'Faith-based' organisations and contemporary welfare

This paper explores issues arising from the welfare reform process in the United States and Australia. The involvement of faith-based organisations in both countries has evolved in different historical, social, political and cultural contexts. The paper will explore three main themes. First, it examines the relevance of the term 'faith-based' to describe the nature of the relationship between charities and churches in the mixed economy of welfare in the Australian context. Second, it provides a critical analysis of the reform processes, suggesting implications for the future of church-based organisations. Third, it maps directions for cross-comparative research of church-based social services provision in both countries.

Cost-based pricing in the NHS internal market : accounting choices and the achievement of economic efficiency

Since 1988, quasi-markets have been introduced into many areas of social policy in the UK, the NHS internal market is one example. Markets operate by price signals. The NHS Internal Market, if it is to operate efficiently, requires purchasers and providers to respond to price signals. The research hypothesis is - cost accounting methods can be developed to enable healthcare contracts to be priced on a cost-basis in a manner which will facilitate the achievement of economic efficiency in the NHS internal market. Surveys of hospitals in 1991 and 1994 established the cost methods adopted in deriving the prices for healthcare contracts in the first year of the market and three years on. An in-depth view of the costing for pricing process was gained through case studies. Hospitals had inadequate cost information on which to price healthcare contracts at the inception of the internal market: prices did not reflect the relative performance of healthcare providers sufficiently closely to enable the market's espoused efficiency aims to be achieved. Price variations were often due to differing costing approaches rather than efficiency. Furthermore, price comparisons were often meaningless because of inadequate definition of the services (products). In April 1993, the NHS Executive issued guidance on costing for contracting to all NHS providers in an attempt to improve the validity of price comparisons between alternative providers. The case studies and the 1994 survey show that although price comparison has improved, considerable problems remain. Consistency is not assured, and the problem of adequate product definition is still to be solved. Moreover, the case studies clearly highlight the mismatch of rigid, full-cost pricing rules with both the financial management considerations at local level and the emerging internal market(s). Incentives exist to cost-shift, and healthcare prices can easily be manipulated. In the search for a new health policy paradigm to replace traditional bureaucratic provision, cost-based pricing cannot be used to ensure a more efficient allocation of healthcare resources.

Families 'at risk' and the family nurse partnership:the intrusion of risk into social exclusion policy

This article considers why the family nurse partnership (FNP) has been promoted as a means of tackling social exclusion in the UK. The FNP consists in a programme of visits by nurses to low-income first-time mothers, both while the mothers are pregnant and for the first two years following birth. The FNP is focused on both teaching parenthood and encouraging mothers back into education and/or into employment. Although the FNP marks a considerable discontinuity with previous approaches to family health, it is congruent with an emerging new approach to social exclusion. This new approach maintains that the most important task of social policy is to identify quickly the most 'at-risk' households, individuals and children so that interventions can be targeted more effectively at those 'at risk', either to themselves or to others. The article illustrates this new approach by analysing a succession of reports by the Social Exclusion Unit. It indicates that there is a considerable amount of ambiguity about the relationship between specific risk-factors and being 'at risk of social exclusion'. Nonetheless, this new approach helps to explain why British policy-makers may have chosen to promote the new FNP now. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.

Logics of marginalisation in health and social care reform:integration, choice, and provider-blind provision

The period 2010–2013 was a time of far-reaching structural reforms of the National Health Service in England. Of particular interest in this paper is the way in which radical critiques of the reform process were marginalised by pragmatic concerns about how to maintain the market-competition thrust of the reforms while avoiding potential fragmentation. We draw on the Essex school of political discourse theory and develop a ‘nodal’ analytical framework to argue that widespread and repeated appeals to a narrative of choice-based integrated care served to take the fragmentation ‘sting’ out of radical critiques of the pro-competition reform process. This served to marginalise alternative visions of health and social care, and to pre-empt the contestation of a key norm in the provision of health care that is closely associated with the notions of ‘any willing provider’ and ‘any qualified provider’: provider-blind provision.

