This article is a reflection on some of the discussions around faith and public life, within the context of Muslim communities and their interaction with public policy. It looks at the gap between popular debates on Muslims and the actual lived socio-economic reality of most people of Muslim background, and then goes on to look at aspects of identity formation and Muslim identity politics in the UK. It also considers the idea of integration and looks briefly at emerging Islamic discourses that are grappling with some of the challenges presented by modern British society. Finally, the article explores the role of faith in the public sphere and if it can help to build social capital and play a role in ideas such as the Big Society. The article concludes by emphasising the need to move beyond identity politics and communitarianism and asks where the real divides in society are – between religious and ideological groups or within them?

Active labour market policy (ALMP) has emerged as a major topic of inquiry among comparative scholars in recent decades, alongside other social investments. However, few conclusive results have been produced regarding the political explanations of these policies, and not least the role of partisan politics. To help remedy this problem, this article proposes a new understanding of ALMP as a profoundly versatile set of ‘multi-purpose tools’ that policymakers across the political spectrum can use as a means to very different distributional ends. Specifically, it highlights how ALMP programmes vary in terms of 1) their target groups, 2) their intended labour market outcomes, and 3) their modes of production in politically salient ways. Informed by the new framework and by recent research, the article then develops a refined theory about how governments with different left–right placement, operating under economic and institutional constraints, affect ALMP development in different directions.

This article seeks to understand the challenges of combining the distinct aims of personalisation and integration in adult social care. Addressing the local context of service delivery in England through interviews with key stakeholders, we identify how personalisation and integration activities require different, and potentially conflicting, approaches. We observe direct tensions when structural integration with health systems distracts focus from achieving personalised delivery of care or where a focus on clinical outcomes takes precedence over broader wellbeing aspirations. Integration can entail the prioritisation of health over social care and a population rather than personal orientation. We suggest that personalisation and integration are in ‘policy conflict’ (Weible and Heikkila, 2017) and that policy-makers need to acknowledge and address this rather than promise the ‘best of both worlds’.

This article reports on a study assessing the incentives and deterrents to long-term care (LTC) supply in two local markets in England. The supply of LTC in many countries is facing the issues of rising demand, (lack of) workforce and the interaction of the public and private sectors. Findings from qualitative interviews of local council and provider stakeholders exploring barriers and enablers faced by LTC providers in two local authorities (LAs) are presented and discussed. The interviews provided insight in three main areas: staffing, demand and stakeholder relationships. Staffing, in particular, is crucial and we found that there are many difficulties for providers in maintaining their workforce. Consistent with previous research, we also found that public spending levels on LTC puts pressure on providers striving to maintain a good quality service, including improved remuneration of staff.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the relationship between work and ageing has become increasingly visible as a policy issue. It is both reflected in and influenced by changes in macro-economic policy, life-opportunities and social attitudes associated with growing older, as a combination of falling birth rates and increased longevity, and has put pressure on the traditional parameters of the working age. The idea of retiring at a fixed point in the life-course, to enjoy a period of rest or leisure at the end of a working life, emerged in many advanced economies during the 1900s and evolved into policies that encouraged early retirement as the baby-boomers entered the jobs market in the 1960s and 1970s (Phillipson and Smith, 2005). Early retirement, itself a relatively recent development, gave rise to the possibility of a ‘third age’ of leisure and active ageing (Laslett, 1987), but as demographic and economic changes make themselves felt, it is again becoming an uncertain prospect for many older workers (Biggs and McGann, 2015).

Authoritarianism seems to be emerging as the default mode of global capitalism. In the absence of reliable economic growth, and with working-class incomes in long-term stagnation, both liberal and social democratic parties have lost support in many countries, and authoritarian regimes have come to power in several. But poor people in the USA, UK and Europe have long experienced coercion, being forced to accept low-paid, insecure work or face benefits sanctions. As a growing proportion of workers have come to rely on supplements such as tax credits, the working class has been divided, and opportunistic authoritarian politicians have mobilised the anxiety and resentment of those on the margins of poverty. This article argues that only an active civil society, with voluntary agencies uncompromised by involvement in coercive policies, along with universal, unconditional Basic Incomes for all citizens, can reverse these trends.

