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This paper seeks to examine the practice of human resource management (HRM) in the UK voluntary sector. In recent years many voluntary sector organisations have experienced a changing context, where they have become increasingly involved in contracting for the provision of publicly funded services. This paper examines the suggestion made by a number of commentators that as a result the government has exercised influence over the way in which human resources are managed in this sector.

The paper uses data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 (WERS 2004) to examine HRM practice in the voluntary sector and compares this with the public and private sectors.

The findings show that most voluntary sector organisations have adopted performance‐oriented HR practices, communication and involvement schemes, and welfare‐oriented practices. This suggests a departure from the relatively unsophisticated HRM that has traditionally been found in the voluntary sector and which may be as a result of the influence of government on HRM standards in the sector.

Future research, which adopts a longitudinal approach, would allow the impact of government influence on HRM practices in the voluntary sector to be examined in more depth.

This paper represents a rare examination of HRM practice across a wide range of voluntary sector organisations and provides insight into the potential influence of government on HRM in the sector.

This paper aims to consider the impact of the European Union procurement regulations. It assesses the impact of the re‐tendering of services on the terms and conditions of employment and sense of well being, and commitment of employees in the social care sub‐sector of the voluntary sector.

The study employs a qualitative study of three organisations utilising semi‐structured interviews with managers and employees.

The process of re‐tendering is creating intensified competition and the breakdown of co‐operation between voluntary sector organisations. Re‐tendering also has an impact on employee terms and conditions with related problems arising with regard to their morale and commitment.

This remains a relatively small‐scale piece of research and there is also scope to consider how these issues are played out in private, as well as voluntary sector organisations.

The research highlights the potential tensions between creating greater competition and a search for value for money in the tendering and re‐tendering of services on voluntary organisations' raison d'être and the sense of commitment of employees.

There is little research examining the human resource aspects of re‐tendering and this research provides an important step in surfacing a number of emergent issues for how voluntary organisations manage the people dimension of the re‐tendering process.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a distinctive strategy used in the Australian non‐profit community services sector to recruit and retain care workers. The paper argues that the implementation of salary sacrificing illuminates a wilful blindness to the interests and rights of paid care workers and the genesis of this blindness lies in the gendered nature of care work.

The paper draws on a brief review of relevant literature on the gendered nature of paid care work, Australian industry debates, interviews and data from a small case study to examine the context and paradoxical outcomes of salary sacrificing.

The findings illustrate the consequences of New Public Management models of funding and management in the non‐profit community sector, including how inadequate resourcing of agencies can work to pit the interests of clients against the interests of workers. The findings also suggest the limited impact of salary sacrificing as a retention strategy, while revealing the links between gender, domesticity and care that play out in the undervaluing of paid care work.

The research suggests that sustainable change to address the looming “crisis of care” in community services needs a rethinking by governments of funding and service models so that quality services are supported by properly valued and remunerated care workers.

The paper explores the paradoxical effects of an Australian industry recruitment and retention strategy.

This paper aims to provide a reflection on the other contributions to this special issue of IJPSM on the “employment implications of the outsourcing of public services to voluntary, not‐for‐profit organisations” in the light of more widely available discourses and evidence.

The paper, in line with the purpose, draws on relevant secondary sources, including those forming part of this special issue.

The provided analysis centrally concludes that, against the backcloth of growing competitive pressures and public expenditure cuts, there is a real threat of a general downward trend in the employment conditions of voluntary sector staff engaged in the delivery of outsourced public services that has the potential to adversely affect service quality.

There is a need for much more extensive research on how market‐based outsourcing is impacting on the work experiences of voluntary sector staff outside the area of social care and the implications that it has for the quality of service provision.

The analysis draws attention to the need to consider further regulatory action to protect the terms and conditions of voluntary sector staff engaged in the delivery of outsourced public services.

The paper serves to highlight that, rather than improving the value for money of social care services, outsourcing has the potential to do the opposite by adversely impacting on the employment conditions of staff and hence the quality of services provided.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the origin and development of the increased use of the voluntary sector in the delivery of public services in the UK and to identify both the threats and opportunities that this policy poses.

The paper uses government documents to examine policies and models for change. This is located within a discussion of the literature around the developing role of the voluntary sector in public service provision against the backdrop of wider neo‐liberal public sector reform.

New Labour laid the basis for a major expansion in the use of the voluntary sector in public service provision as part of its public service reform programme. It did so with a range of sometimes contradictory justifications. The policy is now being extended by the new coalition government.

