Traditional welfare and employment policies have been unable to tackle the problems of high unemployment and exclusion in OECD countries and recently a wave of new approaches has emerged together with new political notions of welfare-to-work. This book describes these new approaches in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France and the Netherlands. All these countries are relying increasingly on local agencies to design and manage policy to try and ensure that policy solutions meet local needs and to bring to bear local energies, skills and resources. What is the role that local agencies can play? How can they be integrated in effective partnerships? And what policy tools can best be applied? This book gives valuable answers to these questions and shows that governments and practitioners have much to learn from each other on the practicalities of implementing effective welfare-to-work policies.

These Proceedings of the Sheffield Conference, held in November 1998 in collaboration with the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) in the United Kingdom, were prepared by the Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Programme of the OECD's Territorial Development Service.