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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Figures and tables -- 1 Introduction -- 2 New policies, new words-the service concept in Scandinavian social policy -- 3 A multitude of universal, public services-how and why did four Scandinavian countries get their social care service model? -- 4 The development of local authority social services in Iceland -- 5 From poor relief to social rights and social care services' clienthood -- 6 Local government in Scandinavia: autonomous or integrated into the welfare state? -- 7 The Scandinavian model as seen from a local perspective -- 8 Why are social care services a gender issue? -- 9 The Scandinavian social service state in comparison -- Appendix: A statistical summary of the development of social services for children, elderly and disabled in the Scandinavian countries.

The study deals with the relationship between regional structure and children's social problems. Theoretical interest is focussed on deviant behaviour. Its association with social structure is described by a general model of deviant behaviour. On account of the model it would appear that deviant behaviour can de divided into two main types. Characteristic of the one is passiveness, relative stability over time and weak impact of contagion effects while the reverse is true of the other. The empirical part deals with the regional distribution of child welfare cases and other forms of deviant behaviour on the basis of representative data on the municipalities in Finland. The results indicated that differences in the effectiveness of official control could not account for regional variation in the number of child welfare cases. Important determinants were shared community values, stability of the community structure and regional historical differences in cultural patterns. Child welfare cases arise when individuals in close interpersonal relationship to the child do not compensate for the parent's low resources of their total absence. The risk increases if there is only one parent, if the parents are deviant or otherwise isolated from the community, and if the informal community functions poorly.

Overstretched provides fresh perspectives on the reality of European family life where care and paid work need to be woven together on a daily basis, offering an opportunity to discuss and evaluate care policies in a new light.A collection of essays providing new perspectives on the reality of European family life where care and paid work need to be woven together on a daily basis. Focuses on families who live under strained conditions, such as lone parent families, immigrant families, and families who care simultaneously for both their children and an elderly family member. Based on interview

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.

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.