This article draws on case study research of a low-income neighbourhood in Leeds to explore experiences of, and attitudes towards, place-based community. Through tracing social relations in the neighbourhood over time, from the early twentieth century to the present day, the ways in which community is embedded in everyday activities and social interactions, and the social impact of socioeconomic change on local neighbourhoods, is demonstrated. It is argued that the relentless and nostalgic focus on local communities as an idealised form of social solidarity has meant that the reasons why place-based community has declined over time have been overlooked. The article challenges the assumption that social fragmentation on neighbourhood levels necessarily indicates antisocial trends or a lack of a sense of duty towards others, and draws attention to the constraints people face in developing relationships with others. Questions are raised about the viability of top-down attempts to shape social relations in particular ways.

Informal care provision is an integral part of the long-term care system. However, it has been shown to have negative effects on the carers’ economic activity, and understanding the mechanisms behind this is crucial for social policy design. This study provides new insight into mid-life carers’ decisions to reduce their economic activity through a convergent mixed-methods design. Quantitative analysis of a sample of 2,233 carers aged fifty from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) Wave 8 with follow up at age fifty-five, and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews of forty-eight carers between 2008-2010, were used. The combined results indicate that being female, single never married, having financial issues, being an employee, and frequently meeting a parent are associated with economic activity reduction; the carers’ own perspectives further elucidate key factors, such as their value and identity, family structure, life course events, and care intensity, which affect their decisions.

Climate change is arguably the defining issue of our time, with global impacts. Yet to date, scholarship within social policy has remained relatively fragmented and disparate, leaving an urgent need to start comprehensively embedding environmental thinking across all domains of the discipline (Williams, 2021). Responding to this challenge, this paper draws together existing work at the nexus of social policy, the environment, and climate change. The paper then presents findings from workshops held with social policy scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, using these discussions to propose pathways to embed climate change within the discipline. The paper represents a significant contribution to knowledge within the field as it seeks to both broaden discussions about social policy and climate change; to identify theoretical and empirical relationships that exist between the two fields but have not been fully recognised in existing scholarship; and to bring new perspectives and voices into the discussion.

Childcare provision in Britain has improved in terms of its quality, accessibility and affordability, but still much more has to be done, especially in meeting the needs of minority ethnic groups. Household research with Chinese and Bangladeshi families including grandparents, parents and children was conducted to account for their childcare needs. The findings indicate that, while there are a number of similarities between the two groups, there are also significant differences that influence household practices and preferences with regard to childcare. The qualitative data illustrate the diverse and dynamic nature of minority ethnic households, while also drawing out policy implications for socially inclusive childcare planning.

As this themed section has illustrated, understanding and supporting families with multiple and complex needs is an area of policy and practice that is gaining importance and emphasis in the UK. This growth in interest is reflected in the developing field of family focused policy and practice work. In this article, we review a range of recent government-led initiatives and interventions developed principally through the Cabinet Office's Social Exclusion Task Force Think Family initiative. Whilst we recognise that there are a number of related policy documents and initiatives (many of which are discussed by Murray and Barnes in this edition), we choose to focus on Think Family due to its emphasis on a ‘whole family’ approach for families facing multiple sources of disadvantage.

Based on data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), this study examines the extent to which cognitive dissonance regarding egalitarian attitudes toward the gender division of labour are associated with fertility rates in sixteen societies, representing Anglo American, Northern European, Western European and East Asian regimes. The findings show that although levels of support for gender equality in the realms of the family and the market are positively associated with fertility rates, an even stronger relationship to fertility emerges when weighing the differences between the levels of support for gender equality in each realm. The findings lend some corroboration to McDonald’s hypothesis, which suggests that declining fertility rates are influenced by contradictory expectations between gender equality for women in the home and market.

This article analyses local care policies through the lens of the feminist ethics of care. The focus is on the normative understandings regarding care that emerge in local care strategy documents and how these understandings relate with the concept of ‘responsibility’. In this article, strategies published by the municipality of Jyväskylä, Finland, between the years 2008 and 2016, are analysed using Trace analysis. The research questions are: How is the division of responsibility regarding care among different actors constructed in the strategies? How do the roles assigned to these different actors accord with the principles of ethics of care? The findings show that the documents emphasise individual responsibility in managing risks related to old age, as the norms of local societal institutions are largely detached from the principles of ethics of care. The analysis also reveals the absence of gender and human frailty from the care strategy documents. Rethinking the strategies through the lens of the ethic of care would mean reconceptualising responsibility as relational.

