In the April 2016 issue of the Journal of Social Policy (vol 45, part 2 pp251-268), there was an article by Philip Taylor and Catherine Earl entitled ‘The Social Construction of Retirement and Evolving Policy Discourse of Working Longer’ which contains the following statement: “The case for early exit was argued, in part, on the back of efforts to re-distribute work to the young. Macnicol (2008) describes this as ‘misguided short-termism’ attempting to facilitate economic modernisation” (p251). This should have read “Macnicol (2008) describes as incorrect commentary that this was ‘misguided short-termism’ attempting to facilitate economic modernisation.” The authors acknowledge that the statement in their article was incorrect and apologise for this oversight.

The distribution of education by social background and the mobility prospects of society are intimately connected. To begin to predict future trends in mobility in the UK we bring together evidence on educational inequality by family background for cohorts from 1958 to 2000 for a range of educational outcomes. There is evidence that educational inequalities have narrowed among recent cohorts as the overall level of educational achievement has increased. This could be promising for mobility provided the labour market returns to these qualifications are maintained. However, stubborn inequalities by background at higher attainment levels imply that narrowing inequalities and expanding equality of opportunity throughout the educational distribution is a difficult task.

Within the original published article the acknowledgements section was sadly omitted. The following acknowledgement should have been included

Following the success of a recent Swiss Citizens’ Initiative to grant each citizen an unconditional income guarantee and the Finnish Government's plans to conduct the first national pilot project, the idea of a basic income as a citizens’ right has gained much prominence in the policy debate. This article reviews a number of policy developments on the ground through the lens of the policy transfer literature. In the absence of a fully developed basic income in place, proponents must rely on partially implemented schemes or proposals that differ in crucial respects from the basic income ideal. This paper outlines three sets of empirical cases and analyses what (if any) lessons we can draw from them regarding the future of basic income schemes.

Social innovation is a contested concept with multiple meanings that have implications beyond academia. It is not a new term – its sociological heritage can be dated to the late nineteenth century. However, until the twenty-first century the concept was sparsely utilised, and, despite its current popularity among policy makers in Europe and the United States, remains largely ignored by social policy researchers. Through bibliometric analysis we identify the most influential articles on social innovation and explore how these have conceptualised the term. We show that over time social innovation has taken on a set of meanings far removed from its sociological roots. In particular we identify a weak tradition that sees social innovation as any increase in aggregate individual utility arising from an innovation, and a strong tradition that focuses on the process of collaboration between different groups and the restructuring of power relations. We conclude by outlining implications for social policy research.

In 2008, compulsory community care (CCC) for people with severe mental illness was introduced in Sweden. CCC requires co-operation between psychiatric and social services, thus further complicating the longstanding difficulties with service coordination in the mental health field.

This article investigates what happens when a new policy is introduced that assumes complex co-operation of two organisations bestowed with high degrees of discretion. The process of institutionalisation will be analysed in terms of how an idea is translated and materialised on local levels. This has been investigated by interviewing key informants within psychiatric and social services at three different locations.

The implementation was perceived as relatively successful and occurred without major conflict. The main effect of the new legislation was improvement in the coordination of services, where designing a template form for a coordinated care plan was central. The inter-organisational discussions about service coordination that arose had a spill-over effect on services for other patient groups.

In essence, respondents describe CCC as a pedagogical reform to promote the coordination of services, rather than a reform to increase coercive powers over patients. This raises concerns about the legitimacy of the reform.

This paper presents an empirical study of asylum seekers in Glasgow and their capacity to co-produce the public services they use. It is divided into three parts. The first briefly examines the theory of co-production, revisiting a conceptual framework for co-production developed through the integration of the public administration and services management literatures (Osborne and Strokosch, 2013). Second, the paper examines the capacity of asylum seekers in Scotland to co-produce, considering their position as a marginalised group in society which significantly challenges many of the assertions about the nature of co-production. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of this new evidence for our understanding of the links between public services consumption and citizenship, asking two fundamental questions: can asylum seekers, as non-citizens, co-produce the public services they receive and, if so, what forms does co-production take; and what are the implications of this for social inclusion and citizenship?

This article contributes to an understanding of how conditionality applies across social security and immigration policies in restricting the access to social benefits of national citizens, EU and non-EU citizens. Specifically, the article builds on Clasen and Clegg's (2007) framework of conditionality in the context of welfare state reform by extending that conceptual framework to include migration. The framework is applied to examine how different levels of conditionality have been implemented in UK policy reforms to restrict access to rights of residence and to social benefits. It is argued that a conditionality approach moves beyond a binary of citizens and migrants in social policy analysis, contributing to an understanding of the dynamics and interactions of work-related conditions in restricting access to social benefits, with implications for inequalities that cut across national, EU and non-EU citizens in terms of the relationship of particular groups to the market.

The literature on policy implementation is divided with regards to the impact of street-level bureaucrats on the implementation of public policies. In this paper, we aim to add to and nuance these debates by focusing on ‘institutional work’ – i.e. the creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions – undertaken by central authorities and street-level bureaucrats during public reform processes. On the basis of a case study of the organisational implementation of a retirement pension reform in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, we argue that institutional work is a useful heuristic device for conceptualising the variety of responses available to street-level bureaucrats during public reforms. We also argue that the responses demonstrate the impact of street-level bureaucrats in these reforms in the context of managerial control and regulation. Finally, we argue that the effectiveness of policy change is dependent on the institutional work of street-level bureaucrats and, in particular, on institutional work that supports the institutions created by politicians and public administrations.

This paper explores third sector organisational experiences of governmental policy change and implementation. Using a four-year longitudinal study of 13 third sector organisations (TSOs), it provides evidence based on the experiences of, and effects on, third sector organisations involved in the UK's Work Programme in Scotland. The paper explores third sector experiences of the Work Programme during the preparation and introductory phase, as well as the effects of subsequent Work Programme implementation. By gathering evidence contemporaneously and longitudinally a unique in-depth analysis is provided of the introduction and implementation of a major new policy. The resource cost and the challenges to third sector ways of working, for the organisations in the Work Programme supply chain, as well as those not in the supply chain, are considered. The paper considers some of the responses adopted by the third sector to manage the opportunities and challenges presented to them through the implementation of the Work Programme. The paper also reflects on the broader context of the employability services landscape and raises questions as to whether, as a result of the manner in which the Work Programme was contracted, there is evidence of a move towards service homogenisation, challenging perceived TSO characteristics of service innovation and personalisation.

Welfare institutions have long been set up in most European countries in ways oriented towards the family as the one basic principle. Reforms in recent times however have fundamentally changed the conception of the social citizen. Yet social rights are still mainly conceptualised in the literature in terms of employee rights, and family elements are often interpreted as a kind of vestige of the traditional welfare-state policies of industrial societies.

In this paper we develop a formula for making the weight of the family in social security visible and comparing it through the evaluation of cross-country levels of institutional individualisation. We deliver original theoretical, conceptual and empirical insights into the welfare-institutional order with the aim of furthering the understanding of the current social constitution of European societies. The findings show that there is considerable variation in the degree to which welfare institutions treat the social citizen as an individual and that the results do not correspond to common welfare categorisations.