The Social Policy Digest went online in the summer of 2003. This means that the Digest, which used to be printed as part of the Journal of Social Policy, is now only available via the web.

Three successive Labour governments have developed a range of work/family balance (WFB) policies, including child care services, leaves and flexible working hours, which have also become an increasingly coherent package. Drawing on Hall (1993), we explore the extent to which these represent a significant change at three levels: that of ideas (the goals of policy), mechanisms (the nature of the policy instruments), and settings (the fine-tuning of policy instruments). We examine how far the ideas driving the policy developments have been about the welfare of the family and its members, and the nature of the balance of continuity and change in policy instruments and settings, making some suggestions as to how this might be explained.

The past decade has been marked by the coming to prominence of social policy doctrines at the centre of which sits the idea that poverty reduction is best achieved through increased levels of labour market participation. A major reference point in the debate is the Netherlands, where a radical policy shift from passive benefit adequacy towards boosting labour market participation was initiated around the late 1980s and where it has been vigorously pursued since. The Netherlands is routinely praised for achieving a meteoric rise in employment, while maintaining extensive social protection and low levels of poverty and inequality. This article shows that unprecedented employment growth during the 1980s and 1990s went accompanied with comparatively small reductions in absolute poverty and a rise in relative poverty among the working-age population. These developments are linked to the main features of Dutch economic and social policy. The article also draws out some general lessons.

This article presents new empirical findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study of low-income working family life. It explores the experiences and perceptions of a group of children living in low-income, working, lone-mother households. Their accounts disclose the impact on children's everyday lives of their mothers' move into low-paid employment following a period out of the labour market. Children's accounts show that their mothers' move into work had brought significant economic and social change to their lives. How children experienced their mothers' employment and made sense of changes in family life was mediated by a range of different factors including their age, changes in income and security, changes in family time and family practices, child care, and their perceptions of maternal wellbeing. The findings also reveal that children, as active social agents, were engaged in a complex range of caring and coping strategies that endeavoured to ease some of the pressures that low-income working life could generate in their family lives. The article concludes with a discussion about the implications of the findings for policy, particularly in relation to the quality of social and economic support that lone mothers and their children receive.

The government has argued in various arenas that ‘active citizenship’ is one way in which young people can be effectively re-engaged with their communities, and with the political process more broadly. As part of this analysis, it has placed particular emphasis on the potential contribution of youth volunteering. However, many researchers have argued that such initiatives are essentially conservative, placing emphasis firstly on the skills and competences necessary to make a contribution to the economy rather than more innovative understandings of citizenship, and secondly on the importance of active community participation rather than an understanding of welfare rights and social citizenship. In engaging with this debate, this article draws on a study of 21 young people (aged between 16 and 18) involved in a range of different voluntary, peer-driven and socially focused extra-curricular groups in sixth-form colleges. It argues that, for the young people involved in this study, the effects of becoming involved were complex, multidirectional and, in some cases, apparently contradictory. While in some ways the activities appeared to serve essentially conservative functions (for example, by developing sympathy for those in positions of power), in other respects they engendered a much more critical stance to some aspects of the young people's worlds.

‘Community Cohesion’, and the apparent lack of it, was rapidly offered as the explanation for the 2001 disturbances across northern England, and has since become a cornerstone of government approaches to race relations policy. This article explores what Community Cohesion means to welfare practitioners in Oldham, one of the affected towns. Academic discussion of Community Cohesion has been largely hostile, focusing on the language and assumptions of the government reports. While highlighting important issues, these debates have been virtually free of empirical evidence on how Community Cohesion is actually being understood and operationalised by welfare practitioners. Drawing on in-depth research with youth workers in Oldham, I argue that the Community Cohesion analysis of the state of race relations is largely accepted, and supported, by those youth workers, and that it has enabled a significant shift in the assumptions and operations of their professional practice. Within this ‘modal shift’ in practice is a moving away from the language and assumptions of ‘anti-racism’, as it has been largely understood and operationalised by youth workers on the ground, towards what I argue can be seen as ‘critical multi-culturalism’.

As policy makers have sought to reconfigure the public–private boundaries of their pension systems, trust has become an increasingly salient issue. At stake is the attainment of desired policy outcomes regarding retirement. By what criteria, then, should the capacity of pension institutions to build and sustain trust be assessed? This article emphasises the strategic importance of institutional design in the trust process. Building on Sztompka's seminal analysis of the institutional foundations of trust, and a substantial review of the literature and survey evidence regarding public confidence in pensions, we identify, justify and give indicative operational content to six trust benchmarks. This provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research on the capacity of pension institutions to build and sustain trust.

There is increasing evidence that characteristics of place influence health and that the dimensions of rurality interlock with the process of ageing to produce a number of distinctive patterns. For the rising number of older people living in rural England, it is clear that, overall, the countryside promotes the health and wellbeing of the newly retired, fitter cohort who have access to financial and community resources. However, it carries a number of risks for elders who are frail, deprived or isolated; inequalities combine to undermine health and deepen exclusion. The efficacy of policy in taking account of the needs of rural elders is uneven. Analysis of the three most pivotal policy arenas – rurality, ageing and health, and community development – suggests that while some initiatives do promote quality of life, significant limitations remain. Further, the overarching policy response is incoherent and fragmented. Key deficits relate to resource allocation, limited recognition of rural disadvantage, and minimal incorporation of the perspectives of rural elders. That the majority of policy is rurally blind is a fundamental challenge; for rural elders to benefit from policy investment, a systemic shift is required in the mechanisms that steer its development, funding and implementation.