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Titmus defines “policy” as “the principles that govern action directed towards given ends”. Höhn and Lüscher define family policy as “public activities, measures, and organizations that attempt to recognize, support, complement, and thus influence or even enforce specifically or generally defined achievements of the family”. Thus family policy can include a wide range of activities of governments and organizations, including private associations, that seek to transform families and increase family well‐being.

This paper has a dual purpose: on one side, it analyzes what types of solidarity and social relations are implemented as social support resources applied to actions aiming at the empowerment of children living in poverty. On the other, it investigates on the role of the community in the governance of local welfare practices and its ability to produce social innovations for municipal policies in favor of children and adolescents.

Proximity, flexibility, generativity and territoriality are just some of the features that – in the framework of the scientific debate – characterize the social work in areas of social disadvantage. In the framework of the debate, this paper presents a qualitative research on the social ties and educational practices promoted and implemented by nonprofit organizations that attempt to counteract educational poverty and social exclusion of children and adolescents in the eastern peripheral neighborhoods of Naples, one of the poorest cities in the South of Italy.

The results of the analysis reveal a capacitating and generative role of the actions applied to social and educational practices for children and adolescents and their families in poor neighborhoods and peripheral areas; a role that is, however, also useful for community social policies targeting children and adolescents. Among local welfare policies enhancing community resources, such practices have indeed become an active resource of subsidiarity; they also ensure wider rights and empowerment for children and adolescents who live in poor communities and for their families as well.

More recent studies focusing on the role of social ties in deprived context and impoverishment processes, demonstrated that nonprofit organizations operate as crucial actors fostering inclusion and social cohesion, by means of “elective participation”; this guarantees access to protection and recognition resources that are an integral part of the social support these organizations provide in their areas of intervention. Despite the wide debate on the key role of the Third Sector in territorial welfare policies, further empirical studies on the role of these organizations in poor neighborhoods of the cities of the south of Italy are necessary. The value of this article is an attempt to provide to bridge this gap.

This study is aimed at developing an understanding of the consequences of the pandemic on families' socioeconomic resilience, and the strategies adopted by the families in overcoming social vulnerabilities amid uncertainty.

The materials for this study consist of semi-structured interviews with 21 families spread across the South Sumatra Province, Indonesia. Families in the study represent four different income levels, namely very high, high, middle and low, and who also work in the informal sector. Each family has at least 1 or more members who fall into the vulnerable category (children, the elderly, people with disabilities unemployed or having potential economic vulnerability).

Two main findings are outlined. Regardless of their socioeconomic status, many of the families analyzed adopted similar strategies to remain resilient. Among the strategies are classifying the urgency of purchasing consumer goods based on financial capacity rather than needs, leveraging digital economic opportunities as alternative sources of income, utilizing more extensive informal networks and going into debt. Another interesting finding shows that the pandemic, to some extent, has saved poor families from social insecurity. This is supported by evidence showing that social distancing measures during the pandemic have reduced the intensity of sociocultural activities, which require invited community members to contribute financially. The reduction of sociocultural activities in the community has provided more potential savings for the poor.

In this study, informants who provided information about their family conditions represent a major segment of the workforce and tend to be technologically savvy and younger, due to the use of Zoom as a platform for conducting interviews. Therefore, there may be a bias in the results. Another limitation is that since the interviewees were recommended by our social network in the fields, there is a risk of a distorted selection of participants.

This study offers insights that are critical in helping to analyze family patterns in developing countries in mitigating the risks and uncertainties caused by COVID-19. In addition, the literature on social policy and development could benefit from further research on COVID-19 as an alternative driver to identify mechanisms that could bring about change that would result in “security.” Critical questions and limitations of this study are presented at the end of the paper to be responded to as future research agenda.

The basic family unit is an important institution whose scope and function has changed greatly over the past one hundred years. The contemporary form of the family is understood as “conjugal and nuclear.” This implies a greater emphasis than previously on individual roles and relationships within the private sphere of the contemporary family. Additionally, the family is understood to have lost many of its former functions, further separating itself from the external world. The separation has further stripped the family from many of the roles it once had, with traditional familial functions performed by other institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how traditional definitions of family, in the context of employment, have not kept pace with actual family formation in the USA and much of the rest of the world, and how this disadvantages individuals from atypical (i.e. non‐nuclear), but increasingly common, families.

A wide range of literature from disciplines spanning industrial relations, gerontology, management, and family studies is invoked to illustrate how employers' definitions of “family” are often incompatible with actual contemporary family structures, and how this poses difficulties for employed individuals in non‐traditional families.

