Throughout the years, social policy scholars have advanced a multi-level perspective of non-take-up, viewing it as is a complex process shaped by a broad range of interacting barriers and actors. However, a comparatively small amount of that scholarship has addressed the key role of take-up agents: professionals or semi-professionals who actively help clients realise their welfare rights. Moreover, most of this scant literature has tended to focus on the agents’ impact rather than on their role and practices. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Israeli take-up agents from the public, business, and non-profit sectors, this study seeks to understand better the work of take-up agents in realising their clients’ welfare rights. Our findings show that in order to pass their clients through the gateways of welfare, agents use four keys: knowledge, networking, emotions, and power. The meaning of these keys and related practices is discussed.

Academic debate about social isolation and loneliness, and their adverse health and well-being implications, has resulted in many policy and programme interventions directed towards reducing both, especially among older people. However, definitions of the two concepts, their measurement, and the relationship between the two are not clearly articulated. This article redresses this and draws on theoretical constructs adapted from symbolic interactionism, together with the Good Relations Measurement Framework, developed for the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK, to challenge the way in which social isolation and loneliness are currently understood. It argues for a need to understand experiences of social relationships, particularly those which facilitate meaningful interaction, suggesting that opportunities and barriers to meaningful interaction are determined by wider societal issues. This is set out in a new conceptual framework which can be applied across the life course and facilitates a new discourse for understanding these challenging concepts.

This article analyses local care policies through the lens of the feminist ethics of care. The focus is on the normative understandings regarding care that emerge in local care strategy documents and how these understandings relate with the concept of ‘responsibility’. In this article, strategies published by the municipality of Jyväskylä, Finland, between the years 2008 and 2016, are analysed using Trace analysis. The research questions are: How is the division of responsibility regarding care among different actors constructed in the strategies? How do the roles assigned to these different actors accord with the principles of ethics of care? The findings show that the documents emphasise individual responsibility in managing risks related to old age, as the norms of local societal institutions are largely detached from the principles of ethics of care. The analysis also reveals the absence of gender and human frailty from the care strategy documents. Rethinking the strategies through the lens of the ethic of care would mean reconceptualising responsibility as relational.

Active labour market policy (ALMP) has emerged as a major topic of inquiry among comparative scholars in recent decades, alongside other social investments. However, few conclusive results have been produced regarding the political explanations of these policies, and not least the role of partisan politics. To help remedy this problem, this article proposes a new understanding of ALMP as a profoundly versatile set of ‘multi-purpose tools’ that policymakers across the political spectrum can use as a means to very different distributional ends. Specifically, it highlights how ALMP programmes vary in terms of 1) their target groups, 2) their intended labour market outcomes, and 3) their modes of production in politically salient ways. Informed by the new framework and by recent research, the article then develops a refined theory about how governments with different left–right placement, operating under economic and institutional constraints, affect ALMP development in different directions.

The Care Act 2014 gave local authorities in England broad duties around wellbeing, and responsibility to ensure the availability of good quality, personalised social care and support services for people who need them. These responsibilities are for all people needing support, whether that is publicly or privately funded. In exercising their duties, councils have a responsibility for ‘market-shaping’: that is, understanding the supply and demand for care, and the types of services and support needed now and in the future, and steering the market accordingly. Changes to the implementation of the Care Act removed some of the levers that might have brought self-funders into the mainstream of local authority responsibilities. This article draws on sixty-four qualitative interviews undertaken as part of a larger study on market-shaping and personalisation of care, and reflects on the experience of self-funders and the approach to them adopted by local authorities and provider organisations. The findings indicate that self-funders are still largely bystanders to local authority market shaping strategies, despite being both impacted by those strategies and significantly influencing the markets in which they operate.

