification, whether by incentivising or coercive means, increase exposure to labour market risks and connect with the growing inequalities between capital and labour under post-crisis re/financialised austerity capitalism. This analysis is paired with a synoptic review of recent labour market trends and reforms across the European Union. As recommodification evolves, the insecurity it institutes raises fundamental questions about the underlying nature of social citizenship which are also addressed.

European welfare states have a tradition of compensating for social risks. But across Europe, remarkable transformations may be observed that shift the focus from a needs/rights based compensatory approach towards a more individualistic ‘social risk management’ approach to welfare (see Schmid, 2006; Abrahamson, 2010). The basic idea of social risk management is that citizens have their own responsibility for preventing social risks. The ‘new’ welfare state mirrors this approach by adopting the role of equipping individual citizens for this task. The concept of the ‘new welfare state’ has been discussed under different labels, including ‘positive welfare’ (Giddens, 1998), ‘enabling welfare’ (Gilbert, 2002), ‘new welfare’ (Taylor-Gooby, 2008) and ‘social investment state’ (Engelen et al., 2007).

This article examines the relationship between food insecurity and the uncertainty and inadequate financial resources associated with low quality work among lone mother households in the United States. Food insecurity has increased since the start of the Great Recession and is particularly high among lone mother households. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that mothers who have been employed part-time involuntarily and experienced job loss have an increased likelihood of experiencing food insecurity. This relationship holds even after controlling for multiple measures of household income, suggesting the relationship between low quality work and food insecurity is not solely determined by low financial resources. Results suggest that, to reduce food insecurity among lone mother families, policymakers must address both the low wages and uncertainty associated with low quality employment.

Parents and carers often have interrupted workforce histories, causing gaps in their pension contributions and hence significantly lower retirement incomes. In some countries, to ameliorate these inequalities, carer credits have been introduced to maintain public pension contributions during periods of workforce absence. But improvements to credits in public schemes have taken place alongside a shift to private pensions that widens inequalities for carers. Introducing carer credits to private pensions is one method of addressing these inequalities. A search for examples of credits to private schemes in OECD countries revealed that, at present, they are rare and limited. This article sets out the design features and principles that should underpin carer credits to private pensions.

This review explores debates concerning the costs of long-term care for older people, and aims to give an overview of the recent and current research agenda in this area, referring primarily to work published 2000–2006. The focus of much work is on the identification of costs, their distribution and the contexts of policy and delivery of services in which these operate. Live debates concern future costs, their control and related issues of social justice and equity.

With the ‘gig economy’ moving to the forefront of research on service labour, interest has heightened in the techniques of labour control that reproduce it. Taking tipping as just such a technique, this article explores critically the policy research around ‘tipped’ employment in the United States. In the United States, tipping is a legally recognised form of labour remuneration that informalises the wage relation, incentivises the worker in precarity, and internalises social relations of subordination. Understanding tipped work, its legal status, its operative logic, and the contradictions that arise within its framework, is a priority for relevant social policy analysis. The aims here are: 1) to set out the ‘topography’ of the policy landscape on tipping in the United States; and 2) to problematise the current scope of this policy literature in societal terms. This research will focus on the restaurant industry, but will establish its broader societal significance.

Recent discussion in the UK has focused on proportionate dispute resolution to deal with people's problems with public services. Complaints procedures, which are seen to be user-friendly and informal, have been held up as good examples of proportionate dispute resolution mechanisms. Most complaints procedures include an informal first stage where, it is argued, most complaints should be resolved but there is little research evidence about what happens at this stage. This article looks at the informal stage of complaints procedures from the perspective of social care service users and considers some of the issues raised by informality.

To what extent does Malta's social policy support gender equality, in the use of time? How much do state policies assume that men and women both need time to care, as well as for paid work? Does Malta's full-time paid work structure allow time for the equal sharing of unpaid care responsibilities between women and men, that in turn enhances gender equity in the workplace and domestic sphere? Themes that emerge in the study rest largely on women's voices. The study finds that women need to shift their full-time economic activity to shorter and flexible working hours when they become mothers, with negative consequences of loss in income and career regression. Labour market exit and financial dependence on men is also a frequent occurrence. The findings of the study suggest that strong pressure to assume traditional roles is embedded not only in Maltese culture and social norms, but also in the state's own social policy.