In this article – a review article preceding a series of articles in this themed section considering specific aspects of the impacts and implementation processes of the Welsh legislation – we contextualise the introduction of the prevention agenda in Wales by defining homelessness and highlighting the shift towards prevention policy in an international context. We consider the nature of prevention, and examine related theoretical debates, critiques and the cost/benefits of prevention. We conclude by offering some reflections on the progress of homelessness prevention since the Act’s implementation drawing on data from the longitudinal post-implementation evaluation of the Housing Act (Wales) 2014.

Applying a political economy lens, this article examines the impact of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), within a political context marked by crisis and austerity. Taking the case of Portugal, a country that faced a financial crisis and underwent an austerity plan, the article seeks to understand the impact of the CRPD at domestic level. What has changed, what has remained the same and what has deteriorated? And how has the disability movement responded and resisted to the crisis? This article addresses these questions and discusses the challenges of implementing disability rights in times of ‘enduring’ austerity.

This article examines the distribution of net benefits from subsidies to higher education in the United Kingdom, focusing on the system in place in the mid-1990s. We find the distribution to be regressive with respect to graduate income, with high lifetime earners receiving large net subsidies, while low lifetime earners are net contributors to the system. Our findings are of particular relevance to policymakers in the UK in light of the ongoing debate over tuition fees. However, these results should also be of interest to anyone who studies the socioeconomic implications of higher education.

Since announcing its ambitious pledge to eradicate child poverty, the Government's strategy has focused on providing extra income to families, particularly in terms of tax credits, and on increasing employment rates among parents. Recently, however, its strategy has developed to encompass a new emphasis on job retention, career progression and smoothing movement into and out of work, all of which should serve to safeguard and support children's movement out of poverty. With reference to poverty dynamics research, this article discusses why this new emphasis is crucial for reducing child poverty and highlights the possible future direction of developing policy in this light.

This article describes a service that aimed to support the development of play and leisure opportunities for Gypsy/Traveller children. It uncovered a high demand for direct service provision, and there was limited capacity for action to make existing provision more inclusive. The article suggests how a focus upon networks, between Gypsy/Traveller communities, between service providers, and upon bridges between the two, could reduce the exclusion experienced by Gypsy/Traveller children and families.

‘Risk’, ‘social inclusion’ and the ‘life course’ have become key notions in social policy after the Golden Age of welfare capitalism. This article reviews some of the key debates and developments in Australian social policy and research that underpin the contributions to this themed section. From ‘new social risks’ to ‘the great risk shift’ and the broader debates about the ‘risk society’ and ‘governmentality’, it reviews debates about social inclusion and the individualisation of risk, the risk shift in service delivery and the understanding and researching of the new life course. It concludes with suggestions for more community based research to inform social policy.

Research-led teaching is the sine qua non of the 21st century university. To understand its possibilities for teaching and learning about race in Social Policy requires, as a first step, interrogating the epistemological and theoretical core of the discipline, as well as its organisational dynamics. Using parts of Emirbayer and Desmond’s (2012) framework of disciplinary reflexivity, this article traces the discipline’s habits of thought but also its lacunae in the production of racial knowledge. This entails focusing on its different forms of institutionalised and epistemological whiteness, and what has shaped the omission or marginalisation of a full understanding of the racialisation of welfare subjects and regimes in the discipline. Throughout, the article offers alternative analyses and thinking that fully embrace the historical and contemporary role of race, racism, and nation in lived realities, institutional processes, and global racial orders. It concludes with pointers towards a re-envisioning of Social Policy, within a framework in which postcolonial and intersectional theory and praxis are championed. Only then might a decolonised curriculum be possible in which race is not peripheral to core teaching and learning.

The current UK Government's focus on the development of services to manage and support offenders with mental health problems has resulted in a number of innovative project developments. This research examines a service development in the North East of England which co-located mental health nurses with two Integrated Offender Management teams. While not solving all problems, the benefits of co-location were clear, although such innovations are now at risk from government changes which will make Integrated Offender Management the responsibility of new providers without compelling them to co-operate with health services.

This article presents the results from a cumulative impact assessment of the distribution of tax and social security reforms in the UK since the 2010 general election. The analysis covers the 2010-15 and 2015-17 parliaments plus measures announced in the Autumn 2017 Budget. The article finds that taken as a whole, reforms since 2010 have had a regressive impact across the household income distribution, with average losses of around 10 per cent of net income in the bottom fifth of the distribution, compared to roughly a zero impact in the top three deciles. I also analyse results by a number of Equality Act protected characteristics including ethnicity, disability, gender, single/couple status and the number of children in the household. Lone parent families lose out more than any other demographic group while Pakistani and Bangladeshi adults lose out more than any other ethnic group. The reforms also have particular negative impacts on disabled people, on low income women and on households with children.

In an article published in Prospect magazine, later reproduced in The Guardian, Goodhart (2004a) identifies a link between a decline in support for welfare and growing ethnic diversity. We argue that his analysis is flawed in terms of his comparative analysis, his definition of welfare, his ahistorical approach and his implicit conceptual framework of ethnic diversity. While he appears to conceal his political objectives behind the language of the third way, we maintain that it is time to wrest political language and activity away from those who claim to operate only on the basis of commonsense and a ‘what works’ philosophy.

There is an increasing emphasis on activating workers on sick leave and on using their residual work capacity. This article compares activation via graded-work schemes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, with a focus on the role of employers. The analysis of literature sources and survey data reveals an ongoing reform activity, as well as great diversity in terms of employer obligations and incentives in the countries studied. These differences are very consequential for the intensity of employer efforts to activate sick-listed workers, even when comparing countries that otherwise share many institutional features. The distinction between public and privatised systems of sickness insurance, on the contrary, seems to be less relevant for the question of employer participation in activation. The findings are consistent with the expectation that less comprehensive employer participation is correlated with stronger selectivity in activation efforts. Depending on the prevailing approach in the individual countries and on developments to date, policy-makers are confronted with different challenges and priorities.

