Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centred concept – which we name social care – that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.

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The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states.

This article focuses on the caring function of the family in child care and elderly care and follows a comparative as well as a gender perspective. It aims at developing a gender-sensitive theoretical concept of familialism which allows to identify real world variations of familialism. Four ideal types of familialism are distinguished and care policies in the EU member states are classified according to them. It can be shown that countries cluster differently for different care policies. In addition, structural gender effects of the four ideal types of familialism are reflected upon. The empirical analysis of paid parental leave in nine EU member states gives an example of gendered and de-gendered variants of familialism.

Varieties of familialism: The caring function of the family in comparative perspective

Throughout Europe, the family is still an important provider of care, but welfare state policies of individual countries may support and/or supplement the family in different ways, generating different social and economic outcomes. This article compares and categorizes care strategies for children and elderly persons in different member states of the European Union, while also taking into account the varied modalities for providing care, like leave arrangements, financial provisions, and social services. In EU countries, care regimes function as “social joins” ensuring complementarity between economic and demographic institutions and processes. As these processes and institutions change, they provide impetus for care regimes to change as well. However, because ideas and ideals about care are at the core of individual national identities, care regimes also act as independent incentive structures that impinge on patterns of women's labor market participation and fertility.

Comparing Care Regimes in Europe

Summary Faced with the problems associated with an ageing society, many European countries have adopted innovative policies to achieve a better balance between the need to expand social care and the imperative to curb public spending. Although embedded within peculiar national traditions, these new policies share some characteristics: (a) a tendency to combine monetary transfers to families with the provision of in-kind services; (b) the establishment of a new social care market based on competition; (c) the empowerment of users through their increased purchasing power; and (d) the introduction of funding measures intended to foster care-giving through family networks. This article presents the most significant reforms recently introduced in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) as regards long-term care. It analyses their impact at the macro- (institutional and quantitative), meso- (service delivery structures) and micro-level (families, caregivers and people in need). As a result the authors find a general trend towards convergence in social care among the countries, and the emergence of a new type of government regulation designed to restructure rather than to reduce welfare programmes.

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Restructuring the welfare state: reforms in long-term care in Western European countries

The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing, first published in 2005, is a guide to the body of knowledge, theory, policy and practice relevant to age researchers and gerontologists around the world. It contains almost 80 original chapters, commissioned and written by the world's leading gerontologists from 16 countries and 5 continents. The broad focus of the book is on the behavioural and social sciences but it also includes important contributions from the biological and medical sciences. It provides comprehensive, accessible and authoritative accounts of all the key topics in the field ranging from theories of ageing, to demography, physical aspects of ageing, mental processes and ageing, nursing and health care for older people, the social context of ageing, cross cultural perspectives, relationships, quality of life, gender, and financial and policy provision. This handbook will be a must-have resource for all researchers, students and professionals with an interest in age and ageing.

The Cambridge handbook of age and ageing

The purpose of this article is to bring social care services into the domain of comparative social policy research. The reason why it is important for social care services to be incor porated into the debate is that they represent an expanding component of the welfare state; that they are important for women; and that there are major differences between different countries in social care services. We have defined social care services as a specific way of increasing the autonomy of both care pro viders and care receivers.

European Social Care Services: Is It Possible To Identify Models ?:

New policies, new words - the service concept in Scandinavian social policy, Lennart Nygren et al A multitude of universal, public services - how and why did four Scandinavian countries get their social care service model?, Jorma Sipila et al the development of local authority social services in Iceland, Ingibjorg Broddadottir et al from poor relief to social rights and social care services clienthood, Outi Ketola et al local government in Scandinavia - autonomous or integrated into the welfare state?, Teppo Kroger the Scandinavian model as seen from a local perspective, Jan-Inge Hanssen why are social care services a gender issue?, Pirkko-Liisa Rauhala et al the Scandinavian social service state in comparison, Peter Abrahamson. Appendix: A statistical summary of the developemnt of social services for children, elderly and disbled in the Scandinavian countries, Jan-Inge Hanssen and Ole-Martin Elvehoi.

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Social care services : the key to the Scandinavian welfare model

1. The Importance of Social Care 2. Social Care in Finland: Stronger and Weaker Forms of Universalism 3. Social Care Services for Children and Older People in Germany: Distinct and Separate Histories 4. Care for Children and Older People in Japan: Modernizing the Traditional 5. Social Care in the United Kingdom: A Pattern of Discretionary Social Administration 6. Care for Children and Older People in the United States: Laggard or Merely Different? 7. Patterns of Social Care in Five Industrial Societies: Explaining Diversity Index.

The Young, the Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Nations

In 1985 the Finnish Parliament passed a law which stipulated that all children under age three were to be guaranteed a day care place as from the beginning of the 1990s. The law was made possible by a political compromise in which the agrarian Centre Party won the backing it needed to push through a system of state subsidies for the home care of children. As an alternative to a day care place, parents were now given the option of taking a child home care allowance and using that allowance either for purposes of looking after their child themselves or for paying for a private place. Measured in terms of the number of users, the child home care allowance was a hugely successful innovation. Most parents of small children have used the allowance for at least some period of time. This was due above all to the size of the allowance compared with other social benefits. However, following cutbacks in allowance expenditure of more than 20 per cent from 1995, the use of home care allowances declined at almost the same rate as the allowances were reduced. This brought significant short-term savings to the Government and to local authorities, but in the longer term other costs have been rising. There has even been a sharp, unexpected decline in the birth rate. The case of Finland goes to show that, even in a country where wage-earning motherhood has become firmly established, income transfers through family policy can have a very significant influence on the numbers opting temporarily for homemaking.

Cash versus Child Care Services in Finland

Contents: 1. Introduction Jorma Sipila, Katja Repo and Tapio Rissanen 2. Cash vs Care: A Child and Family Policy Issue Sheila B. Kamerman and Shirley Gatenio Gabel 3. Cash for Childcare: Unnecessary Traditionalism or a Contemporary Necessity? Jorma Sipila, Katja Repo, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo 4. Finnish Child Home Care Allowance - Users' Perspective and Perceptions Katja Repo 5. Cash for Childcare Schemes in Sweden: History, Political Contradictions and Recent Development Anita Nyberg 6. Cash for Care in Norway: Take-up, Impacts and Consequences for Mothers Marit RA nsen and Ragni Hege KitterA d 7. Rationalities of Cash for Childcare: The Nordic Case Minna Rantalaiho 8. The Paradox of Cash for Childcare: Are There Ways to Solve the Dilemma? Katja Repo, Jorma Sipila, Tapio Rissanen and Niina Viitasalo

Jorma Sipilä

Papers

European Social Care Services: Is It Possible To Identify Models ?:

Social care services : the key to the Scandinavian welfare model

The Young, the Old and the State: Social Care Systems in Five Industrial Nations

Cash versus Child Care Services in Finland

Cash for childcare : the consequences for caring mothers