Political and administrative processes are leading to collectively undesirable and intolerable societal outcomes in the advanced liberal democracies, as policymakers seek to address social issues in the design and implementation of new social policies that actively govern conduct. Behavioural regulation is the order of the day. For scholars interested in the development of social policy and the idea of a society as a whole, it is timely to begin the revaluation of the very notion of social policy and society beyond the ‘active’ neoliberal policy paradigm. Here we are particularly concerned with the ends and means of the coercive policy instruments and the active ethical issues arising from their use.

Housing is a platform of wealth accumulation in many home-owning societies. Ownership of assets often contributes to help people build social capital, influence their social participation and helps them access increasingly privatised goods and services. Such ‘asset-based welfare’ has been fashionable in Western academic circles, considering the ways in which housing could become a real or potential welfare resource. It may not, however, be such a novel idea from an East Asian perspective since the promotion of home ownership has always been embedded in the wider context of welfare provision in many parts of the region. Despite the argument that an increasing level of home ownership could potentially compensate for the erosion of family support, the sustainability of a home-ownership-based welfare approach has been questioned. At the forefront of ‘post-growth’ societies with societal ageing, recession, housing price volatility and neoliberal policy reforms, using Japan as a case study, this article examines the reasons and conditions behind the lack of success in commonly identified strategies of asset-based welfare in a regional context. The policy-driven market failures which supersede the cultural obstacles require re-examination.

Despite the long-term strategic shift to personalisation, with its emphasis on choice and control for those who use public services, there has been relatively little policy consideration of family carers’ choice within personalisation. The relationship between carers and personalisation also remains under-researched. This article is based on a review of existing knowledge around personalisation. It shows that carer choice is highly complex, not least because of the multifaceted and paradoxical nature of the concept of choice itself. The review demonstrates that choice for carers within personalisation is no less complex and is subject to new and overlapping variables which do not necessarily lead to improved choice for carers. In light of the limited empirical evidence about carers, choice and personalisation, the introduction of the Care Act 2014, and the importance of frontline practice in securing choice for carers, recommendations are made for future research and social work policy and practice.

Elder abuse can be conceptualised as a social problem, a crime problem and a human rights issue. This article presents the findings from an evaluation of the ‘Access to Justice’ Pilot Project for victims/survivors1 of elder abuse, which was launched in 2010 as part of the Welsh Government's six-year integrated strategy for tackling domestic abuse. It was designed to address the needs of older people in domestic settings and facilitate their access to criminal and civil justice options. Between April and July 2012, case study data were obtained for 131 individuals. A total of thirty-three interviews and a focus group were conducted with service providers, potential service users and practitioners drawn from relevant statutory and third sector groups. The article explores multi-agency responses to elder abuse and addresses the victim‒perpetrator dynamic. Reactive and proactive types of perpetrator2 behaviour are identified and interdependence is described as a feature of the victim‒perpetrator relationship.

One of the central lessons taken from the work of Michael Lipsky on street level bureaucracies is that street level bureaucrats make policy. Two resulting broad public policy concerns are the impact of street level decision making on public policy and the impact on citizens’ access to public services. This article reports on a study of the views of Ontario Works’ case managers on the nature of bureaucratic discretion in the setting of a highly rule bound provincial income assistance programme in Canada. The focus of this article is on case managers’ interaction with contradictory and complex policy directives. An argument is developed that in such a restrictive policy setting, meeting the goals of unswerving policy implementation and citizen access to public services may work at cross purposes.

This article traces changes in the descriptions of entrenched social disadvantage, and changes in the way that social description is conceptualised and measured. The article is also an analysis of the importance of categories and categorisation to social policy research; an importance which is recognised relatively rarely. Its focus is on the growing importance of multiplicity as a mode for measuring and conceptualising disadvantage. It argues that multiplicity has become important in social policy, and traces distinct trends in research and policy over the last half-century, and their convergence at particular moments. The rise of multiplicity as a trope for understanding social disadvantage has the effect of rendering social problems as more ‘wicked’ and intractable than they were previously understood to be. The strengths of this are in the sophistication of theoretical, multidisciplinary conceptualisations of disadvantage and the disadvantaged. There may be costs to this, however, in policy responses to addressing people's needs.

