In comparative welfare state analyses, cross-national differences have often been explained both by the specific profiles of welfare state institutions and the constellations of social actors. However, the way in which cultural differences also contribute to the explanation is often ignored, or at least treated as a more marginal issue. The aim of this article is to reflect on the relationship between culture and welfare state policies, and consider how it might be analysed in a comparative perspective. A theoretical framework for analysis is introduced in which the relationship of culture and welfare state policies is conceptualised as a complex, multi-level relationship which is embedded in the specific context of a particular society and can develop in contradictory ways.

Individuals and families may encounter difficulty making ends meet on many dimensions and there are a large number of measures designed to identify this group. In general, there is agreement that all of the approaches capture different pieces of the puzzle, while no single indicator can yield a complete picture. In an attempt to understand this multidimensional aspect of poverty, several measures are examined in this article: the official US poverty measure, a relative poverty measure, an experimental measure following recommendations of the US National Academy of Sciences, an index of material hardship, a measure of household debt, and responses to a question about inability to meet expenses. This study uses the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The SIPP is a longitudinal survey that allows us to examine all of these various indicators for the same people over the period from 1996 to 1998. The study uses regression analysis to assess the relationship between and among the various indicators of economic hardship.

Rights and responsibilities lie at the heart of New Labour's social policies. Children and young people present a challenge to the social contractual model of responsibility evident in policy spheres. Government is torn between the notion that children are dependent on parents for well-being, and the idea that individuals should take responsibility for their own actions. The article examines the problem of childhood in social policy through an examination of the conflicting messages emerging out of family policy and anti-social behaviour policies. Policy discourses are then critically evaluated with reference to a qualitative study of children's ideas about responsibility. The authors suggest that policies relating to children can learn from children's private experience of responsibility in the home, and from the complex and rich ways in which children understand the moral and relational components of responsibility.

This article discusses the potential of family group conferences to act as a liberating intervention for families traditionally controlled by the state welfare system. Family group conferences are interventions designed to remove control of decision making from professionals and allow family groups to make decisions about the welfare of one or more of their members. Using data from a qualitative evaluation of family group conferences in Wales, this article examines ‘imposed empowerment’ and social control, and the feasibility of treating ‘the family’ as a unit for state intervention. The authors propose that the family group conference approach not only has the potential to shift the balance of power between the state and client families, but that it may have the potential to democratise decision making within families. However, it is also noted that such interventions can be seen to be maintaining social control through subtle and possibly unintentional means. The article engages with sociological research and theory on democracy in the family.

This article is concerned with explaining the relatively disappointing results of the Labour government's National Childcare Strategy to date, with particular emphasis on the role of the EYDCPs (Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships). After briefly describing and assessing childcare policy under Labour, it suggests that limited outcomes partly reflect the constraining legacy of previous policy and provision, but must also be related to the way childcare has fitted into the wider government agenda, and ‘third way’ discourse. This has affected not only policy content but the chosen means of implementation. In this context the article focuses in particular on the local EYDCPs: both their rationale and the part they have played in practice.

Despite improvements in childcare provision since the implementation of the National Childcare Strategy in England in 1998, little is known about the practicalities of managing childcare and employment from a parental perspective. It is not recognised that dependent children have to be physically transported from home to the place of care-education, and if transported by the parent the latter usually also has to travel to their workplace in a different location. This article discusses the complexity involved in coordinating these events, the barriers posed to maternal employment, and the strategies used by working parents to overcome the difficulties. It presents an analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 40 mothers in a middle-sized city in England. The analysis exposes the additional work involved in temporally, spatially and physically coordinating childcare, education and work. It indicates that early education related to children's ages might have a greater influence on coordination difficulties, and therefore maternal employment, than the numbers of children in a family per se. The article argues that policy makers need to have a greater regard for the time and space dimensions attached to coordination, the coordination support provided by fathers and others (as opposed to childcare), transport issues and the need for fully integrated early years provision in all neighbourhoods.

This article presents a comparative child-focused analysis of child support policies in the UK and Australia (an influential forerunner to the development of the UK child support system). Using a child-focused approach that places the best interests of children at the centre of the inquiry, it assesses how children have fared in each country in relation to three key criteria: first, the extent to which child support policies have succeeded in addressing the issue of child poverty; second, how child support policies have influenced the degree of conflict that children can experience between their separated parents; and, third, how equitable child support policies are in relation to children in ‘first’ and ‘second’ families. By focusing solely on children's wellbeing, the article shows how competing interests and social and political pressures can influence and distort policy outcomes, perversely affecting children's lives. The article concludes that child support policies in both countries have failed in several critical areas to put children's best interests first. In response to issues and concerns raised by using a child-focused approach, key reforms to the UK child support system are proposed.