The process of change outlined in the paper is continuing, so it is not possible to make conclusive statements regarding its impact. Further research will be required to monitor the effects.

Alerting the voluntary sector organisations to the potential problems of large‐scale involvement in public service provision may assist them in retaining their independence and effectiveness.

The paper contributes to a necessary (and overdue) assessment of the impact of the changed role of the voluntary sector in public service provision on the sector itself, the services provided and the surrounding framework of accountability.

This paper aims to explore 15 UK adult social care workers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper’s 15 open-ended interviews with adult social care workers are complemented by digital ethnography in COVID-19 social media forums. This data set is taken from a global mixed-methods study, involving over 2,000 participants from 59 different countries.

Workers reported a lack of planning, guidance and basic provisions including personal protective equipment. Work intensification brought stress, workload pressure and mental health problems. Family difficulties and challenges of living through the pandemic, often related to government restrictions, intensified these working conditions with precarious living arrangements. The workers also relayed a myriad of challenges for their residents in which, the circumstances appear to have exacerbated dementia and general health problems including dehydration, delirium and loneliness. Whilst COVID-19 was seen as partially responsible for resident deaths, the sudden disruptions to daily life and prohibitions on family visits were identified as additional contributing factors in rapid and sudden decline.

Whilst the paper’s sample cohort is small, given the significance of COVID-19 at this present time the findings shed important light on the care home experience as well as act as a baseline for future study.

Care homes bore the brunt of illness and death during the first and second COVID-19 waves in the UK, and many of the problems identified here have still yet to be actioned by the government. As people approach the summer months, an urgent review is required of what happened in care homes and this paper could act as some part of that evidence gathering.

This paper offers revealing insights from frontline care home workers and thus provides an empirical snapshot during this unique phase in recent history. It also builds upon the preliminary/emerging qualitative research evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted care homes, care workers and the residents.

The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be of such a nature that, while they give a certain degree and a certain kind of protection to the public, they can never be expected to supply a sufficiently real and effective insurance against adulteration and against the palming off of inferior goods, nor an adequate and satisfactory protection to the producer and vendor of superior articles. In this country, at any rate, legislation on the adulteration question has always been, and probably will always be of a somewhat weak and patchy character, with the defects inevitably resulting from more or less futile attempts to conciliate a variety of conflicting interests. The Bill as it stands, for instance, fails to deal in any way satisfactorily with the subject of preservatives, and, if passed in its present form, will give the force of law to the standards of Somerset House—standards which must of necessity be low and the general acceptance of which must tend to reduce the quality of foods and drugs to the same dead‐level of extreme inferiority. The ludicrous laissez faire report of the Beer Materials Committee—whose authors see no reason to interfere with the unrestricted sale of the products of the “ free mash tun,” or, more properly speaking, of the free adulteration tun—affords a further instance of what is to be expected at present and for many years to come as the result of governmental travail and official meditations. Public feeling is developing in reference to these matters. There is a growing demand for some system of effective insurance, official or non‐official, based on common‐sense and common honesty ; and it is on account of the plain necessity that the quibbles and futilities attaching to repressive legislation shall by some means be brushed aside that we have come to believe in the power and the value of the system of Control, and that we advocate its general acceptance. The attitude and the policy of the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON ADULTERATION, of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and of the BRITISH ANALYTICAL CONTROL, are in all respects identical with regard to adulteration questions; and in answer to the observations and suggestions which have been put forward since the introduction of the Control System in England, it may be well once more to state that nothing will meet with the approbation or support of the Control which is not pure, genuine, and good in the strictest sense of these terms. Those applicants and critics whom it may concern may with advantage take notice of the fact that under no circumstances will approval be given to such articles as substitute beers, separated milks, coppered vegetables, dyed sugars, foods treated with chemical preservatives, or, in fact, to any food or drug which cannot be regarded as in every respect free from any adulterant, and free from any suspicion of sophistication or inferiority. The supply of such articles as those referred to, which is left more or less unfettered by the cumbrous machinery of the law, as well as the sale of those adulterated goods with which the law can more easily deal, can only be adequately held in check by the application of a strong system of Control to justify approbation, providing, as this does, the only effective form of insurance which up to the present has been devised.

IT would be quite impossible adequately to report a Dublin conference of any kind in purely professional terms. The warm friendliness of its people demands an equally personal reaction from its visitors and for public librarians certainly this is as it should be, because we are ourselves, above all, involved with people. So professional affairs at this conference were kept in their proper place—as only a part of the whole and merely providing a framework round which the business of renewing contacts and making friends could take place.