Too many children face disadvantages that negatively impact their health, happiness and future life chances. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) represent a particularly traumatic set of circumstances that have been found through research to dramatically increase the likelihood of poor adult physical and mental health outcomes. While we do not view ACEs to represent the only or necessarily the most serious risks to children’s development, we do recognise them to pose a substantial threat. This article identifies twenty-four interventions with causal evidence of preventing or reducing ACE-related trauma and considers how they could be offered through system-wide strategies aimed at improving the lives of children who are at the greatest risk. While we are not suggesting that these interventions – on their own or in combination – represent a magic solution to ACEs, or the wider societal issues that contribute to them, we do propose that knowledge about their effectiveness can improve the quality of services that support the needs of highly vulnerable children.

Foodbanks and other forms of charitable welfare provision are fast becoming an established feature of the UK social security system. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic observation in a Trussell Trust foodbank in North East England, this paper explores the relationship between the construction of the ‘active citizen’ and lived experiences of foodbank users and volunteers. Findings show how participants’ experiences and behaviour challenges popular political and policy narratives that individuals are using foodbanks because of poor lifestyle choices. The internalisation or rejection of this narrative is then examined, contrasting the different forms of citizenship that arise. Through the significant work that goes into living on a low income, people both aligned with and challenged the ideas underpinning ‘active citizenship’.

Global warming and some climate change policies pose additional social risks that necessitate novel responses from the welfare state. Eco-social policies have significant potential to address these challenges, but their wide-scale adoption will depend, among other factors, on public support. In the current article, we theorise how public opinion about eco-social policies is likely to be influenced by a set of contextual and individual-level factors, as well as the perceived welfare deservingness of the target groups. Alongside contributing to the emerging body of literature on eco-social policies, this theoretical framework could help policymakers to anticipate the social groups that will support or oppose eco-social policy agendas and how some of the contradictions could be reduced through policy design.

European migrant citizens and their social rights are strongly contested in British political debate. This article seeks to challenge some common concerns and perceptions regarding the exceptionality of the British welfare state and the alleged ‘costs’ to it from intra-EU migration. The article first provides a brief overview of the foundations for EU citizenship and associated social rights, highlighting the semi-sovereign nature of welfare states in the European Union. It then (i) rejects the significance of the often-claimed difference between contributory and non-contributory welfare states in the context of EU migration; and (ii) challenges concerns about the costs of EU migration. The article contrasts the experiences of Britain and Germany. It concludes by considering how concerns often associated with EU migration can be addressed by improving administrative and state capacities.

It is argued that the encompassing concept of welfare rights that is contained within the Social Policy literature – and which has developed from TH Marshall's distinction between civil and political rights on the one hand and social or welfare rights on the other – provides a clearer and more explicit basis for an international call for the progressive development of social policies than, for example, the human rights approach to poverty reduction currently espoused by the UNDP and OHCHR. Social rights continue to be a relatively marginalised or qualified element of the human rights agenda and may be more effectively harnessed by way of a welfare rights approach based on a politics of needs interpretation.

In the UK, participation in decision-making is increasingly being viewed as a right for users of mental health services. Yet research repeatedly finds a policy implementation gap in this area. Drawing on a localised, qualitative study involving three mental health service user/community groups, this article frames this issue in terms of a ‘politics of recognition’. It demonstrates how whilst government user involvement policies officially attempt to recognise users and their voices, they simultaneously reconstitute failures of recognition in terms of status subordination and a disqualified identity for service users, thereby obstructing participatory parity and amounting to a dereliction of the core principles underlying human rights.

This article evaluates recent transformations in social policy that reflect the tendency towards individualisation in The Netherlands. Such transformations have taken place in old age pensions, widows' pensions, social assistance and taxation, and in respect of child support following divorce. Interestingly most reforms have not resulted in ‘full individualisation’, but rather have taken into account the fact that people, in particular women, are not or cannot be assumed to be full-time adult workers. Such a ‘moderate individualisation’, however, is not without risks for women's economic independence, especially when the developments of the Dutch ‘life course perspective’ on social security are considered.

