The purpose of this themed section is to bring together a set of papers that highlight children's perspectives of poverty and disadvantage. The articles selected explore the experiences, paid and unpaid resource contributions, and perspectives of children who face economic adversity in different countries across a range of diverse settings. They reveal some of the complexity of children's lives using different methodological approaches drawn from a spectrum of qualitative research with disadvantaged children that is growing and changing as it responds to new and innovative ways of engaging with children. The themed section includes findings from a qualitative longitudinal study in the UK, findings from a survey of children's views in Norway that includes a qualitative component, and snapshots across time from seven years of research with working children in Indonesia. These papers, coupled with an extensive review of the growing body of literature on children's perspectives on poverty present a valuable insight into a developing field of research.

Resilience and social exclusion are both slippery concepts. Attempting to explore the relationship between them – the challenge set for contributors to this themed section – might therefore be considered a rash undertaking. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned – theoretically, empirically and in terms of policy implications – from bringing together these two areas of investigation which have developed hitherto largely in isolation from each other.

This paper explores understandings of gender equality within the context of work/family balance strategies embedded in the European Employment Strategy (EES). The article compares developments in childcare provision with parental leave drawing the conclusion that while increasing childcare provision is a clear priority for the European Employment Strategy, parental leave and other measures aimed at balancing time spent on paid work and unpaid care are not given equal concern. Work/family balance strategies are primarily intended to facilitate the engagement of young mothers in the labour market by offering public childcare provision; this is done at the cost of not exploring other more far-reaching and complex understandings of the work/family conflict.

Ten years have passed since devolution was implemented for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This anniversary is worthy of note for all scholars of UK social welfare, not just those with a specialist interest in political reform or the ‘Celtic’ nations, because reflection on the first decade of devolution inspires a rethink of some of the basic working assumptions of social policy analysis (see below, also Mooney et al., 2006), for example the extent to which the notion of a UK welfare state remains meaningful (cf. McEwen and Parry, 2005). This themed section provides an opportunity to consider the impact of devolution on broader understandings of polity, policy and practice as well as pointing to further possible divergences in and across the UK. These are explored in relation to key areas of social welfare intervention in Scotland, focussing particularly on poverty, inequality and social justice; immigration and the experiences of labour migrants in rural areas; the use of private finance; key literature and useful sources.

The Scottish National Party led Scottish Government has identified household poverty as a key focus for its anti-poverty strategy. The government's ‘Solidarity Target’ seeks to both increase wealth and increase the share of total income gained by the bottom three deciles. The ability to demonstrate the advantages of policy divergence within Scotland, relative to the other parts of the United Kingdom, is central to the government's aim of gaining support for increased powers for the devolved government. This paper seeks to provide evidence on one aspect of the government's anti-poverty strategy: the degree to which Scotland differs from the rest of the UK over levels of entrenched poverty. The paper demonstrates that not only does Scotland have greater entrenched poverty but that the changes in mobility since the 1990s have impacted on Scotland to a lesser degree than the rest of the UK.

Recognition of the effects of social, economic, political and cultural conditions on mental health and the personal, social and economic costs of a growing global mental health crisis (WHO, 2001; EC, 2005) mean that mental health and well-being are a current feature of social policy agendas at UK, European and world levels, with debate increasingly becoming framed in human rights terms. In the UK, policy drives to address social exclusion and health inequalities as key social and economic rights issues have encompassed attention to mental health and distress (DoH, 2003; Social Exclusion Unit, 2004) and mental health has been identified as a priority area for the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (Diamond, 2007; DRC, 2007). At the European level too, rights-based social policy approaches to promoting social cohesion (European Committee for Social Cohesion, 2004) and policy directives on the ‘right to health’ (Commission of the European Communities, 2007) have been centrally concerned with mental health and well-being, and have been accompanied by a European strategy on mental health for the EU (EC, 2005). At a global level, the World Health Organisation has declared enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health to be a fundamental human right (WHO, 2006). It has launched a new appeal on mental health which draws attention to the impact of human rights violations and cites social isolation, poor quality of life, stigma and discrimination as central issues for those with mental health needs (Dhanda and Narayan, 2007; Horton, 2007; WHO, 2007).

The emphasis of this literature review is on conceptual issues rather than a review of empirical studies. The paper starts by addressing the question why the concept of resilience is particular and what value is added if such a perspective is adopted. Next, the historical context and evolvement of the research on resilience are briefly reviewed with a short overview of the range of research topics in the area. The third section discusses the definition of resilience and its main elements. Section four addresses the main criticisms of the resilience concept. Section five identifies areas for further research.

Underpinning Labour's welfare-to-work policies is an assumption that employment will benefit disadvantaged children and their families. However, the effect of low-income and unstable employment on lone mothers and their children is uncertain. This article draws on interviews with children drawn from a qualitative, longitudinal study of low-income working family life, to explore the accounts of those children whose mother's entry into the labour market was unsuccessful. The article examines how children experienced their mother's employment and the impact of ‘failed’ work transitions on their well-being and their perceptions of the value of work for them and their families.

In the context of risk and resilience, the paper attempts to integrate three strands of research: genetic and mental-health factors, the findings of cohort studies and those of other investigations of educational outcomes. A very wide range of factors, many of them related to disadvantage, bear on such outcomes, but none deterministically. Intelligence, conduct and emotional disorders are all found to influence academic achievement to varying degrees, as do a number of aspects of family, school and the wider social environment. Aspects that contribute to resilience are identified, and the paper concludes with a discussion of interventions to enhance resilience.