Tax implications of dividend policy

This study examines the tax-arbitrage possibilities on the Budapest Stock Exchange between 1995 and 2007. The theoretical possibility for the arbitrage is the different taxation for different stockholders, for the private investors and for the institutions: the institutions had higher taxation on capital gain while private persons in the whole period had tax-benefits on capital gains. The dynamic clientele model shows, that there is a range of the price drops after dividend payouts which guarantees a risk-free profit for both parties. The research is based on the turnover data from 97 companies listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange. We have tested the significant turnovers around the dividend-dates. The study presents clear evidence that investors continuously did take advantages on the different taxation.

Spillover: the empirical utilisation of the concept. An empirical review of the social scientific corpus between 2004-2014

In recent decades, spillover has become a highly influential concept which has led to the initiation of new theoretical and methodological approaches that are designed to understand how people attempt to reconcile their work and private lives. The very notion of spillover presupposes that these spheres are connected, since the people who move between them bring certain ‘less visible’ content with them such as cognitive or affective mental constructs, skills, behaviors, etc. This paper attempts to create fresh insight into the different areas, themes and methodologies related to how spillover has been addressed over the last ten years. Four main categories are discussed based on the 76 academic articles that were selected: (1) general spillover research, (2) job flexibility and spillover, (3) individual coping strategies, and (4) the spillover effect on the different genders. The final section of the paper provides a tentative synthesis of the main conclusions and findings from the examined papers.

An analysis of the labor market situation of vocational students based on national and international data

The article focuses on the labour market situation and opportunities of the Hungarian vocational students. After briefly placing the topic in an international context, the study introduces the findings of the Hungarian empirical researches. Due to the differences between the various national education systems, it is not easy to make international comparisons; therefore I chose former socialist countries with characteristics similar to those of Hungary. When comparing the relevant data, it became clear that obtaining a diploma provides more advantages in Hungary. Hungarian researches suggest that vocational schools mostly attract students with poor competence test scores at the end of primary school. Also a significant proportion of these students are disadvantaged. Vocational students are the most likely to drop out of the system and their return to the school later is sporadic at best. Although a completed VET improves their employment conditions and prospects, many of the graduates will leave their profession or do unskilled labour. Their labour income varies greatly depending on their type of trade and experience gained.

A Framework for Citizen-Centred Social Statistics and Analysis (Working Paper 48)

Economic policy-making has long been more integrated than social policy-making in part because the statistics and much of the analysis that supports economic policy are based on a common conceptual framework – the system of national accounts. People interested in economic analysis and economic policy share a common language of communication, one that includes both concepts and numbers. This paper examines early attempts to develop a system of social statistics that would mirror the system of national accounts, particular the work on the development of social accounts that took place mainly in the 60s and 70s. It explores the reasons why these early initiatives failed but argues that the preconditions now exist to develop a new conceptual framework to support integrated social statistics – and hence a more coherent, effective social policy. Optimism is warranted for two reasons. First, we can make use of the radical transformation that has taken place in information technology both in processing data and in providing wide access to the knowledge that can flow from the data. Second, the conditions exist to begin to shift away from the straight jacket of government-centric social statistics, with its implicit assumption that governments must be the primary actors in finding solutions to social problems. By supporting the decision-making of all the players (particularly individual citizens) who affect social trends and outcomes, we can start to move beyond the sterile, ideological discussions that have dominated much social discourse in the past and begin to build social systems and structures that evolve, almost automatically, based on empirical evidence of ‘what works best for whom’. The paper describes a Canadian approach to developing a framework, or common language, to support the evolution of an integrated, citizen-centric system of social statistics and social analysis. This language supports the traditional social policy that we have today; nothing is lost. However, it also supports a quite different social policy world, one where individual citizens and families (not governments) are seen as the central players – a more empirically-driven world that we have referred to as the ‘enabling society’.

