The Social Policy Digest went online in May 2002, and since then has become a major resource on UK social policy issues. By the end of 2008 it contained well over 20,000 entries, covering policy developments and research findings across the whole range of social policy fields.

The Social Policy Digest went online in 2002, and since then has developed into a major web-based resource on UK social policy issues. By the end of 2008 it contained over 22,000 entries, covering policy developments and research findings across the whole range of social policy fields.

The Social Policy Digest went online in 2002, and since then has developed into a major web-based resource on UK social policy issues. By the end of 2008 it contained over 22,000 entries, covering policy developments and research findings across the whole range of social policy fields.

The Social Policy Digest went online in 2002, and since then has developed into a major web-based resource on UK social policy issues. By the end of 2008 it contained over 22,000 entries, covering policy developments and research findings across the whole range of social policy fields.

This paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

This article revisits Titmuss's essay on the Social Divisions of Welfare (SDW) and reflects on its continuing relevance. Titmuss first presented the SDW in an Eleanor Rathbone Memorial lecture at Birmingham University in 1955, but it is best known from his Essays on the Welfare State published in 1958. Titmuss challenged the stereotype of ‘welfare’ as simply public welfare dependency and illustrated the different elements of the SDW. Some limitations of Titmuss's approach are identified, notably in relation to how he saw dependency arising, and revisions offered. The article provides a number of examples from the UK but also highlights some significant parallels with the SDW in the USA and Australia, the so-called ‘liberal welfare regimes’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Finally, it is claimed that 50 years on we need to be reminded of the insights and analytical potential of Titmuss's essay.

Gordon Brown has eagerly lauded his fellow Kirkcaldy citizen, Adam Smith, as his main policy inspiration. This article tests the rigour of such a claim by matching Brown's promotion of Smithian ‘sympathy’ as the centrepiece of his programme for government with the changes introduced by his Treasury to the British welfare model. In the 1970s, Thomas Wilson showed that the traditions of the post-war British welfare state were compatible with a modified form of Smithian sympathy socialised at the level of the state. New Labour has set about reforming the welfare model with respect to both its underlying institutions and the basic subjectivities of its recipients. I show that Brown's substantive preference for an asset-based system of welfare moves those subjectivities away from the ‘relational self’ of Smithian sympathy and towards a much more ‘autonomous self’. Consequently, I conclude that it is stretching Smith's concept of sympathy too far, even in a modified socialised form, to associate it with New Labour's asset-based system of welfare.

Uncovering old or historical family secrets has become an enjoyable pastime yet in contemporary families the keeping of secrets, especially those relating to reproduction and paternity, is seen increasingly as undesirable. This article explores these issues and the growing tendency for family law and policy to favour exposing genetic truths – seeing this form of scientific veracity as crucial to child welfare and equality. The article explores the changing contexts of family secrets (using data drawn from the Mass Observation Archive) and seeks to locate these secrets in their cultural and historical context. An argument against imposing a simple solution (in the form of genetic truth) onto complex relationships is pursued.

The welfare state faces a number of challenges. Recent reforms in the UK appear broadly successful in attaining targets and improving cost-efficiency, but are nonetheless confronted by public disquiet and unease. This article argues that one difficulty with the new directions in policy is that they rest on a particular and limited understanding of agency. Reformers tend to operate within a theoretical framework that understands behaviour as driven by individual and predominantly rational incentives and pays little attention to the expressive and normative aspects of social action. The problems that arise in these areas when a competitive market logic is applied in social provision tend not to be recognised. Such a logic may contradict established values of social care and commitment to user interests. A qualitative survey of 48 members of the general public is used to examine perceptions of and responses to the NHS reforms, and to show how public discourse in this area is at variance with the instrumental and individual assumptions of policy-makers. The result is that the reform programme damages the legitimacy of the service and that those responsible for the new policies fail to recognise that the individual instrumental agenda is eroding public trust.

This article argues that existing typologies on production and welfare regimes should be combined into a typology unifying the study of production and distribution in advanced capitalist countries. The article utilises a principal component and cluster analysis to show that such a typology indeed reflects the empirical diversity of countries. This is further illustrated by a brief literature review of different typologies. It is then shown how the integration of the two approaches helps to resolve problems addressed in the new literature on the varieties of capitalism approach, notably how welfare arrangements relate to production systems. Thereby, the relevance of an integrated typology for policy-makers in the fields of welfare and production will be illustrated. Lastly, some thoughts follow on how an integrated typology allows for a perspective that explains the development of various welfare and production regimes based on the common historical heritage of families of nations.

Nowadays many more young children experience non-maternal childcare than in the past. From a theoretical perspective, the effect this may have on their cognitive and behavioural development is unclear. This paper uses data from the UK for a sample of children in the Millennium Cohort Study, whose mothers were working when they were nine months old, to test how different forms of childcare at an early age play a role in the production of cognitive skills and the behavioural development of young children (measured at age three). The results show that formal group care is positively associated with school readiness test scores. But, unlike previous research, we find no association between formal group care and problem behaviour. Grandparent care, which has received negative attention in the past, is shown to be positively associated with vocabulary test scores, but also positively related to problem behavioural scores.

Improving children's lives is high on the UK policy agenda. In this study for a recent birth cohort of UK children we examine how three aspects of parental resources – income, mother's mental well-being and family status – in early childhood enhance or compromise their children's cognitive and behavioural development. As well as examining how these three aspects of parental resources separately and jointly affect children's well-being, we also enquire whether persistent poverty or persistent maternal depression are more deleterious for children's current well-being than periodic episodes of poverty and depression. We find strong associations between poverty and young children's intellectual and behavioural development, and persistent poverty was found to be particularly important in relation to children's cognitive development. Maternal depression (net of other factors) was more weakly related to cognitive development but strongly related to whether children were exhibiting behaviour problems, and persistent depression amplified the situation. Family status, net of other factors (most noticeably poverty), was only weakly associated with children's development.

