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.

Distributive justice is ordinarily calibrated in monetary terms. But money is not the only resource that matters to people. Talk of the ‘work−life balance’ points to another: time. Control over one's time, the capacity to spend it as one wishes, is another important resource; and its distribution raises another important aspect of justice. Here I describe a new method of distinguishing how much time one has discretionary control over, net of the amount it is necessary to spend in certain ways given one's circumstances. To draw out the distributive-justice implications of these calculations, I contrast the most-to-least privileged, in terms of discretionary time: a person in a dual-earner couple with no children, versus a lone mother. The magnitude of the gap between the discretionary time enjoyed by the best and worst is a measure of temporal injustice. That gap is substantially larger in some countries (such as the US and Australia) than in others (such as Finland and Sweden). Conventional welfare-state interventions – tax and transfer systems, support for child care – contribute pretty similarly to reducing that particular gap across all the countries examined. Differing practices surrounding the dissolution of marriages with children potentially makes a much bigger difference. Differing labour-market policies might make a similarly large difference yet again.

This article discusses reforms of the design of the organisational arena for policy implementation and service provision in European welfare states, focusing on the policy areas of income protection and activation. First, it discusses and compares recent reform programmes in four countries: the UK, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The comparison shows that these reforms share some common characteristics: the establishment of one-stop agencies, decentralisation, the introduction of quasi-markets for the provision of activation services, a reduction of the role and influence of social partners and the use of new public management instruments in managing public agencies. Secondly, the article argues that these reforms are not merely reflecting new ways of thinking about organising the public sector and providing public services, but should also be interpreted as responses to policy administration and implementation problems arising in the process of making welfare states more activating.

Introducing individual savings accounts into the system of social security may be an innovative way to reorganise European social security systems. This article examines the merits and drawbacks of this modernisation strategy using the Transitional Labour Market approach as a frame of reference. On the basis of normative criteria derived from this approach, we perform an evaluation of the Dutch life-course scheme (‘Levensloopregeling’). This scheme is a unique and pioneering arrangement that offers employees a fiscally facilitated option to save money to finance periods of unpaid leave. Following the assessment of the Dutch case, we identify several pitfalls of reforms based on individual savings accounts. Finally, we put forward some proposals to overcome these shortcomings.

The recent German welfare state reform with the introduction of Social Code II has created a complex situation for the labour market integration of long-term unemployed people with disabilities. A range of social laws with differing underlying principles is now applicable. In this article, we examine the effects that the implementation of this social code has on long-term unemployed people with disabilities. We show that their integration patterns changed. This is due to the building of new institutions responsible for labour market integration, followed by a temporary destabilisation of work routines at the operational level. Additionally, more persistent consequences occur because the inconsistencies of the relevant laws are creating an area of conflict, which is increasing the risk of marginalising people with disabilities in terms of labour market integration.

A comparison of unemployment rates in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, the UK and the United States suggests poor performance by the German labour market. The present study endeavours to show that a more sophisticated picture of unemployment can be drawn by taking into account additional forms of non-employment (such as incapacity, retirement or labour reserve). For this purpose, data from the ‘European Social Survey’ (ESS) and the survey ‘Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy’ collected in 2004 and 2005 have been analysed. While ‘unemployment’ plays a dominant role in Germany, people with comparable demographic characteristics and similar health status are more likely to identify themselves as ‘permanently sick or disabled’ and hence are classified thus in other countries. The results of this study underline that an international comparison of labour market performance, particularly a comparison of the effectiveness of labour market and social policy reforms, should not rely only on employment and unemployment rates. Taking alternate forms of non-employment into account can enhance one's knowledge and understanding of the functional differences between the labour markets in Europe and the United States.

This article investigates the ethnic patterning of exit from means-tested benefits in a UK town. Lone parents in the UK face high risks of poverty and high rates of receipt of means-tested, out-of-work benefits. There has been extensive policy concern with lone parents' poverty and with potential ‘welfare dependency’. Investigation of welfare dynamics has unpacked the notion of welfare dependency, and has stimulated policy to better understand the factors associated with longer rather than shorter durations. However, within this analysis, there has been little attention paid to ethnicity. This is despite the fact that the extensive literature on the UK's minority ethnic groups has emphasised diversity in both rates of lone parenthood and risks of poverty. To date we have little understanding of ethnic variation in lone parents' welfare dynamics. Using a data set drawn from administrative records, this article analyses the chances of leaving means-tested benefit for a set of lone mothers in a single town, exploring whether there is variation by ethnic group. We find that, controlling for basic demographic characteristics, there is little evidence to suggest that ethnicity affects the chances of benefit exit, even between groups where rates of lone parenthood are very different.

This article examines 14 judgments over a ten-year period of challenge to the removal of welfare support from ‘late claimers’ for asylum. The case history spans a period of transition in Britain from the general principles of the Common Law to the implementation of the Human Rights Act (HRA) (Home Office, 1998), but indeterminacy is to the fore in such a developing area of law, allowing considerable scope for judicial interpretation. The focus of this article is therefore the cumulative dynamic of the judgments, their strategic delivery and their policy impact. The analysis demonstrates the force of general principles in yielding a solution, while also providing evidence of judgment as political dialogue over competing visions of society.

Volunteering is perceived as important for creating social capital and civil society, and therefore has become a fundamental part of social policies across most Western countries. In this article, we examine the involvement of governments, corporations and educational institutes in encouraging volunteering, and pinpoint their role in developing volunteering circles. Based on essential concepts presented here (volunteerability and recruitability), we develop the third-party model, and show how third parties get involved. We identify new ways in which these parties can enhance volunteering, and discuss their impact on volunteerability and recruitability. The potential negative impacts of volunteerism and ways in which these can be ameliorated are also acknowledged. Finally, issues that arise due to such involvement are also discussed, thereby offering an important contribution to social policy research in the area of volunteerism.