The population of refugees in the UK is expanding and will expand further given the UK Government's response to the European refugee crisis. This paper breaks new ground by undertaking a gender analysis of integration outcomes across a range of areas, namely social networks, language proficiency, health, education, employment and housing, that are highly relevant for social policy. Using the UK's only longitudinal survey on refugees, we conduct secondary data analysis to examine the factors associated with integration outcomes. We find significant gender differences in language, self-reported health, ability to budget for household expenses and access to formal social networks and quality housing, with women generally faring worse than men and some inequalities enduring or intensifying over time. We call for the recording of refugee outcomes in institutional monitoring data to enable inequalities to be identified and addressed. The findings also enable the identification of social policy areas in which a gender sensitive approach might be necessary.

Insights from experimental research in the behavioural sciences offer a powerful impetus to reject the new paternalist approach to social policy. The findings from psychology, behavioural economics and behavioural finance, concerning decision-making by people experiencing poverty, point to the importance of alleviating material hardship by improving the social safety net, rather than trying to remedy the character of individuals through welfare conditionality. Thus far, the behavioural sciences’ usefulness as an intellectual weapon against punitive welfare reform has been underappreciated. This is partly due to underappreciation of the considerable contrast between the libertarian paternalism advocated by some behavioural scientists, which provides a rationale for governments to nudge citizens, and Lawrence Mead's new paternalism, which emphasises the personal responsibility of the poor for their circumstances. More importantly the disproportionate attention given to nudge has inhibited recognition that the behavioural research on poverty can be used to argue for more ambitious policy approaches which seek to transform behaviour in more ethical ways.

In 2009, the UK government emphasised that it was ‘deeply committed’ to the maintenance of the state's social union, embodied in a single social security system. Five years later, the future of this social union appeared less certain than at any time since the 1920s. Dissatisfaction with the ‘welfare reform’ agenda of the coalition government was a driver of support for Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum campaign. Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Assembly failed to pass legislation to mirror the Welfare Reform Act 2012, normally a formality due to the convention of parity in social security. Despite Westminster's subsequent extension of the 2012 reforms to the region, divergence in secondary legislation and practice remains likely. This article draws on the findings of qualitative interviews with politicians and civil servants in both regions during a period covering the conclusion of the Smith Commission's work on the future of Scottish devolution and the height of a political impasse over Northern Ireland's Welfare Reform Bill that threatened a constitutional crisis. It considers the extent to which steps towards divergence in the two devolved regions have altered the UK's social union and to which the two processes have influenced one another.

In countries that have experienced decentralisation processes, the role that central and sub-national authorities play in the governance of some social policies may vary considerably across regions. In Italy, for instance, whereas some regions (and municipalities) have been very active in financing social assistance programmes, others still overwhelmingly rely on resources directly allocated by the central government. This indicates that, in a ‘regionalised’ system, the development of a sub-national social dimension is not a territorially homogeneous phenomenon. Interestingly, cross-regional variation is mainly explained by differences in the strength of regionalist parties. The share of total social assistance spending allocated by sub-national authorities has increased significantly in those areas of the country where regionalist parties are stronger and does not seem to depend on ideological shifts on the left-right spectrum. Surprisingly, the positive effect of regional economic development on sub-national spending is not as strong as expected. On the other hand, female employment and population ageing seem to explain part of territorial divergence, the former having a positive effect and the latter a negative one on the dependent variable.

With the continued implementation of the personalisation policy, Personal Budgets (PBs) have moved to the mainstream in adult social care in England. The relationship between the policy goals of personalisation and safeguarding is contentious. Some have argued that PBs have the potential to empower recipients, while others believe PBs, especially Direct Payments, might increase the risk of abuse.

This paper provides empirical evidence about levels of uptake of PBs and safeguarding referrals in England based on in-depth analysis of national data at aggregate, local council level in England, covering 152 Councils. This is complemented by analysis of 2,209 individual referral records obtained from three purposively selected study sites. The aim is to explore whether available data could provide evidence of association between the uptake of PBs and safeguarding referrals. Analysis of the national dataset found no significant relationships between PB uptake and the level and type of alleged abuse. However, analysis of individual-level referral data, from the three selected sites did find some significant associations particularly with financial abuse; and found the main perpetrators of the alleged abuse to be home-care employees. The findings are discussed within the context of current policy and practice.

How does the rising ‘regulatory welfare state’ address social policy concerns in pension markets? This study examines this question by comparing the regulatory responses to high charges paid by low-income workers in pension markets in the UK and Israel. In the UK, with the recognition that the market would not cater to low-income workers, the regulatory response was the creation of a publicly operated low-cost pension fund (NEST), a ‘public option’ within the market. This allowed low-income workers access to a low level of charges, previously reserved for high-income and organised workers. In Israel, regulation sought to empower consumers, while providing minimal social protection by capping pension charges at a relatively high level, thereby leaving most of the responsibility for reducing the charges with the individual saver. By comparing these two cases, the article develops an analytical framework for the study of the regulatory welfare state, making two contributions. First, it highlights different types of regulatory citizenship: minimal regulatory social protection as opposed to a more egalitarian approach. Second, it identifies an overlooked regulatory welfare state strategy: creating ‘public option’ arrangements, whereby a state-run (but not funded) service operates within the market.

Provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in England is highly marketised. Since 2010, when the Labour Party lost power to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition, followed by a Conservative victory in 2015, there has been a strong austerity agenda. It is therefore surprising that ECEC has continued to be supported and expanded. However, we show that policies to address the three key issues of availability, affordability and quality have undergone significant incremental change in response to shifting emphases between the two main goals of increasing children's development and mothers' employment, together with a much firmer orientation towards the importance of growing the childcare market.

The distinctive character of the unemployment policies overhaul, known as the ‘activation turn’ of the 1990s, was that OECD governments intensified coercion against unemployed individuals while relaxing their commitment to ensuring full employment. By now supply-side activation policies have been tested long enough to permit conclusive evaluations, and the article surveys the body of empirical assessments to determine the achievements of the activation turn. The implementation of welfare-to-work policies has not resulted in bringing down the rates of unemployment (independently of the business cycle), combating long-term unemployment, reducing (in-work) poverty or empowering jobseekers as consumers of public services, which were all goals of the reformed ‘activating state’. Instead, activation has been working as a mechanism of entrapment at the margins of liberalised labour markets by dint of its complementarity with employer-centred flexibility. The activation turn has thus failed to achieve its direct labour market and social objectives. However, it has produced pronounced indirect negative effects in the labour market, and its social impact has been regressive and repressive, as anticipated in normative and political-economic critiques of the rising ‘workfare state’.

This paper examines the possibility that life-long learning promotes intergenerational class mobility. The following two research questions are asked. Is it the case that further education provides individuals coming from less advantaged origins with a second chance to improve on their educational attainment? Is it the case that the returns to further qualifications, in terms of chances of upward class career mobility, are greater for children from less advantaged backgrounds than for children from more advantaged backgrounds? The analyses – that are based on the complete educational and class histories of men and women in a British birth cohort – mainly produce negative findings. Children coming from managerial and professional backgrounds seem to benefit most from further education. More specifically, further education appears to be an effective means of career advancement for individuals of managerial and professional origins who start out in their working lives in relatively low-level class positions. Via further education they can increase or update their qualifications, and in turn enhance their chances of being counter-mobile back to their class of origin. Overall, based on the findings of this paper, we can conclude that qualifications attained through life-long learning primarily serve to maintain, rather than to narrow, inequalities attached to social origins in Britain.