This short guide cuts through the confusing mass of legislation to provide a concise and jargon-free explanation of current community care practice and the law. In clear and simple language, it explains the legislation directly relevant to practitioners, including: rules about how people in need get an assessment from local authorities; the assessment of need itself; eligibility for actually getting a service (and the "fair access to care" policy); charging for services; ordinary residence; topping up of care home fees; assessing informal carers; and the rules about asylum seekers. It provides an overview and analysis of high profile issues such as direct payments, personal budgets and the policy of personalisation and National Health Service provision, including the vexed issue of NHS continuing health care. It also highlights the duties placed on local authorities and the NHS, the various tensions underlying community care, and the consequent shortcuts - both lawful and unlawful - that local authorities and the NHS feel obliged to take. Quick Guide to Community Care Practice and the Law is an essential resource for busy practitioners at all levels as well as managers in both the statutory and voluntary sectors, policy-makers in local authorities and the NHS, advocates, lawyers and social work students.

The book discusses how labour law and welfare systems will be affected by the ongoing transformation of work. The first section considers demography from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it focuses on chronic diseases and their impact on work, emphasising the role and the regulation of welfare systems. On the other, attention is given to youth unemployment and to those forms of employment which might have an impact on young people. Section II touches upon the relationship between the environment and industrial relations, while the third part broaches the topic of the impact of technology in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. As such, this volume provides an exhaustive picture of the changes currently underway, considering all the aspects which will affect work now and in the future.

The idea that European welfare states are struggling to meet new social risks during a process of adaptation to a post-industrial setting has been an acknowledged theory in welfare state research for some time. The authors of this remarkable book have chosen to study a powerful indicator of how this trend might affect legal protection and access to justice for individuals: reforms in social security systems as they apply to cases of reduced earnings capacity. While previously the notion of social protection made welfare state inhabitants feel that the risk of loss of income due to physical or psychological hindrances was minimal, this sense of security can no longer be taken for granted. This book presents in-depth analyses, by nine leading scholars in social security law, of recent reforms in the field of incapacity benefits in four European countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The authors emphasize how recent reforms in the field of social security have been transformed into legal provisions, how the gate-keeping function is implemented in the legislation of the different countries, and to what extent the reforms have affected the legal position of the individuals concerned. They find that ever-tightening requirements designed to reduce benefit dependency, in combination with policies emphasizing individual responsibilities rather than individual rights, cause increased social risks for exposed groups. Among the specific aspects covered are the following: Measuring the reduction of earnings capacity; rights and obligations attached to reintegration into the labour market; work capability assessment procedures; 'rehabilitation chains' with fixed time limits; the real and increased risk of poverty faced by long-term incapacitated persons; constitutional concerns raised by increased dependency on means-tested benefits; conditionality of benefits on work-related activities, participation in training programmes, or active job searching; and sanctions that can be applied if the claimant fails to comply with activation measures. All the country chapters provide thorough surveys of recent reforms, as well as analyses of their different weaknesses and strengths. The European dimension is explored with particular reference to anti-discrimination legislation, health and safety law as well as the Open Method of Coordination. As a systematic analysis of the current reforms relating to reduced earnings capacity, this book will attract a wide readership among lawyers and policymakers for its thorough coverage of the current landscape and the far-reaching implications it suggests. The book's systematic comparative method sheds a bright light on the challenges faced by post-industrial European welfare states, and its crystallization of the legal strategies behind the individual legal measures and reforms deepens our understanding of the institutions of social security and our awareness of the rights and obligations of exposed individuals.

What international and European legal instruments protect the right to social security? What are the obligations which states have assumed under these instruments? How is their application monitored? What are the trends in national legislation in relation to the standards of the European Code of social security and its protocol, the main Council of Europe instruments in the social security field? Is social security considered as a human right and how has the case law of the European Court of Human Rights developed in this area? These are some of the key issues addressed in this publication, where the code and its protocol are viewed against the background of other standard-setting instruments, developments at national level and human rights.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of social security in the Balkan states. Social security is presented from a broad perspective as a mechanism that addresses human needs, provides protection against social risks, reduces social tensions and secures peace. Various sectors of social policy, pension systems, health care systems, disability insurance, labor policy as well as social risks, such as poverty and unemployment, have been analyzed from historical, economic, political, sociological and security perspective. The book also offers recommendations for improving the level of social security in the region. Contributors are: Maja Bacovic, Agata Domachowska, Dorota Domalewska, Tomasz Ferfecki, Afet Mamuti, Katerina Mitevska Petrusheva, Natalija Perisic, Kire Sharlamanov, Katerina Veljanovska Blazhevska, and Marzena Zakowska.

The "Welfare Reform Act 2009" received Royal Assent on 12 November 2009. This Act amends the law relating to social security and reforms the welfare and benefit system to improve support and incentives for people to move from benefits into work. It includes measures to increase personal responsibility within the welfare system. The Act will also provide more employment choices for people with disabilities. It confers regulation-making powers that can be used to give adult disabled people greater choice and control over the way in which relevant services are provided by relevant authorities. The Act also provides encouragement of parental responsibility by introducing a requirement for joint birth registration and by amending the law relating to child support.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the employment protection systems of many countries were affected by the strain of market forces and neo-liberal policies. This study compares developments in three countries with a social collectivist system of labour law and industrial relations, namely Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. A global account is also given of employment protection in the USA, Japan and Germany.