This article explores support services for teenage mothers. It draws upon empirical evidence from a wider study into the experiences of teenage mothers in the Midlands area of the UK, in which 20 young women who had given birth as teenagers participated in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of support services. The findings are used to make suggestions as to policy regarding support for teenage mothers, arguing that the diverse nature of support needs must be taken into account when designing support services. The article concludes that more attention should be paid to the possibilities of the group mode of support, rather than focusing on support delivered on a one-to-one basis, and, in addition, the functions of support services, beyond encouraging re-engagement in education, employment and training, need to be valued more significantly.

Various authors point to the connection between public perceptions of poverty and institutionalised strategies of dealing with the poor. The way the general public perceives the poor, and especially the causes of poverty, is generally assumed to have a profound influence on the legitimacy of anti-poverty policies. Yet studies on popular perceptions of and attributions for poverty are relatively infrequent. Moreover, a considerable share of existing research appears conceptually and/or methodologically inadequate. This article provides a critical review of existing literature that is interwoven into the discussion of the two most common approaches to studying lay poverty attributions: the factor analytical approach and the forced-choice-question approach. With respect to the latter, we present an empirical analysis and interpretation of the four response categories that constitute the core of the forced-choice question included in Eurobarometer.

The academic literature on incapacity benefits in Britain is dominated by debates about ‘hidden unemployment’, particularly in relation to working-age men in the industrial and former coalmining areas. Although women account for two-fifths of all claimants, they have been given relatively little attention in the literature on incapacity benefits. This article draws on a representative survey of recent claimants of Incapacity Benefit (IB) in Britain to compare the situation of men and women aged under 60. It shows that there are significant differences in their characteristics and circumstances and in their routes onto this benefit. It is concluded that academic debates in Britain need to take into account the differences between women and men in order to reach a more complete understanding of the role of IB in the post-industrial economy.

This article suggests that an alternative to a social rights of citizenship approach to comparing welfare states is to use disaggregated programme expenditure data to identify the diverse spending priorities of different types of welfare state. An initial descriptive analysis shows that four major categories of social spending (cash spending on older people and those of working age; service spending on health and for other purposes) are almost entirely unrelated to one another and that different welfare state regimes or families of nations exhibit quite different patterns of spending. The article proceeds to demonstrate that both the determinants and the outcomes of these different categories of spending also differ quite radically. In policy terms, most importantly, the article shows that cross-national differences in poverty and inequality among advanced nations are to a very large degree a function of the extent of cash spending on programmes catering to the welfare needs of those of working age.

The vetting and barring scheme known as the POVA (Protection of Vulnerable Adults) List established in England and Wales by the Care Standards Act (2000) was intended to provide greater assurance about the quality of social care for adults. This article discusses referrals to the POVA List in the period 21 May 2004 to 17 November 2006, details of which were made available to the researchers. These comprised 5,294 cases. Further data relating to the investigation process were provided through drawing on all material supplied in a purposively selected sample of 298 referrals. These have been analysed and findings are reported here in respect of referrals and prior disciplinary action, interactions with local and national agencies and the involvement of the police. What happened to the referrals and the length of time for decisions about Listing are also reported. The article concludes with some policy recommendations for the future of the scheme and sets this in the context of regulation.

Scholarship in social policy in recent years has examined how policy positions users in a range of roles, particularly most recently in terms of their roles as ‘choosers’ through the increased use of markets in welfare. This article considers how choice policies have positioned users since the creation of the modern welfare state, presenting a history of choice policies, but also a comparative examination of how they have differed in the UK between housing, education and healthcare. It concludes by suggesting that although approaches to choice vary considerably between the three public services examined, policy-makers often appear unaware of these differences, leading to mistaken assumptions that policies can be transferred or transplanted unproblematically.

Alford's theory of structural interests has been used as a framework within which to analyse health systems across the world. However, authors have often been uncritical in their acceptance of Alford's original analytic categories. In this article we use data from a detailed qualitative study of the introduction of Practice Based Commissioning in the UK NHS to interrogate Alford's work more critically. Disrupting Alford's original categories of ‘professional monopolisers’ as dominant interests, challenged by management ‘corporate rationalisers’, we suggest that the new structures established in the NHS since 2002 systematically privilege an interest that we call ‘corporate monopolisers’, and that this is under challenge from ‘professional rationalisers’.

The outcomes for children in public care are generally considered to be poor. This has contributed to a focus on reducing the number of children in care: a goal that is made explicit in the provisions of the current Children and Young Persons Bill. Yet while children in care do less well than most children on a range of measures, such comparisons do not disentangle the extent to which these difficulties pre-dated care and the specific impact of care on child welfare. This article explores the specific impact of care through a review of British research since 1991 that provides data on changes in child welfare over time for children in care. Only 12 studies were identified, indicating a lack of research in this important area. The studies consistently found that children entering care tended to have serious problems but that in general their welfare improved over time. This finding is consistent with the international literature. It has important policy implications. Most significantly it suggests that attempts to reduce the use of public care are misguided, and may place more children at risk of serious harm. Instead, it is argued that England and Wales should move toward a Scandinavian system of public care, in which care is seen as a form of family support and is provided for more rather than fewer children and families.