Celebrating the 25th birthday of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's seminal book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), this article looks back at the old ‘liberal world’ and examines the new. In so doing, it contributes to debates and the literature on liberal welfare state development in three main ways. First, it considers the concept of ‘liberalism’ and liberal ideas about welfare provision contained within Three Worlds. Here we are also interested in how liberal thought has conceptualised the (welfare) state, and the class-mobilisation theory of welfare-state development. Second, the article elaborates on ‘neo-’liberal social reforms and current welfare arrangements in the English-speaking democracies and their welfare states. Finally, it considers the extent to which the English-speaking world of welfare capitalism is still meaningfully ‘liberal’ and coherent today.

‘Individualisation’ did not enter German social policy debates until the end of the 1980s. Mainstream feminists argued first in favour of individualised benefits for women, and labour market individualisation, for women as well as for men, now scores high on the German social policy agenda. Benefits and other provisions are being increasingly (re-)designed in the expectation that both men and women in households will be employed. This article briefly examines the original meaning of individualisation and the way in which it was transformed in the influential writings of Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. It then argues that the current social policy reforms in Germany reveal ambiguities in respect of individualisation which were debated in the earlier sociological literature.

New forms of inter-agency co-operation have gained increasing prominence in the development and delivery of activation strategies. This article compares different models of inter-agency co-operation, drawing on case study research in Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. The different models have reported variations in performance when delivering on the key benefits often attributed to effective inter-agency co-operation. The article raises concerns that the process of contracting-out in activation has at times conflicted with attempts to improve co-operation between agencies, while the increasing dominance of purchaser–provider relations can undermine progress towards ‘shared ownership’ of activation policies and effective partnership-working.

This paper considers concepts of citizenship and consumerism in light of complaints about healthcare, which have risen since the early1990s, due to a greater willingness by the healthcare user to complain, and also the reforms in complaint systems. The narrow legal model for dealing with complaints has been replaced by a managerial model based on corporate sector practice that views complaint handling as a way of retaining customers and organisational learning. The managerial model has proved difficult to embed into the English NHS and has been superposed with a centralised regulatory system that aims to manage performance while also being responsible for reviewing, complaints and being responsive to complainants. It is argued that this may have positive consequences in terms of improving healthcare quality but more negatively, the promotion of consumerism within complaints processes has led to a loss of the right to due process and public accountability.

The Nordic countries are admired for high employment, low levels of poverty and inequality, encompassing welfare states, and peaceful industrial relations. Yet the model is criticised for hampering the employment opportunities of vulnerable groups. The literature identifies several potential mechanisms of exclusion. Compressed wage structures may make employers reluctant to hire certain workers for fear that their productivity is too low to justify the cost. Second, generous benefits lower individuals’ incentive to work. Third, businesses increasingly specialise in high-skill activities. We explore these arguments comparatively by considering the employment chances of two vulnerable groups: disabled persons and migrants. The Nordic countries are compared with other rich democracies that take different approaches to social protection and wage dispersion. The Nordic countries do not perform systematically worse than other ‘varieties of capitalism’. In line with recent research, we also find that there is considerable intra-Nordic variation, which calls for further study.

The extent to which social protection programmes in general, and targeted programmes in particular, actually alleviate poverty has been a central issue in development debates for decades. The objective of this article is to contribute to the debate by empirically examining the poverty-alleviation effects of one of the largest targeted programmes in the world: the Minimum Living Standard Assistance (MLSA) or Dibao in China. Using newly available data on MLSA spending and a unique panel survey dataset covering the 1993 to 2009 period, this research investigates the impact of the MLSA on poverty alleviation. The analyses using fixed-effects and random-effects logit models and hierarchical liner models offer insights that go beyond the existing studies on the subject. Findings from the study confirm that targeted social protection programmes are an effective tool for reducing poverty.

In Denmark, a process of defamilising has taken place since the expansion of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector in the 1960s, in the sense that children now spend a large part of their childhood outside the family. Nevertheless, parents are still seen as key figures in children's upbringing and as having primary responsibility for the quality of childhood, implying a simultaneous process of refamilising. Based on ethnographic fieldwork we show that parents are not only held responsible for their children's lives at home, but also for ensuring that ECEC staff have the best possible opportunity to support children's development at ECEC institutions. We analyse how ECEC staff offer guidance on how to be a responsible parent who cooperates in the right ways, and on how to cultivate children's development at home. Parents willingly accept such advice because of a strong risk awareness embedded in diagnostic forms, positioning ECEC staff as parenting experts.