The aims of this review article are two-fold: (1) to set out the key theoretical trends in the study of religion, populism and social policy as antithetical concepts that also share common concerns; (2) to re-assert the relevance of social policy to the social and political sciences by making the case for studying outlier or indeed rival topics together – in this case populism and religion. Social policy scholars do not necessarily associate these two topics with modern social policy, yet they have a long history of influence on societies all over the world; populism is also especially timely in our current era. The article contributes to the literature by: (a) helping social policy better understand its diverse and at times contradictory constituencies; (b) contributing to a more complex and inclusive understanding of social policy and, therefore, social welfare. In setting out the state-of-the-art, the article also draws upon research on social policy which spans various continents (North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and Latin America) and a preceding paper collaboration by the authors on religion and social policy (Pavolini et al., 2017).

This article examines the expansion and underlying aims of structured parenting support in Norway. Norway's approach to parenting support differs from that of most other countries (Glavin and Schaffer, 2014), in supposedly being universal and offered to all parents (Eng et al., 2017). However, it is difficult to determine whether parenting support in Norway is actually unique, since little is known about how it is implemented in practice (Bråten and Sønsterudbråten, 2016; Wesseltoft-Rao et al., 2017). This article contributes further knowledge of how parenting support travels from national-level policy-making down to the level of municipal institutions where it is implemented. The analysis draws upon insights from a comprehensive case study in Bergen, Norway's second largest city, that included fieldwork observations and service mapping over a period of two years (2015–2017), a large number of in-depth interviews with various stakeholders, and analysis of relevant documents (advertisements, project applications and project reports, budgets, etc.).

This article considers the character of EU social policy and in particular the linkages between the EU's economic and social strategies. Arguably, the most recent enlargement of the EU represents a turning point for the future of EU social policy, though there is disagreement about its future if not so much about the causes of this crisis. The article concludes that the future political economy of EU social policy and indeed of the EU itself may be subject to fundamental changes.

This article discusses the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). It suggests that the HRA is designed to promote a classic liberal conception of political citizenship, which protects the individual from the exercise of arbitrary state power, and not to extend the role of the state as a welfare provider. It goes on to argue that the government has limited the effectiveness of the HRA by claiming that they are building a culture of rights and responsibilities whilst treating human rights as an issue for the courts rather than an issue for government and public authorities generally. The article concludes by discussing extending the HRA to include economic, social and cultural rights.

In this article we engage in a critical examination of how local authority Housing Solutions staff, newly placed centre stage in preventing homelessness amongst prison leavers in Wales, understand and go about their work. Drawing on Carlen’s concept of ‘imaginary penalities’ and Ugelvik’s notion of ‘legitimation work’ we suggest practice with this group can be ritualistic and underpinned by a focus on prison leavers’ responsibilities over their rights, and public protection over promoting resettlement. In response we advocate for less-punitive justice and housing policies, underpinned by the right to permanent housing for all prison leavers and wherein stable accommodation is understood as the starting point for resettlement. The analysis presented in this article provides insights to how homelessness policies could play out in jurisdictions where more joint working between housing and criminal justice agencies are being pursued and/or preventative approaches to managing homelessness are being considered.

Countries adopted a variety of social policy responses to reduce the social risks exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which in some cases took the form of institutional reforms. The study of the institutionalisation of emergency responses is relevant to understanding if and how a critical juncture, like the one opened by the pandemic, can generate path dependencies or changes that expand or retrench social protection. This state-of-the-art article offers an overview of how social policy responses to the pandemic have translated to institutional reform across the globe under various types of welfare systems. By conducting a systematic literature review of thirty-nine peer-reviewed journal articles in two leading bibliographic databases (Scopus and Web of Science), this article reviews the available evidence on the responses to the pandemic and their institutional consequences. We find four underlying research clusters regarding the degree of institutionalisation of the social policy responses implemented during the pandemic.

This article is a contribution by a Jobcentre practitioner. The focus is first upon the context for government policies. The policies themselves are next outlined, and some problematic issues are then considered. The author's two case studies are based upon personal experience, and point up the importance of local initiatives within the national framework. Other key aspects include assessing and meeting individuals' needs, whether among the younger or older out-of-work; encouraging older persons to change expectations about themselves; and a measure of age diversity in training provision.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has again focussed attention on the failings of the Australian aged care system. Residential aged care in Australia has become increasingly market-driven since the major reforms of 1997. The aims of increased marketisation include providing residents with greater choice, higher quality services, and increasing providers’ efficiency and innovation. However, marketisation is not meeting these aims, predominantly due to asymmetries of knowledge and power between residents and aged care providers. These asymmetries arise from inadequate provision of information, geographic disparities, urgency for care as needs arise acutely, and issues surrounding safety, including cultural safety. We propose a human rights framework, supported by responsive regulation, to overcome the failings of the current system and deliver an improved aged care system which is fit for purpose.

More than one in ten Australians live in poverty, with many relying on government provided support and emergency payments. These payments are insufficient to cover basic costs of living, and as a result, many people are forced to engage with emergency and community food assistance. The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of those who, despite being in receipt of an Australian welfare payment and engaged with the welfare system, rely on charitable food assistance for some or all of their weekly food supply. Interviews were conducted with seventy-eight people and were thematically analysed. The main findings of this study are the significant challenges faced by people who are on very low incomes when navigating the government-provided welfare and non-government charity systems and the insufficiency of the welfare system in providing income to meet basic costs of living.