Many family structures are not accounted for by employment legislation and thus organizational work‐family policies. These include same‐sex couples, multi‐generational and extended families (e.g. including parents or other elders; members from outside the bloodline or with grandparents providing primary care for grandchildren) and virtual families.

The authors discuss a number of problems associated with current provision of work‐family policy and practice among organizations, and recommend that governments and organizations expand upon the traditional definition of “family” to better enable employees in a variety of familial configurations to successfully balance their work and family demands.

This paper identifies current failings in employment legislation and suggests improvements so that both governments and organizations can better facilitate employees' work‐life balance. As such, it will be of use researchers, practitioners, and policy makers interested in the interface between work and family.

This article analyzes the challenges Finnish single mothers experienced in their everyday lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. In studies on challenges to family life during COVID-19 lockdowns, single-parent families remain a largely understudied group.

The authors apply triple bind theory and ask how did Finnish single mothers manage the interplay between inadequate resources, inadequate employment, and inadequate policies during lockdown in spring 2020? These data come from an online survey including both qualitative and quantitative questions which was conducted between April and May 2020 to gather Finnish families' experiences during lockdown. This analysis is based on the qualitative part of the survey.

This study's results show that lockdown created new inadequacies while also enhancing some old inadequacies in the lives of Finnish single mothers. During lockdown, single mothers faced policy- and resource-disappearances; accordingly, they lost their ability to do paid work normally. Furthermore, these disappearances endangered the well-being of some single mothers and their families.

This article contributes to the wider understanding of everyday lives of single mothers and the challenges COVID-19 pandemic created. Moreover, this study provides knowledge on the applicability of the triple bind theory when studying the everyday lives of single mothers.

Purpose: To explore emotional support, daily housework assistance, and economic support for older adults provided by the Vietnamese family within the context of the impacts of socio-economic, demographic, and other factors.

Methodology: (1) The researchers used data from censuses taken from 1989 to 2019; national surveys of Internal Migration, Labor and Employment and other topics; and recent large sample sociological surveys (2) adapted a modified Diamond Care Model (Ochiai, 2009) to analyze effects of the characteristics of older adults; and of the country’s laws, policies, and socio-economic changes, on the families’ caregiving activities supporting the older adults.

Findings: The family is still the most important institution providing care for older adults in Viet Nam. Most older people live with their children and see this as an age-old security solution despite differences related to lifestyles and interests. However, when the average number of working-age people per older person decreases, as older adults live longer, household sizes are smaller, and there is increased large migration, the demand for non-family caregiving for older adults will increase. Since social services to help meet this demand are limited, the traditional family support system for the elderly in Viet Nam will face many challenges as families try to assure the quality of care needed in the very near future.

Value: This chapter shows systematically a relationship between elderly care in the Vietnamese family and socio-economic, demographic, and associated factors based on comprehensive data sources. The results can help us think about how to create an appropriate future model for taking care of older adults in Viet Nam that combines the efforts of families and the support of comprehensive social policies by the community.

This paper will consider the notion of “parental responsibility” in British policy in relation to two major pieces of legislation, the Children Act 1989 and the Child Support Act 1991. These have considerable impact on the shape of policy in relation to families with children in the 1990s. These two Acts originate in different processes and address different areas of the family‐ state interaction — in the case of the Children Act, public and private law concerning who should care for children in case of dispute or problems; in the case of the Child Support Act, the question of how children should be financially maintained. But both embody a notion of greater parental responsibilities (as opposed to rights) which cannot be lightly surrendered or neglected. The differences and similarities between these two Acts will be examined, and the underlying theme of Conservative “family policy”, and its long‐term intentions and implications, will be addressed.

Life in Slovakia, as in most European countries, was formed under the strong influence of Christianity. It influenced the standards of society and determined general behaviour, relationships among people, and especially family life. Christianity emphasised long-term low mobility, resulting in a strong traditionalism that persists in many spheres of life today.

Eastern Europe has been recognized as a region that has experienced major socio-political and economic changes in the last decades. The impact of these transitions on families and their functioning has also been significant. Although understanding of families in different cultures in the last years has considerably increased, little has been written on Eastern European families. This book fills the void in literature and provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of family issues in Eastern Europe. It brings together scholars from fourteen Eastern European countries. The authors explain family processes in that particular country focusing on the historic, social and economic contexts and the impact they have on families. The scholars also provide demographic information about families and discuss cultural traditions, marital and gender roles, parenting processes, family policy and programs within the society, and the state of research on family issues. The first chapter provides both an overview of family changes in Eastern Europe and an introduction to the subsequent chapters.