In this thematic issue, the authors explore family policies in seven different countries: Hungary, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Romania, Taiwan, Turkey, and the UK. A common theme is that in analysing these policies, we need to take into account more than gender, but rather we need to also consider issues such as class, poverty, religion, and the use of migrant workers. Thus, these countries have all been moving away from the traditional male breadwinner model; however, the adult-worker model is also inadequate for describing the nuances of these countries’ policies. Instead, an intersectional approach makes more sense, combining gender with the other important socioeconomic issues just mentioned.

Citizen trust is a prerequisite for the success of service provision. However, working relations are typically shaped by power asymmetries and one-sided dependencies, contributing to cautiousness towards or distrust of caseworkers (Dumbrill, 2006; de Boer and Coady, 2007). This article sheds light on the conditions and mechanisms that lead (some) citizens nevertheless to trust their caseworker. Based on thematic coding of semi-structured interviews with twenty-five German and sixteen Danish welfare users, our findings elucidate how shared problem perceptions and positive experiences in direct working relationships with committed, citizens-oriented caseworkers mitigate structural asymmetries and allow trust-building. In particular, they underscore the importance of personal bonding and positive emotions, including feelings of sympathy, or even friendship, and of being seen, understood and respected. Our article strengthens the interpersonal, micro-level perspective on trust-building in welfare service provision and provides new empirical insights into the role of personal relations in trust-adverse institutionalised contexts.

The article investigates the role and challenges of digital technology adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic through a critical human security lens and comparative analysis between South Korea and the United Kingdom. The pandemic served as motivation for the adoption of digital technology among vulnerable groups, either forcing or encouraging the necessity and utilisation of these technologies. This contributes to enhancing human security, but the persistent exclusion of certain individuals indicates the need for additional attention and policies. The case of both countries highlights the disparities in technology use due to factors like digital literacy and information security concerns, emphasising that rapid technological adoption by governments does not guarantee an effective pandemic response. The study also examines the dual role of digital technologies in enhancing and compromising human security, illustrating the importance of a balanced approach to digitalisation that includes policy support for vulnerable groups and public endorsement of new technologies.

Dementia is represented as a condition deserving urgent policy attention. In the United Kingdom (UK) substantial resources have been invested in it, including in earlier intervention and in basic science. This selective narrative review explores England’s national dementia policy and practices. It uses Bacchi’s framework of questions, grounded in a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, to understand how policy initiatives, service re-orientation and lobbying campaigns shape dementia as a problem. This ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be’ (WPR) analytic approach helps explain why prevention has often been overlooked and reminds us that not all ‘stakeholders’ have the same motivations. Our preliminary conclusions are that Bacchi’s approach does elucidate the representation of dementia and illuminates how a ‘medicalindustrial-charity-complex’ shapes the representation of dementia. Bacchi’s approach could be used to construct an agenda for change in dementia research and care.

Recently there has been increased attention in critiques of paid work and calls for less work via working-time reduction. Yet except for universal basic income and the shorter working week, few have examined how welfare states, more broadly, can effectively reduce working-time. This article argues widespread change is required to effectively reduce working-time. First, it explores how welfare states have historically affected working-time. Second, it examines universal basic income and the shorter working week as conduits for working-time reduction. Third, the article analyses alternative ways that working-time reduction has been achieved in advanced welfare states through, for example, parental leave policies, sabbaticals, and annual leave entitlements. In doing so, it concludes with a ‘life-time’ perspective, whereby the goal of less work is imagined and achieved over a whole life. This holds the best hope for a gradual, but profound, change in social and cultural norms around paid work.

This study explored the social policy context for international students in the UK and its implications for social exclusion (an inability to fully participate in society). Within a rapid review policy literature addressing international student experience, forty-two articles from the Web of Science and Social Science Research Network (SSRN) were selected through multiple screenings. Migration and education were the most explored policy areas, followed by inequalities, work, health and wellbeing, security, and housing. Results demonstrated that policy both creates barriers to inclusion (e.g. hostile environment migration/bordering practices) and supports inclusion/adaption to social exclusion-related challenges (e.g. sanctuary scholarships for forced migrants, Graduate visas). All international students to some degree lack equitable participation in wellbeing-relevant provision. Overall, policies are constructed so the state and universities can extract value from internationals without fully including them in British society. Policies abdicate responsibility for students’ inclusion, making it expensive and complicated to build a life there.

