Accommodation and care for older people is commonly thought of in relation to residential care homes: the collective settings with communal lounges and dining rooms, where older people may live what seems to be a fine balance between individual and group routines. Yet, while there have been changes to the living arrangements of people in relatively large collective groups, the ideal put forward as a basis for care settings has remained that of ‘home’, with the family model still central. With the tensions between public and private, domestic and institutional living, regulated and non-regulated settings, all too obvious, this article uses a pilot study in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire of registered small homes with less than four residential places, often run by the proprietor and her family, to consider whether residential homes may replicate a homely environment, or whether the model has run its course.

This article presents a series of measures of the extent to which social policies in twenty-one OECD countries are oriented towards the support of elderly (over 65 or in formal retirement) and non-elderly (under 65 and not retired) population groups. Employing breakdowns by age in spending on social insurance, education and health, tax expenditures on welfare substituting goods, and housing policy outcomes, this article shows that countries tend to demonstrate a consistent age-orientation across a variety of policy areas and instruments. After correcting for the demographic structure of the population, Greece, Japan, Italy, Spain and the United States have the most elderly-oriented social policy regimes, while the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada and the Nordic countries have a more age-neutral repertoire of social policies. In identifying the age-orientation of social policy as a dimension of distributive politics that is not captured by other welfare state typologies, this article suggests the need to develop new accounts of the development of welfare states that include the dimension of age.

While there are feminists in other countries who would like to see the buying of sex made illegal, Sweden is indeed unique for having done so. Sweden's popular form of radical feminism has shown itself to be highly effective in mobilising support and creating a broad consensus on an issue which can be very divisive. This article outlines the Swedish debate about prostitution, to find out why legislation was passed which is barely on the agenda in other countries. While the strength and purpose of the women's movement was a key factor, others also played a part. The women's movement was itself rooted in a popular movement tradition that is particularly effective in influencing government policy. The link between drugs and prostitution provided both a rationale and a symbolic discourse for intervention. Fears about foreign prostitutes and liberal practices abroad played a part. Sweden's weak liberal tradition also made the advocacy of the liberal argument difficult.

This article's starting point is Glennerster et al.'s 1991 question in JSP, 20: 3 whether ‘the decisive break’ they then saw in British social policy represented ‘A New Enlightenment or a New Leviathan’. Evidence is produced from the policy arena of education and training (i.e., learning) to argue that the Learning and Skills Act due for implementation from 1 April 2001 represents an example of the latter rather than the former. The Act is a further step on the road from what was traditionally ‘a national system of education locally administered’ to a national system nationally administered. This is clearly seen when the post-war system of education and training established by the 1944 Education Act is contrasted with the new system of contracting out provision through agencies. In presenting this contrast the article is an exercise in ‘Learning Policy’, described as ‘a new area of social policy … [which] indicates the concerted approach that many governments in developed countries now take to integrate the reproduction of knowledge at all levels in the education institutions under their control with skill formation in training in and out of employment’ (Ainley, 1999, p. 9).

This article examines why, despite similar general interests, institutional positions and political constraints, EU social NGOs find it so difficult to develop co-operative strategies except on the most fundamental issues. To demonstrate these difficulties the article considers the general reasons for and against co-operation between social NGOs and then examines the difficulties and advantages of collective EU social NGO action during the 1998 NGO funding crisis, Red Card protest and civil dialogue. The article argues that there is a fundamental desire for, and are benefits from, close co-operation between the EU social NGOs. However, due to the complex ‘context structure’ within which NGOs must operate, this co-operative impetus is constantly undermined. In conclusion, the article argues that social NGOs will remain weak and insignificant actors until the Commission/Parliament and/or the social NGOs can organise the complex context structure and allow co-operative strategies to emerge.

Most Western countries have, for some time, provided income support and/or taxation relief to parents with children in their care. The significant amount of research into the costs of children to couple and sole parent households has been important in assessing and developing family support policies. Changing societal expectations about the level of involvement of fathers in child rearing activities has highlighted the need to understand the costs facing usually male non-resident parents in having contact with their children. The budget standards methodology is used in this paper to estimate the costs for non-resident parents exercising regular contact with their children. Costs of contact are found to be high. For contact with one child for 20 per cent of the year, costs of contact represent about 40 per cent of the costs of that same child in an intact couple household with a medium income and more than half of the costs of that child in a household with low income. Household infrastructure and transportation is the reason for high costs. One implication of this finding is that the total cost of children substantially increases when parents separate. The article discusses some policy implications of these findings. This research is of relevance to social security, taxation, family law and child support policies and administration.

Contents

1 Social security and income maintenance

2 Health (formerly Health care)

3 Education

4 Housing and environment

5 Personal social services

6 Law and the treatment of the offender

7 Unemployment and the labour market

8 Race relations

9 The voluntary sector

10 Government (formerly Local government)

11 Gender

12 Demography

Robert E. Goodin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, Henk-Jan Dirven. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, x+358 pp.

The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism represents the fruits of ten years' interaction of an international team of colleagues from Australia and the Netherlands. What it does can be summarised as follows: it compares different welfare states each of which is deemed to represent one of the three main types of welfare regimes. This is done with reference to five external criteria taken as standards of success. As a basis for the assessment, the study uses an advanced statistical instrument – namely – panel studies. And to say right at the beginning, this is an impressive piece of work.