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The administration of social assistance benefits is devolved to local agencies in Belgium, which raises questions about how much variation in spell lengths of benefit receipt is associated with differences across agencies. We address this issue by analysing the monthly hazard of benefit exit using administrative record data for 14,270 individuals in 574 welfare agencies. Our random-effects model allows for differences in both the observed and unobserved characteristics of beneficiaries and of local agencies. There are large differences in median benefit duration for individuals serviced by different welfare agencies: the range is from two months to more than 24 months. We find strong associations between beneficiary characteristics (sex, age, foreign nationality, citizenship acquisition, work history and being a student) and spell length. The estimates show higher odds of exiting social assistance receipt in bigger municipalities and in agencies which provide more generous supplementary assistance, and also strong evidence of shorter episodes in agencies where active labour market programme participation rates are higher.

Why have multi‐agency or “partnership” approaches to crime prevention and community safety been reported internationally with unfavorable results? Can groups and individuals from disparate government and non‐government sectors work together to reduce or prevent crime? This article will address these and other questions by using developments in Belgium as its case study. In 1992, Belgium launched its “safety and crime prevention contracts”, a series of locally based crime prevention initiatives which have attempted to contract federal, regional and local governments to a range of social and police oriented crime prevention endeavors. Traces the development of the Belgian crime prevention contracts and examines the difficulties experienced with “multi‐agency crime prevention” and suggests that much of the political rhetoric in Belgium calling for local, community and intersectorial “partnerships” has, like several other countries including England and Wales, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, lacked clear practical expression. However, some promising initiatives indicate that this prevention approach may be capable of producing effective crime prevention and community safety outcomes. Further research is needed to describe these initiatives and analyze the conditions under which they are developed.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the diversity of markets for the provision of activation services.

The article is based on the outcomes of a project involving nine European countries. The project investigated changing forms of governance of income protection schemes and activation services for unemployed people. Diversity is investigated by focusing on five dimensions of diversity derived from the quasi‐market concept as developed by Le Grand: the purchasers, the providers, the customers, the purchaser‐provider split and the purchaser‐customer split.

The paper finds considerable diversity in the design of markets for the provision of activation. Diversity is visible in all dimensions involved in the analysis. One interesting finding is that a full split between purchasers and providers hardly exists, although some countries have introduced a stricter split than others. Another finding concerns the voice and choice of service consumers, which seems hardly affected by the introduction of market mechanisms in the provision of activation. Finally, marketisation does not seem to be an irreversible project, as de‐marketisation processes were identified as well.

Most current research into activation markets and their effects pays little attention to the issue of diversity in the design and functioning of markets. This article argues in favour of more systematic research of market diversity and of the variety of effects of various market models. Rather than comparing marketised with public service provision, a stronger focus on various market models may strengthen our insight into how service provision models affect the effectiveness of activation services.

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the public. Organized advocacy by youth also informs and animates policy development. One recent example fosters youth organizing to promote “normalcy” in child welfare practices in Florida, and in related federal legislation.

The purpose of this article is to examine the governance of activation in relation to the decentralization and centralization of activation for social assistance recipients in Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK.

This paper outlines broad trends in the governance of activation policies in Europe, focusing on processes of decentralization and centralization in Sweden (characterized by a context of shifting national and local level governance of policies, cultivated within a strong tradition of active labour market policies); The Netherlands (where there has been a deliberate shift in governance towards the local level); and the UK (typified by highly centralized decision making in policy design but local variation in delivery).

The comparison identified different paths of decentralization and examines how these processes interact and overlap with modes of centralization/coordination of policies. Finally, the paper demonstrates the interface between the modes of decentralization and centralization.

The investigation of vertical changes in the governance of activation in three country case studies provides an original in‐depth analysis of types and paths of decentralization and centralization.

Activation policies are key elements of contemporary welfare reform throughout Europe. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of more active and individualised welfare policies for conceptualisations of professionalism and competence in the welfare services.

The primary data are 25 qualitative interviews with street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) conducted in two local offices in The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). These data were supplemented by relevant policy documents. A distinction between the authorities discourse of organisational professionalism and the SLBs discourse of occupational professionalism is applied to structure the analysis.

Efforts to professionalise activation work takes place in the absence of a specific professional knowledge base to guide daily work. The paper explores how relevant competence and skills are defined in such a context, both from the perspective of the authorities and from the front-level workers themselves. A key finding is that such competence tends to be defined in terms of the ability to manage communicative processes and relations. Paradoxically, the active turn in social policy with its emphasis on work and activity seems to entail a competence ideal that is inward looking and psychologised.

The qualitative approach implies limited generalisability in terms of statistical representativity. Furthermore, the results invite closer studies of the practical effects for social security users of the identified patterns.

Policy makers who aim to make welfare services more work orientated should look for ways of increasing SLBs concrete relations with and practical experience from collaboration with employers. This may entail reviewing the practice of outsourcing the implementation of active measures to private actors.

The paper adds to a small literature on the implementation of activation policy in contemporary welfare states.

This article addresses the question of the determinants of public policy at the local level. It is particularly concerned with local political leaders' interpretations of given socioeconomic environments, and the bearing these have on public policy formation.

Social services in most western democracies find themselves in recent years in the midst of diminishing public resources due to economic, demographic and political changes. Phenomena such as slowed economic growth, inflation, unemployment, and the exhaustion of public treasuries have become the daily diet of a number of Western countries (Specht, 1981; Norsworthy et al., 1979; Hakim, 1982).

Since the definition of objectives lies at the basis of any programme, an analytical system of classifying service organisation activities is proposed in which the focus is on internal characteristics of the activities, and differentiation among programmes and treatments. This taxonomy may be used by social welfare organisations who wish to know what they do, and to what extent they adhere to what they aim to do, as it makes both a conceptual and empirical contribution, increasing awareness of what the organisation and its professional staff do, and allowing examination of the consistency of any programme.

The international women's movement has always focused on discrimination against women, but only in the past few decades have activists paid special attention to domestic violence. In post-communist Europe, it took even longer but the Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Slovene governments eventually reacted to domestic and global pressure and established new definitions and norms dealing with domestic violence. Analyzing the process of norm development on domestic violence in Central Europe can direct us toward determining to what extent political and economic processes and decisions in Europe are driving globalization, or are being driven by globalization.