The article includes considerations and author’s proposals concerning the regional dimension of social policy. This aspect of social policy has not been investigated widely so far. The scope of regionalism and its forms are linked with the dominant social doctrine in a given country. They reflected in the ratio of territorial self-governments’ own incomes against those of the state budget, and in the institutional freedom they have in the area of benefit structuring, that is in decentralization. In the case of Poland, the political changes connected with the doctrinal ones hamper the development of regional social policy. This may have a negative impact on the coordination and implementation of social policy actions undertaken on different government levels and on the adjustment of social benefits to the needs of a region’s residents.

This article is about the Brazilian aid programme called Programa Bolsa Família. The programme has generated the interest of international institutions, the media, and the academic world on account of its scale, which provides an opportunity for fundamental social reform; and its measurable success, which is clearly visible in the poverty statistics; and above all, on account of participation being dependent on the fulfillment of specific requirements in the field of education, health, and social care. The author undertakes to go beyond an analysis based on statistics and to look at the functioning of the programme from the level of the participants. On the basis of his own research—that is, freely-conducted interviews with the inhabitants of favelas and rural settlements—he describes what lies behind the terminology and poverty statistics. His analysis of the situation of over a dozen participants in the programme makes it possible to see the immediate improvement of their material situation; the author claims, however, that a complete diagnosis will be possible only after the passage of a dozen or more years, by comparing the human capital (and labor market position) of the children of families taking part in the programme with the socio-economic position of those families today.