This paper considers some of the ways in which representations of people experiencing poverty and disadvantaged places continue to be informed by ideas of individual inadequacy, dependency and disorder. Drawing on media reportage of poverty during the Glasgow East by-election in July 2008, it argues not only that people defined as ‘poor’ and locales that are severely disadvantaged continue to be ‘othered’ through such narratives, but also that this provides a clear indication of the ways in which the politics of poverty and state welfare are increasingly being fought-out in the media. It is argued that such misrecognition amounts to social injustice and stands in the way of progressive approaches to poverty and social welfare.

Employer reluctance to hire disabled people narrows the economic and vocational opportunities of disabled people. This study investigates employer hiring decisions to identify which mainstream employers are most likely to hire disabled people. The study reports findings from interviews with eighty-seven employers in urban and regional South Australia. Analysis reveals differences across groups of employers based on their previous hiring behaviour. Communication from employment support agencies should specifically address concerns of non-hirers and light hirers. Long-term financial concerns present strong but surmountable barriers to light hirers employing disabled people. Policy mitigating long-term employer concerns could attract employers to hire disabled people for the first time (non-hirers) or return to hiring (light hirers) disabled people. Negative employers (antagonists) and employers already sustaining ongoing workplace relationships with disabled people (loyals) have insurmountable reasons to not hire any (or more) disabled people and should not be targeted.

The Healthy Start scheme provides food welfare to pregnant women and children under four years old in the UK. The Government provides vouchers to families living on a low income that can be exchanged for infant formula, plain cow's milk and fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables. This article reports on a qualitative study of parents using Healthy Start in England. Interviews were conducted with 107 parents from thirteen areas in England. Most found the scheme easy to use, but some vulnerable groups were unable to access the scheme. The vouchers provided a vital source of food at times of crisis, and put purchase of fruit and vegetables within reach for some. Parents reduced stigma by using self-service tills and by only visiting retailers known to accept the vouchers. Healthy Start provides additional protection by sitting outside of other social security benefits. To continue to provide this essential protection, their value should be reviewed and increased.

Community participation has become an essential element of government policy around the globe in recent decades. This move towards ‘government through community’ has been presented as an opportunity for citizens to gain power and as a necessary part of the shift from government to governance, enabling states and communities to tackle complex problems in tandem. However, it has also been critiqued as an attempt to shift responsibility from the state onto communities. Using evidence from detailed case studies, this article examines the implementation of Localism in England and Community Empowerment in Scotland. The findings suggest a need for a more nuanced analysis of community participation policy, incorporating risk alongside responsibility and power, as well as considering the agency of communities and the local state. Furthermore, understanding the constraints on community participation is key, particularly in terms of the enveloping impacts of austerity and state retrenchment.

This article provides quantitative analysis of a self-reported measure of food bank use in the UK, adding to a sparse evidence base. Evidence from fifteen deprived communities in Glasgow is used to examine the scale of food bank use and to consider its relationship with socio-demographic, health, and financial variables. Being affected by welfare reforms was found to increase the likelihood of food bank use. Young men and those with mental health problems were found to be more likely than others to have used a food bank. Food banks appear to be used by groups who are being under-served by the welfare state and suffering the most acute impacts of austerity. The very low prevalence of food bank use among those who struggle to afford food points to their inadequacy as a response to food insecurity.

Only 37 per cent of young people voted at the 2005 British General Election, seemingly confirming the oft-cited view that this generation is becoming increasingly disconnected from the political process. Results from a nationwide survey, however, indicate that their withdrawal from formal politics is more a result of their scepticism of the way the political system operates, than apathy. Furthermore, they are diverse in their political (dis)engagement. Results from an examination of the relative effects of socio-economic location and social capital are inconclusive, although the data indicate that government social policy aimed at mobilising social capital and addressing socio-economic issues may increase civic engagement.