This research is focused on investigating the efficiency of Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP) expenditures of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries including institutional quality of governance. The emphasis is on the quality of governance that affects the supply and demand of employment and the ability of governments to master public spending. Using the general method of moments (GMM) for sixteen OECD countries over the 2005/2018 period, we show that Corruption Perception Index (CPI) reduced significantly the efficiency of ALMP on unemployment rate. This result is found consistent using another corruption proxy, Corruption Kaufmann Index (CKI). Moreover, our estimation suggest that the effectiveness of governance reinforces the effectiveness of ALMP.

The concept of a socially sustainable society is linked to the notion of equal access to high-quality welfare services and an equitable distribution of common resources. The rationale behind the introduction of private actors to provide welfare services is that greater choice will result in higher quality of service for individuals, achieved through a co-creation process. The purpose of this study is to examine the processes through which value is co-created when elderly are admitted to retirement homes. The study answers the following questions: (1) how do individual expectations differ between the applicants? and (2) how do the employees take the applicants’ expectations into account when allocating the resources available? This study, conducted between november and december 2014, combines surveys with elderly who apply for a retirement home and interviews with employees at the municipality. Our study show that co-creation is related to intangible aspects, pragmatic alignment in resource integration, and conflicts between interests.

The global health crisis prompted Arabian Gulf states to implement extensive social protection measures to address public health and economic challenges. This study critically examines welfare reforms enacted by six Gulf countries – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman – through the theoretical lenses of Welfare Regime Theory and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. Initially, governments temporarily expanded exclusion-based welfare systems, primarily benefiting citizens, to support broader populations, including migrant workers. However, the long-term sustainability of these expansions remains uncertain. The findings suggest that although the crisis created a temporary policy window for welfare expansion, there was no fundamental reconfiguration of these exclusionary welfare regimes. This study enhances the understanding of the adaptability of Gulf welfare states during global crises and the potential for future policy shifts.

This article stresses the need for climate adaptation to better grasp the social dynamics of vulnerability to climate change. It argues that prevailing approaches in the UK have been inattentive to the social determinants of vulnerability for ethnic and racial minorities. The article begins by setting out the ways in which adaptation is understood and interpolated across multiple levels in the policy process, before discussing why prevailing approaches struggle to recognise that certain social dynamics render some populations more vulnerable to the ongoing effects of climate change. Following this, it will focus on domains of housing and health to reinscribe vulnerability in adaptation as a multidimensional concept, something that registers differentiated levels of structured adaptive capacity by focusing on racialised communities. It concludes by elaborating ways forward in climate adaptation planning and action.

This research investigates Universal Credit (UC) claimants’ interpretation of their experiences when interacting with frontline stakeholders. Government paternalist frameworks restrict justifiable paternalistic intervention to those measures intended to correct individuals’ judgement and means to achieve their own ends, while minimising the loss of autonomy. This study is situated at the intersection of government paternalism and street-level bureaucracy literature. We highlight the need for clear government interference intentions in defining paternalism and for distinguishing between the motivations of frontline staff and overarching government policy. Our argument is that the government should assess and consider the frontline staff’s perception of what ought to be promoted, intervening only when there is a failure in the frontline staff’s approach to achieving the wellbeing of the individual as determined by the individual themselves, and where governmental judgement can achieve better outcomes for the individual.

An attractive way to address both the climate crisis and the problem of global inequality is to tax rich countries, individuals and businesses, who are responsible for the greater part of carbon emissions, and redistribute the proceeds to create carbon-neutral infrastructure and address human needs through state action (see Raworth 2017 Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Penguin Random House; Gough 2017 Heat, Need and Human Greed, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.). However the dominant value framework in which ideas about wealth, need, and redistribution are embedded centres on deservingness. This largely justifies existing poverty and wealth-holdings, making redistribution within and beyond the rich countries of the global North hard to achieve. Two developments – the ‘deliberative wave’ of citizen participation in government, and the impact of crises in nurturing prosocial values – point to a rapid and sustained value shift. This paper reviews and analyses evidence to consider the practical politics of oughnut economics.

