Welfare Reform on the Web (July 2005): Community Regeneration and Development - Overseas

A comparison of local management of regeneration in England and Greece

G.Chondroleou and others

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 18, 2005, p.114 - 127 While examples of English and Greek local self government, community regeneration and management offer encouragement, civil servants in central government find withdrawal from local affairs challenging. This paper looks at

• Foundations for comparative local government studies
• Community leadership and its reform
• Community governance and socio-economic reform

Financial exclusion

S. Carbo, E. Gardener and P. Molyneux

Basingstoke: Palgrave 2005

This text is concerned with the increasingly important and problematic area of financial exclusion, broadly defined as the inability and/or reluctance of particular societal groups to access mainstream financial services. This has emerged as a major international policy issue. There is growing evidence that deregulation in developed financial sectors improves financial inclusion for some groups (more products become available to a bigger customer base), but at the same time may exacerbate it for others (for example, by emphasising greater customer segmentation and more emphasis on risk-based pricing). In developing countries access to financial services is typically limited and therefore providing wider access to such services can aid financial and economic development. This is the first text to analyse financial exclusion issues in different parts of the world and it covers the various public and private sector mechanisms that have been advanced to help eradicate this problem

Reclaiming civil society: the future of global social work

F. Powell and M. Geoghegan

European Journal of Social Work, vol.8, 2005, p.129-144

The state is retreating from its role as a provider of social services and is working in partnership with the voluntary and community sector to enable them to deliver services and act as agents of community renewal. In this context social work can assume a new role in the promotion of social inclusion and in the empowerment of the poor and oppressed to claim their social, cultural and political rights.