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There has been an international trend towards activating lone parents, with the United Kingdom being the most recent example. It has been argued that the most common criterion for deciding which lone parents should have to be available for work is the age of the youngest child. However, by examining the activation policies in the OECD countries more closely, a number of criteria used in conjunction with age of the child have been identified, such as the availability of childcare and the employability of lone parents. It is therefore argued that a typology can be developed consisting of three main approaches: general activation, age of child and no activation, with three sub-categories for the age of child approach. The different (sub-)categories will be illustrated using country case studies as examples.

AbstractA key feature of the previous Labour government inBritain was the large increase in government‐sponsored research as part of its wider commitment to evidence‐based policy‐making. This article focuses on one area of government‐sponsored research as a case study to examine the relationship between research evidence, policy ideas and programme evaluation. The case study chosen for this article is research on lone parents not in work commissioned by theDepartment forWork andPensions between 1997 and 2010. Following a brief review of the research, the main shortcomings in our understanding of the employment barriers for lone parents as well as the reasons for these shortcomings are identified and discussed. The reasons explaining the lack of progress are related to both the content of the research as well as the institutional set‐up of research commissioning in government. The article concludes by drawing lessons from this case study to improve the quality and potential usefulness of research for policy‐making in the short and medium term.

The 2008 welfare reform introduced by the previous Labour government requires (most) lone parents with older children to be available for work. This article examines the potential effect of this reform on the employment rate of lone parents and whether the age of the youngest child is a good indicator of 'ability to work'. It suggests that reform will not lead to the desired increase as the target group is too small and the levels of multiple disadvantages within the group too high. 'Ability to work' needs to be conceptualised more broadly if it is to mean 'ability to get a job'.

The recent welfare-to-work reform requires lone parents with older children to be available for work. This article examines the likely effect of this reform and the proposed extension with regards to the employment rate of lone parents. It is argued that it will not lead to the desired increase in the employment rate of lone parents as the target group is too small and the levels of multiple disadvantages within the group too high. Indeed, ability to work cannot be equated with the age of the youngest child but needs to take into account the characteristics of lone parents as well.

"This comprehensive Handbook provides a unique examination of the key issues and challenges facing society and social policy in the twenty-first century. Featuring both wide-ranging coverage of major issues and detailed analysis of social policies in different countries, the Handbook explores key concepts, policy areas and institutions, considering welfare and social policy in the context of wider socio-economic and cultural divisions. In addition to examining specific policy areas, contributors engage with the social divisions and complex infrastructures that underpin them on both local and global scales. Chapters also discuss significant challenges to contemporary social policy, including the threats to human and societal wellbeing posed by austerity, migration and the climate crisis, as well as the opportunities these present to reshape policy conceptually, ideologically and practically in the future in response to these issues. Scholars and students in social policy, sociology and political science looking for a comprehensive overview of the field of social policy will find this Handbook an invaluable resource. It will also prove useful to researchers and practitioners seeking in-depth analyses of particular countries or policy areas covered"--

Objective: This paper asks how evolving contact and gendered working lives, gendered identities, and conflict and parental relationships influence cognitive labour in separated families. Background: The fact that the often-invisible work of planning, researching, and executing decisions concerning children and household maintenance is borne by women/mothers, receives growing research attention, yet, the bulk of this research focuses on the gendered division of the mental load in intact families. Given the high prevalence of separated families with high levels of father contact, more work is needed to understand how cognitive labour is divided by parents residing in separate households. Method: This paper draws on 31 semi-structured interviews of separated parents, including 7 former couples. Interviews were sampled from a nationally representative longitudinal survey, Understanding Society, professionally transcribed and thematically analysed with Nvivo. Results: Analysing the interviews reveals both continuity and change in the division of the mental load following separation. For some families, gendered identities and working lives continue to justify an unequal division of the mental load, even when children spend large amounts of time solely with fathers. In others, conflict can reduce communication between parents, either increasing fathers cognitive labour through parallel parenting or decreasing it when fathers are excluded from decision-making altogether. Finally, separation can present a turning point where working lives and identities are re-evaluated, and the mental load can be negotiated anew. Conclusion: We provide new evidence that the mental load remains gendered even among those practicing a relatively "modern" family form of shared care post-separation, while highlighting possibilities for variation and change.

Despite legislative reforms over the last 5 years aimed at giving non‐resident parents rights to 'involvement' in the lives of their children, the UK has not enacted a presumption of 50‐50 shared care. The UK's emphasis on individual arrangements follows an overall policy trend toward privatization of family disputes. The sparse data that exists suggest that the UK lags behind other Western countries in the number of separated or divorced couples engaging in shared care. This article outlines recent legislative changes, examines the available information on post separation contact and shared care, discusses reasons for the scarcity of data, and concludes with observations on the importance of improved data‐gathering on UK post separation parenting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the effectiveness of Minimum Income (MI) schemes in protecting people of working age from poverty in the European Union. Using the EU-wide microsimulation model EUROMOD, we investigate (a) coverage and (b) adequacy of MI schemes in 18 countries. In contrast to previous comparative studies of MI benefits, relying on comparisons of the effects on stylised families, we are able to capture the full range of individual and household circumstances and to quantify the effects on people entitled to MI schemes using a comparable approach across countries.