Ecuadorian migration and family strategies of social mobility: dialectic relation between emotional and financial capital

This text deals with transnational strategies of social mobility in Ecuadorian migrant households in Spain. We apply the capital accumulation model (Moser, 2009) for this purpose. The main target of this article is, beyond thinking in terms of capital stock and accumulation, the analysis in depth of the dynamics of the different types of capital, that is to say, how they interact with each other in the framework of the social mobility strategies of the migrants and their families. We are bringing into light the way some households adopt investing decisions in capitals that don't translate into any addition or earnings in all cases, on the contrary, concentrating all their efforts on the accumulation of a certain asset they may, in some cases, lead to a loss of another. We will concentrate our analysis primarily on the dynamics between the physical and financial capital and the social and emotional capital, showing the tensions produced between these two types of assets. At the same time, we will highlight how migrants negotiate their family strategies of social mobility in the transnational area. Our study is based in empirical material obtained from qualitative fieldwork (in-depth interviews) with families of migrants in the urban district of Turubamba Bajo -(south of Quito) and in Madrid. A series of households were selected where interviews were carried out in the country of origin as well as in the context of immigration, with different family members, analysing the transnational social and economic strategies of families of migrant members. Family members of migrants established in Spain were interviewed in Quito, as well as key informants in the district (school teachers, nursery members of the staff, etc.). The research was framed within the projects "Impact of migration on the development: gender and transnationalism", Ministry of Science and Innovation (SEJ2007/63179) (Laura Oso, dir. 2007-2010),"Gender, transnationalism and intergenerational strategies of social mobility", Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2011/26210) (Laura Oso, dir. 201-1-2015) and “Gender, Crossed Mobilities and Transnational Dynamics”, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2015-67164).

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Queensland's Smart State Initiative : a successful knowledge based urban development strategy

The chapter will set out to explain the KBUD and urban policy making processes in Queensland, Australia. This chapter will draw on providing a clear understanding on policy frameworks and relevant ICT applications of the Queensland ‘Smart State’ experience. The chapter is consisted of six sections. The first section following the introduction provides background information. The second section focuses on the KBUD processes in Queensland. The third section offers a comprehensive analysis of the ‘Queensland Smart State’ initiative, and it also identifies actors and goals of the agenda of Smart State experience. The fourth section reviews knowledge based development and ICT applications and policies of the Queensland Smart State and Brisbane Smart City experiences, and their impacts on Brisbane’s successful KBUD. The fifth section discusses knowledge hubs and ICT developments within the Brisbane metropolitan area. Then the chapter concludes with future trends and conclusion sections.

Social justice and high-quality human services : visioning the place of a contemporary professional association

The current world situation is plagued by “wicked problems” and a widespread sense of “things are going to get worse”. We confront the almost imponderable consequences of global habitat destruction and climate change, as well as the meltdown of the financial markets with their largely yet to be seen damage to the “real economy”. These things will have considerable negative impacts on the social system and people's lives, particularly the disadvantaged and socially excluded, and require innovative policy and program responses delivered by caring, intelligent, and committed practitioners. These gargantuan issues put into perspective the difficulties that confront social, welfare, and community work today. Yet, in times of trouble, social work and human services tend to do well. For example, although Australian Social Workers and Welfare and Community Workers have experienced phenomenal job growth over the past 5 years, they also have good prospects for future growth and above average salaries in the seventh and sixth deciles, respectively (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2008). I aim to examine the host of reasons why the pursuit of social justice and high-quality human services is difficult to attain in today's world and then consider how the broadly defined profession of social welfare practitioners may collectively take action to (a) respond in ways that reassert our role in compassionately assisting the downtrodden and (b) reclaim the capacity to be a significant body of professional expertise driving social policy and programs. For too long social work has responded to the wider factors it confronts through a combination of ignoring them, critiquing from a distance, and concentrating on the job at hand and our day-to-day responsibilities. Unfortunately, “holding the line” has proved futile and, little by little, the broad social mandate and role of social welfare has altered until, currently, most social programs entail significant social surveillance of troublesome or dangerous groups, rather than assistance. At times it almost seems like the word “help” has been lost in the political and managerial lexicon, replaced by “manage” and “control”. Our values, beliefs, and ethics are under real threat as guiding principles for social programs.