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This paper argues that research, analysis and policy innovations focused on how households combine paid work with care responsibilities are driven to too great a degree by preconceptions of "the problem" that do not take sufficient account of how families themselves understand their work and care roles and the choices they are making. The evidence of 246 SOCCARE interviews across five European countries (Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK) is that the variables that are conventionally accepted as having fundamental significance (family-friendly policies and generous care services, flexible working hours, women's work–life preferences, family type, national labour markets, cultural differences) are less important than is often suggested. More important are time pressures and the idiosyncratic factors that constrain the work and care timetables that families are able to construct. We characterize these as "scheduling problems". They occupied a large part of the accounts of their lives provided by our respondents and are a primary dimension within which their combinations of paid work and care responsibilities need to be understood. The difficulties our respondents faced in coordinating the work and care activities of their families bear a striking similarity to the problems described in the operations research literature on small businesses. Within the context of these scheduling problems a second important factor emerged: the preferences and behaviour of men who played a critical, though often passive, part in the construction of work and care timetables of the families. We characterize this effect as the "the male veto".

John Baldock and Jan Hadlow look at the links between the need for care, the use of services and the ways in which older people maintain and develop their self-esteem.

This article focuses on two aspects of the real or imagined conflict between welfarism and consumerism; whether the experience of being a welfare user is somehow changed by living in a society in which people may see themselves less as workers and more as consumers; and whether the providers of welfare services and benefits can or should treat their users more like consumers than beneficiaries or even citizens with welfare rights.

This article argues that the material and social circumstances of older people living with disabilities mean that their priorities and subjective evaluations of quality of life are likely to be categorically different from those used by service provider organisations. Based on a qualitative study of a purposive sample of older people, who are over 75 and have recently become housebound as a result of disability, the paper describes two modes of understanding: ‘Self‐talk’ and ‘Needs‐talk’. It is suggested that these two modes are to an extent irreconcilable and limit the degree to which care assessments and care‐management can satisfy users.

This paper questions the intuitive assumption that twentieth-century public welfare states have reflected the wider culture in which they operate. It is argued that the postwar welfare state was a "modernist" project designed to change mass culture. As a result, social policy analysis has tended to ignore the wider culture as both a source and context for welfare. At the beginning of the twenty-first century new patterns of risk and postmodern cultural formations are supporting eclectic policymaking which is more in tune with cultural majorities. This signals the end of the systematic welfare state.

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Gerald Wistow, Martin Knapp, Brian Hardy, Julien Forder, Jeremy Kendall and Rob Manning, Social Care Markets: Progress and Prospects, Open University Press, Buckingham and Philadelphia, 1996, viii + 200 pp., hard £45.00, paper £14.99. - Volume 26 Issue 2

The chapter evaluates the reformed arrangements for the management and delivery of social care following the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 using a framework drawn from economic sociology. Research findings describing how a group of newly disabled older people fared as consumers of the services are summarized. An explanatory account is given drawing upon concepts and theory to be found in the growing literature on the sociology of economic life, particularly studies of consumption. The central conclusion is that it is difficult to account for the effects of the recent reforms on community care consumers without situating them within a context of existing social relations and institutions. If the reforms are to succeed they must change not just the practical mechanics of service funding and delivery but deeply embedded values and behavioural norms.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Inquiry into Income and Wealth Volume 1 (chaired by Sir Peter Barclay), Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 1995. 59 pp., paper £9.00. - John Hills, Inquiry into Income and Wealth Volume 2, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York. 1995, 120 pp., paper £9.00 (both volumes £15.00 when ordered together). - Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal (chaired by Sir Gordon Borrie), Vintage, London, 1994, xvii + 418 pp., paper £6.99. - Volume 24 Issue 3

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ABSTRACTThis article is based on an international study which investigated innovations in home care for the elderly in three European countries:Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It is argued that the particular changes taking place in services for the elderly may be indicative of what will happen more generally throughout welfare systems. This is because patterns observed in an area of acute pressure are often precursors of further developments. Welfare systems change first at points of pressure where established policies and solutions are no longer working or cannot be sustained. Innovation and reform become necessary. This is certainly true of social care policies for the elderly in industrial countries. It is no coincidence that in each of the three countries we studied government has commissioned major inquiries into the operation of the care system and that the early 39905 will see the introduction of substantial reforms. We argue that the changes that are taking place, although mediated by particular national traditions and politics, have much in common. They are part of a shift away from the state-dominated post-war welfare settlements towards more diffuse and pturalist forms of social care. The frail elderly, for demographic and etonomic reasons, are in tne front line of this shift to new patterns.