This study attempted to determine whether or not the educational curriculum is adjusted in state primary schools to meet the educational needs of Syrian refugee children, whether in-service training related to refugee children’s education was provided, and what the educational needs of refugee students were. The sample was composed of 294 primary school teachers and 372 Syrian refugee students in Türkiye. The data were analysed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 24 and converted to percentage and frequency tables. The results indicated that the central curriculum and the teacher competencies were inadequate to meet the educational needs of the refugee children. It was also concluded that refugee students typically came from low socio-economic and educational backgrounds, however these students maintained a positive perspective toward education and were dedicated to fulfilling their student responsibilities such as attending school regularly and completing their homework. Some recommendations for future research and practices are presented.

The article studies how public policies of migrant ‘integration’ are enacted and made sense of in the street-level welfare state from the perspective of social work practitioners performing integration work and with a focus on language and language skills acquisition. It draws from twenty-seven semi-structured individual interviews and reflective discussions after service user meetings with eleven social workers and social advisors in migrant integration services conducted between 2018 and 2019 in the Helsinki capital region of Finland. Results infer ambiguous, yet persistent, ideals of monolingualism in which Finnish language skills acquisition plays a central role and linguistic diversity turns into individual lack of skills and capacities through service user responsibilisation. Yet practitioners refer to the unfeasible situations this creates for service users as well as to their own struggles as practitioners within the monolingual service system.

The following is a list of learning and research resources on topics that are central to this themed section, namely the male-breadwinner and adult worker models, and their alternatives; intersectionality; the views of employers and workplace culture; the role and influence of informal care; and the tendency toward dualisation.

Northern Ireland has been without a Childcare Strategy for more than a decade – the only region in the United Kingdom (UK) that does not have one. As a devolved responsibility, progress in childcare has been significantly limited, and there is currently no government-funded childcare provision available. This is compared to England, Scotland, and Wales, where investment to expand provision has been introduced to help parents meet the cost of childcare by providing funded entitlement. This article examines and discusses policy developments in early education and childcare in Northern Ireland and the other UK nations. It is argued that the lack of progress by the Northern Ireland Executive to develop a Childcare Strategy overlooks it’s economic and social importance and reflects how childcare continues to be underfunded and undervalued.

This study employed a person-centred approach to investigate the digital divide in South Korea and its impact on life satisfaction among individuals. Six latent profiles were identified based on the following factors: digital device literacy, social capital, and digital self-efficacy. These factors denote different levels of the digital divide, highlighting the multifaceted nature of this issue and the importance of considering multiple factors that contribute to inequality. Additionally, sociodemographic variables such as age, gender, and educational level were found to play a role in determining group membership, emphasising the need to understand the underlying causes of the divide. Variations in life satisfaction among the groups emphasise their different effects on well-being. The findings can be used to inform targeted policies and interventions to bridge the digital divide in South Korea. To that end, this study provides data for designing tailored education, social networking, and support policies for vulnerable groups.

In Canada in 2021, people with non-life-limiting health conditions and disabilities became eligible for medical assistance in dying (MAiD). New legislative safeguards include a ninety-day assessment period and a requirement that health professionals engage with the person requesting MAiD about ‘means available to relieve their suffering’ (MARS). Government communications about the MARS safeguards emphasise distinct policy objectives, that we illustrate by analysing two texts. We then report on an ongoing study with health professionals involved in MAiD. In interviews, participants described supporting patients to imagine possibilities for feeling differently, creatively devising interventions, and actively connecting patients with (and in some cases bringing about) services and resources. Drawing on literature on front-line policy making we show how discourses of expert communication, care, and advocacy animate a specific translation of the MARS safeguards, one that recognises social and relational as well as deliberative autonomy, and reflects a range of MAiD policy goals.

Current social assistance programmes in Canada and beyond have been criticised for normalising the dehumanisation of recipients through policy design and implementation. In this article we look at how exposure to a form of basic income through the Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) allowed recipients to imagine a different kind of support. We report on the findings from a study in OBIP from Hamilton, Canada, thematically analysing a subset of interviews with forty OBIP participants. We find that the higher levels of support, fewer behavioural conditions compared to social assistance, and reduced surveillance under OBIP-nurtured feelings of trust and confidence. Participants felt rehumanised as full members of society in reciprocal relationships with community and government that had been strained under previous forms of social assistance. We consider how the OBIP model provided a transformative framework for participants’ expectations for income support programmes and discuss implications for future research.