This is the third Social Policy Review (SPR) to follow the new structure initially introduced in SPR 16. It includes three sections. Part 1 provides a review of key policy developments during 2005 in the main areas of UK social policy: education, health, housing, the personal social services and social security. Part 2 draws on current research in social policy, including chapters that use empirical findings to explore key policy issues or challenges. Part 3 explores a contemporary policy theme selected by the SPR editors.

This year, Part 2 examines the broad theme of health and well-being, in particular different ways of defining, measuring and applying concepts of health and well-being. The chapters themselves are drawn from a selection of presentations at the Social Policy Association conference held at the University of Bath in June 2005.

Part 3 of SPR 18 examines the theme of employment and later life. This is a particularly fast-changing area of social policy in the UK and beyond. The collection of chapters in Part 3 provides a key contemporary resource for researchers interested in this area of policy.

Part 1

Karen Clarke edited Part 1 of SPR 18. It examines the main developments in social policy in relation to five key areas of welfare provision in 2005. A number of common themes emerge from these chapters that characterise the Labour government in its third term in office. The first is the centrality of individual choice as the means for accessing and shaping services across health, housing, social care and education. Choice is significant in government policy not only as the means for enabling market mechanisms to bring about an improvement in the quality and diversity of services, but also as a way of promoting a particular conception of active and responsible citizenship, and encouraging the virtues of independence and autonomy. The centrality of the individual citizen-consumer has been accompanied by a gradual transformation in the role of local authorities from their traditional role as service providers, through their role in the 1990s as purchasers of services on behalf of service users, to a more strategic managerial role with responsibility for assessing likely needs and ensuring that provision from a variety of sources is available to meet those needs, in a way that leaves the specific choice of service to the individual.