The last twenty years have seen major international developments in welfare state support and services for children, parents and families. Increases in provision occurred within established areas such as welfare benefits, family allowances, child welfare services and maternity leave entitlements; and new ‘forms and modalities of provision’ were introduced (Daly et al., 2015: 10), in particular parental and paternity leave entitlements; welfare-to-work programmes and active labour market policies; conditional cash support schemes; in-work subsidies for low income families; childcare and early education services; earlier intervention and prevention programmes; parenting and family support services; and inter-departmental, inter-professional and inter-agency models of service provision (OECD, 2009, 2011).

This article examines how intensive family interventions in England since 1997, including the Coalition government's Troubled Families programme, are situated in a contemporary problem figuration of ‘anti-social’ or ‘troubled’ families that frames and justifies the utilisation of different models of intensive family intervention. The article explores how techniques of classification and estimation, combined with the controversial use of ‘research’ evidence in policy making, are situated within a ‘rational fiction’ that constructs ‘anti-social’ families in particular ways. The article illustrates how this problem figuration has evolved during the New Labour and Coalition administrations in England, identifying their similarities and differences. It then presents findings from a study of intensive family intervention strategies and mechanisms in a large English city to illustrate how this national level discourse and policy framework relates to developing localised practice, and the tensions and ambiguities that arise.

The policy rhetoric of the UK Coalition government's ‘Troubled Families’ initiative, and that of New Labour's earlier Respect Agenda, share an emphasis on families’ responsibilities, or rather their irresponsibility, and their financial costs to society. Giving children a chance of a better life coincides, in this framing, with reducing costs for the taxpayer. The research reported here was based on a national study of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), funded by the UK government between 2009 and 2012, beginning under New Labour, continuing over a period when the FIP programme was discontinued, and ending after the Troubled Families programme had begun. The research involved over 100 in-depth interviews with stakeholders, including service managers, family key workers, and caregivers and children in twenty families, to consider critical questions about the kinds of trouble that families experience in their lives, and how they are recognised in the policy and practice of intensive family intervention.

Drawing on a case study generated as part of a larger evaluation, this article explores engagement between one family and an ‘edge of care’ intensive family support service, within a cold climate of public spending cuts and rising numbers of children in care. The focus on engagement in the case study illustrates theories about relationship building at the ‘edge of care’: the importance of an empathic relationship; harnessing parents’ agency for change while raising child welfare concerns; allowing parents space to maintain a positive self-conception of parenthood while supporting improvements; and engagement with family practices. The case study highlights that, despite the potential disciplinary aspects of intensive family support, the parents valued the ‘edge of care’ service because it provided them with the help they felt they needed, contrasting with their prior experience of statutory child welfare agency practice.

Since 2000, the New South Wales (NSW) Government in Australia has pursued major child welfare reforms. Responding to the ‘crisis in child protection’ and informed by a public health approach, key aims were to prevent child maltreatment and promote child welfare by ‘expanding and enhancing early intervention and family services’. This article critically reviews the aims, approach and main developments in NSW. The article argues that in several respects the reforms extended and enhanced early intervention and family services in cost-effective ways but suffered from implementation problems, limitations in service developments and major reform challenges which inhibited their scope and impacts. These limitations raise critical issues about the reform framework, resource constraints and ideological influences.

This article examines developments in parenting and family support services in France. Drawing on qualitative empirical studies, the article considers two types of initiatives ‒ the Programmes for Educational Success (PRE) and parenting interventions delivered alongside child protection services. Both of these services are examples of new types of parenting and family support interventions in the French context targeted at ‘children at risk’, seeking to address and prevent problems of educational underachievement, youth offending, poor health in children and young people and child neglect and maltreatment. The article critically reviews tensions between principles of more responsive, partnership-based family support and more prescriptive parenting education and family interventions. Drawing on empirical findings, the article examines frontline practice and professional‒family relationships, highlighting the significance of ‘parental involvement’ practice and conflicting professional and parental perspectives about children's needs, family support and professional–client relationships.

This useful sources paper provides selective lists of: first, the generic and critical literature about family support; second, the UK policy and practice literature about intensive family support services; third, the international policy and practice literature about intensive family support services; and, finally, a number of web resources.