This historically situated, UK-based review of New Labour's human rights and mental health policy following the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) and 2007 Mental Health Act (MHA), draws on Klug's identification of three waves of human rights. These occurred around the American and French Revolutions, after World War II, and following the collapse of state communism in 1989, and the article assesses impacts on mental health policy up to and including the New Labour era. It critiques current equality and rights frameworks in mental health and indicates how they might be brought into closer alignment with third wave principles.

Drawing on current debates in social policy, this paper considers the extent to which social justice has and is informing social policy making in devolved Scotland. Relating to the work of social justice theorists Young, Fraser and Lister in particular, it critically examines some key Scottish social policy measures since 1999, considering some of the ways in which these have been constructed in terms of social justice and which make claims to the Scottish national. Through a focus on the issue of anti-poverty policies, the paper explores the ways in which the dominant policy approaches of the Scottish Government have reflected an uneven and tension-loaded balance between the enduring legacies of Scottish social democracy and the influences of neoliberal economics.

Family relations have for many years been acknowledged as having a protective impact on children's development if positive and as representing a risk factor if negative. Studies based on statistical information have demonstrated an overrepresentation of a number of family problems in low-income families. Does this image change with children themselves as informants on child–parent relationships? The article examines Norwegian children's perception of parental acceptance, support and monitoring in low-income families compared to children living in families from all income groups.

While the causes of child labour are multifaceted and complex, economic disadvantage is generally identified as an important contributing factor. Child labour is also cited as perpetuating poverty. The precise relationship between child labour and poverty is, however, contested. This paper aims to deepen understanding of the relationship between children's work and poverty by focusing on children's views and experiences. Drawing on research with children in Indonesia, this paper examines two questions. First, how do working children define and experience poverty? Second, how do working children view the relationship between their work and poverty?

This paper introduces and illustrates the value of a classification trees approach in the study of resilience. The inherently interactive nature of the resilience construct makes this approach useful. Classification trees are a person-centred approach to data analysis, which successively split the sample into pairs of increasingly homogeneous groups of individuals. We outline the approach and then illustrate using adult educational outcomes for children in the British Cohort Study of 1970 who had experienced foster care. The insights gained from the classification tree approach are contrasted with those obtained from standard regression approaches.

Human rights may be categorised as belonging to ‘three generations’: political, social and ‘solidarity’ rights. This paper considers this schema theoretically, deploying the example of the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement in Britain in support of its central claims. Psychiatric survivors comprise groups of psychiatric patients who have campaigned both for political and social rights in addition to a singular form of ‘right’, which is referred to here as ‘experiential’. The paper clarifies the meaning of the ‘experiential right’ and, drawing upon aspects of social theory, considers how it is to be understood in the context of the ‘three generations’ schema.

For a decade, Scotland has had a declining natural population, dispersed throughout a diverse geography, including remote highlands and islands, which presents a policy making context that is very different from other parts of the UK. Rural Scotland accounts for 95% of Scotland's landmass and only 18% of the population (Scottish Government 2008). In particular, the familiar challenges, presented by the combination of population ageing with below-replacement level fertility rates, have, until 2007, been reinforced by the extent of out-migration amongst people of working age. Evidence suggests that following EU enlargement in 2004, rural areas have experienced an influx of labour migrants from Central and Eastern European countries on an unprecedented scale. Whilst such large-scale migration into rural communities has provided a major challenge for public service provision and ‘social integration’, it has also addressed local labour market shortages and created opportunities for regeneration. This article explores critical questions about the role and impact of migrant labour in rural communities in Scotland and the role of agencies in addressing the needs of all rural residents.

The study examines whether social capital fosters resilience among individuals who are at a high risk of developing mental distress in adulthood. Results suggest that social capital is not associated with a reduction in the probability that high-risk individuals will experience mental distress, while one form of social capital, membership in groups and associations, appears to play a protective role among low-risk individuals. Overall, our research suggests that policies aimed at increasing social capital would not be able to reduce the gap in mental health between disadvantaged individuals and the rest of the population.

This article provides an analysis of the Scottish Government's approach to the use of private finance in public services. It examines the budgetary drivers behind the policy in Scotland and assesses its cost-efficiency. In doing so, it considers first the standard private finance initiative (PFI) model, and then turns to the ‘non-profit distributing’ (NPD) model – a variant of PFI developed in Scotland and one that is, at the time of writing, unique to the country. It concludes that, while NPD provides the Government with an important political benefit, in being seen to safeguard the ‘public interest’ while working within UK-wide budgetary constraints, the decision to continue with private finance carries a high economic cost.

This paper examines conflicts in polices in England and Wales pertaining to the demand for alternative, non-medical crisis support for those experiencing ‘psychosis’. We examine the limitations of current treatment, policy and legislative frameworks in supporting these demands. In particular, we focus on the limitations of prevailing conceptualisations of ‘human rights’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘recovery’. These concepts, we argue, are embedded within a broader treatment framework which renders medication as mandatory and all other treatment modalities as inherently subsidiary, and a broader policy framework which is complicit with bio-medical orthodoxies of ‘mental illness’ and prioritises treatment compliance and compulsion. Therefore, in order to advance a ‘human rights’ approach to mental health policy, we argue that reigning orthodoxies inherent within policy and practice must be explicitly challenged to open up spaces for the availability of alternatives.

The purpose of this review is to examine agency in the worldwide literature on children's perspectives on poverty. By definition, asking children about their lives and responses to living in poverty assumes that they are competent actors – this is one of the positive features of the new and burgeoning literature on children's perspectives. Findings from research in poorer and richer countries are summarised and compared, and children's agency is categorised using frameworks proposed by Ruth Lister and John Micklewright into a number of different types, including self-exclusion, exclusion of children by other children, ‘getting by’, ‘getting (back) at’, ‘getting out’, and ‘getting organised’. The review concludes with suggestions on where more research is needed on children's agency in the context of poverty.