The policy drive to support carers is a longstanding national and international priority. Research about the design and delivery of support for carers is critical to the underpinning evidence base. Through a timely exploration of a third sector perspective, the UK-based study discussed in this article provides insights into approaches to, and the commissioning of, support for older carers and carers of people with dementia. The study highlights the importance of: embedding carers’ perspectives in service developments; the provision of both generic and targeted support which adopts a nuanced and tailored approach; titrating the delivery of information and advice at a pace to match carers’ needs; capturing quantitative and qualitative dimensions in service evaluation; and increased quantity and longevity of funding. Such insights not only complement existing research but are also generalisable to other countries at a similar stage in the development of carer support.

This article describes the social care funding and delivery arrangements of a varied selection of developed countries, focusing on long-term care of older people. International evidence and latest reforms can inform the debate as countries struggle economically. Some have opted for mandatory social insurance that provides universal coverage. A premium is paid and if the insured individual or relatives require support, they are entitled to it. Others opted for a similar universal system but with earmarked taxation, while others fund their social care entirely from general taxation. Many chose a safety-net system in which benefits are means-tested leaving wealthier individuals to secure private arrangements of care. Within the UK, the level of support varies as Scotland provides personal care free of charge, being more generous than England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is no “one solution”, but understanding different options can help in the discussion of current and future reforms.

Population ageing and international migration are two of the major societal trends challenging European elderly care regimes at present. Virtually no research has addressed how public discourses about the implications of these trends for elderly care are shaped in different countries. This article addresses this knowledge gap, examining how Swedish daily newspaper (SvD and DN) reporting on elderly care between 1995 and 2017 (N=370) depicts the impact of increased ethno-cultural diversity on this sector. Through content analysis, this article brings attention to the representations of migrants and culture that this reporting has deployed, and the rhetorical practices that the reporting has relied on (i.e. genre stratification, hegemonisation, homogenisation, normative referencing and idealisation/ diminishment). The article exposes how the ‘Othering’ of migrants is accomplished in Sweden’s daily newspaper reporting on elderly care, and problematizes the ethea of inclusiveness and equality of care with which we have come to associate this welfare sector.

Extra care housing aims to meet the housing, care and support needs of older people, while maintaining their independence in self-contained accommodation. Evidence from several studies suggests that it has benefits for residents in terms of costs and outcomes, and can provide a supportive environment for people with dementia, although the benefits for residents with greater care needs are less clear. Budgetary pressures and increasing eligibility criteria are altering the balance of care between residents and resulting in more task-focused, less personalised care. An increasing shortfall in provision and incentives for developers to concentrate on ‘lifestyle’ provision raise questions about the long-term viability of the model for supporting local authority-funded residents. Responses to the coronavirus pandemic also raise questions about future housing and care arrangements, and these need to be addressed in the government’s long-delayed plans for social care.

This article reports on a study assessing the incentives and deterrents to long-term care (LTC) supply in two local markets in England. The supply of LTC in many countries is facing the issues of rising demand, (lack of) workforce and the interaction of the public and private sectors. Findings from qualitative interviews of local council and provider stakeholders exploring barriers and enablers faced by LTC providers in two local authorities (LAs) are presented and discussed. The interviews provided insight in three main areas: staffing, demand and stakeholder relationships. Staffing, in particular, is crucial and we found that there are many difficulties for providers in maintaining their workforce. Consistent with previous research, we also found that public spending levels on LTC puts pressure on providers striving to maintain a good quality service, including improved remuneration of staff.

There are long-standing concerns of inequalities in the workplace among minority ethnic (ME) workers in the UK health and social care (H&SC) sectors. ME workers contribute significantly to H&SC delivery. However, there is considerable evidence of substantial negative experiences among this group across various workplace indicators and outcomes, including (mis)treatment. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities with higher infection rates and related deaths among ME health and care workers. A rapid review methodology was employed to examine the work experiences and outcomes of ME workers in H&SC in the UK, focusing on low paid workers. The review identified fifty-one relevant outputs, detailing the nature and extent of inequalities across recruitment, career progression and treatment at work, including bullying and harassment. The findings highlight the impact of the intersectionality of gender, race and migration status concerning the ways inequalities are manifested and operated through individual perceptions and institutional and structural racism.