Informed by moral economy theories, this article presents a qualitative study of the normative construction of and contestation over a new in-work benefit in Hong Kong, the Low-income Working Family Allowance (LIFA). Using a policy stakeholder approach to examining the public’s ideas and justifications of LIFA, the findings reveal the eligibility-defined entitlement shared by claimants, scepticism towards long working hours conditionality required by LIFA, complex understanding of deservingness and self-reliance, and dissatisfaction with the closing gap between welfare and wages. This article connects moral economy theories to the normative basis of a social security system, offering insights for capturing the dynamics of consensus and controversies about social welfare. It also extends the research on morality and social welfare from Western countries to an Asian context. The case of Hong Kong evidences how policy stakeholders make moral sense of a new welfare in the absence of social right language.

During the Second World War, a German economist, Marie Dessauer, later Marie Meinhardt, worked with the British welfare state scholar and policy analyst Richard Titmuss on pioneering studies of social factors and health. Titmuss is remembered today for his role in establishing social policy as an academic discipline, and for his internationally-renowned works on welfare, health and public policy. Meinhardt's career as an economist has been largely forgotten. This was an unusual alliance with far-reaching consequences, as Meinhardt later bequeathed a large sum of money to the London School of Economics, where Titmuss worked, to help fund social policy students and research. This article documents the story of the Titmuss-Meinhardt collaboration, locating it in the context of Titmuss's last and probably best-known work, The Gift Relationship, which analyses the function of altruistic giving in promoting healthy and democratic social relations.

When the measurement of inequality is being considered in Ireland and the UK the poor and socially excluded are routinely the focus of debate. Building on methodology developed in New Zealand this paper outlines the development of a more wide ranging approach through the construction of a Northern Ireland Living Standard Index (NILSI). It then utilises this tool to explore dimensions of inequality in Northern Ireland and present findings on the living standards of different subgroups.

The UK Conservative–Liberal Democratic Coalition government has declared that marriage is imperative for society. This article examines couple relationship education (CRE), which aims to strengthen marriage and relationships. It argues that these programmes have potential because they offer opportunities for women and men to enhance their relationships through adult education that develops relationship skills and knowledge. For CRE to have a population level impact, however, knowledge of how to promote access to services designed for disadvantaged or vulnerable couples is critical. Gender disadvantage interacts with class, ethnicity, age and disability. Advocating marriage per se is too simplistic a solution to the complex problems of couples with diverse needs or low-income earners. If the government is serious about wanting to strengthen relationships and marriage, CRE would be a better investment if it was coordinated with policies and services such as balancing work and family and alleviating problems for low-income families.

Over the last 30 or so years the problem of violence against women and how states should respond to it, in its myriad of forms, has become increasingly prevalent in academic and policy debates at both the national and international level. An active international women's movement, spanning Europe, the United States and many parts of the Southern hemisphere, including in particular Latin America and South Asia, has facilitated this growing awareness of gendered violence as a social problem requiring intervention. In a separate, but ultimately related, development there has been a growing global concern with extending human rights protection to women as a distinct group with specific concerns and needs. As a consequence of these twin developments, the tendency for gendered violence to be seen as an essentially private affair requiring limited state interfe-rence has slowly, but increasingly, been superseded by the recognition that the state has been failing victims.

The purpose of this article is to draw on Le Grand's (2007) model of service provision of ends and means (trust, targets, voice and choice) to critique the accepted frameworks for conceptualising the chronology of equal opportunities and diversity (EO&D) in the UK. We do this by reviewing the attempts to provide a chronological analysis before outlining and applying Le Grand's (2007) model. We find that the ‘eras’ of the chronologies give way to a much more complex and fluid picture. Moreover, focusing on ends and means highlights some major issues in the development of EO&D policy that needs to be addressed.

Historically, Travelling Showpeople have sought to distance themselves from the wider Gypsy and Traveller population, on the basis of their unique occupation and travelling patterns, but also based on a discourse around self sufficiency. This article explores how this distinction has been influenced by, and has influenced, policy developments relating to accommodation. It focuses on how this distinction has created a degree of exclusion in terms of accommodation needs, and how this impacts on the position of contemporary Travelling Showpeople, particularly in a time of changing travelling and employment patterns.