Explanations: welfare and politics matter

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Mike Allen ◽  
Lars Benjaminsen ◽  
Eoin O’Sullivan ◽  
Nicholas Pleace
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Psychosocial Difficulties ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Generous Welfare

The impacts of welfare policies and political choices are explored in this chapter. Comprehensive and generous welfare systems that encompass housing, health and other social services, as well as income supports, provide important buffers that lessen the likelihood that people will experience homelessness. The evidence from social democratic welfare regimes such as Denmark is that those who do experience homelessness despite such developed welfare systems tend to have a higher rate of psychosocial difficulties compared to the general population, and this is also likely to be the case in Finland. It was traditionally the case in Ireland, but has become less so in recent years.

Crime Policy and Welfare Policy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carina Gallo ◽  
Mimi E. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Crime Policy ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Social Democratic

This essay provides a synthesis of criminological and social welfare theoretical frameworks, along with empirical data illuminating the links between crime policy and welfare policy. It also reviews current debates regarding the extent to which European countries are undergoing a shift toward more punitive welfare or crime policies. Building upon Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s classic typology of welfare regimes, current scholarship ties liberal welfare regimes to punitive penal ideologies and high rates of incarceration and social democratic welfare regimes to lenient attitudes toward punishment and low incarceration rates. Research also underscores the significance of economic and social inequality in the production and outcomes of crime and welfare policies. Comparative empirical data supports the persistence of penal-welfarism in Europe, particularly in social democratic states, exemplified by Sweden, while indicating more punitive policies targeting marginalized sectors of the population, notably immigrants.

scholarly journals Disability and work intensity in Italian households

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Calegari ◽  
Enrico Fabrizi ◽  
Chiara Mussida
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
Market Participation ◽  
Work Intensity ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Labour Market Participation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
The Disabled

AbstractThe 2030 Agenda of the United Nations clearly sets the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the labour market as a main goal. However, especially in care welfare systems characterized by a low level of social services, disability not only impacts the labour market participation of disabled people themselves but may also affect the labour opportunities of other members of their household. Using EU-SILC data to compute individual work intensity-as a better measure of the actual level of labour attainment-this paper aims to disentangle direct and indirect correlations between disability and labour market participation in Italian households. In confirming the negative direct correlation between disability and labour market participation, the results also show a negative indirect correlation that depends on the family relationship between the disabled person and household members.

scholarly journals Political Parties’ Preferences about the Volume of Social Spending and its Distribution between Programs and Age Groups: a Comparative Study of France, Spain and the UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Cristina Ares ◽  
Antón Losada
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Expenditure

The transformation of the Welfare State is not a standardized response to globalization or a by-product of European Union policies, but rather ‘what parties make of it’ (Burgoon, 2006). Different welfare regimes and welfare cultures contribute to the maintenance of diverse national responses to global and regional integration in terms of their public welfare systems, but there are also meso-level variables, such as parties´ ideologies, that may have an impact on the volume and distribution of welfare expenditure. This article presents a new scheme and procedure to code party manifesto statements in favor of social spending and retrenchment; it applies them in Britain, France and Spain in order to show the possibilities of the new data. The preliminary results indicate that ideologies are linked to parties´ preferences regarding the distribution of social spending between programs, the emphasis on different age groups as beneficiaries of welfare expenditure, and the rationale for social cuts.  

scholarly journals Exploiting Administrative Data to Understand the Mental Health of Children Known to Social Services

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah McKenna ◽  
Aideen Maguire ◽  
Dermot O'Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
General Population ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Mental Health Outcomes ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Children In Care ◽  
Care System

Background Research has consistently found a high prevalence of mental ill-health among children in out-of-home care. However, results have varied significantly by study location, type of care intervention, sample population and mental health measurement, and concerns have been raised about appropriate reference populations. In addition, little is known about children known to social services who remain with their birth families. Aim To examine mental ill-health amongst children known to social services based on care exposure including those who remain at home, those placed in foster care, kinship care or institutional care and the general population not known to social services. Methods Northern Ireland is unique in that has an integrated health and social care system and holds data centrally on all children known to social services. Social services data (1995-2015) will be linked to hospital discharge data (2010-2015), prescribed medication data (2010-2015), self-harm data (2010-2015) and death records (2010-2015) to investigate mental health outcomes in terms of psychiatric hospital admissions, psychotropic medication uptake, self-harm and suicide. Results Data cleaning has been completed and analysis is underway. Preliminary results will be available by December 2019. Descriptive statistics will provide a mental health profile of children in care compared not only to children in the general population but to those who are known to social services but remain in their own home. Regression models will determine which factors are most associated with poor mental health outcomes. Conclusion This project is the UK’s first population-wide data linkage study examining the mental health of children in the social care system, including looked-after children and those known to social services who remain in their own home. Project partners in the Department of Health recognise the potential of these findings to inform future policy relating to targeting interventions for children in receipt of social care services.

scholarly journals Software-Sorted Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Norway and Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Funda Ustek-Spilda ◽  
Marja Alastalo
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Welfare State

As James Scott writes, to be able to govern, administrative bodies need to make objects of government legible. Yet migrant persons do not fall neatly into the categories of administrative agencies. This categorical ambiguity is illustrated in the tendency to exclude asylum seekers from various population registers and to not provide them with ID numbers, which constitute the backbone of many welfare states in Europe. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway and Finland, and in Eurostat and UNECE, we study how practices of population registration and statistics compilation on foreign-born persons can be beset by differential and at times contradictory outlooks. We show that these outlooks are often presented in the form of seemingly apolitical software infrastructures or decisions made in response to software with limited, if any, discretion available to bureaucrats, statisticians, and policymakers. Our two cases, Norway and Finland, are considered social-democratic regimes within Esping-Andersen’s famous global social policy typology. Using science and technology studies and specifically “double social life of methods,” we seek to trace how software emerges as both a device for administrative bookkeeping and also for enacting the “migrant” categories with particular implications for how the welfare state comes to be established and how welfare policies come to be implemented. We note that even if all statistical production necessarily involves inclusions and exclusions, how the “boundaries” are set for whom to include and exclude directly affects the lives of those implicated by these decisions, and as such, they are onto-political. This means that welfare policies get made at the point of sorting, categorizing, and ordering of data, even before it is fed into software and other administrative devices of government. In view of this, we show that methods enact their subjects—we detail how the methods set to identify and measure refugee statistics in Europe end up enacting the welfare services they have access to. We argue that with increasing automation and datafication, the scope of welfare systems is being curtailed under the label of efficiency, and individual contexts are ignored.

Copenhagen: contenimento della disuguaglianza o aumento della segregazione?

TERRITORIO ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Roberta Cucca
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Public ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
Generous Welfare

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Copenhagen was represented as the ‘welfare city', in consideration of the high percentage of the labour force employed in the public sector, the share of social housing that characterized its housing stock and the support furnished by one of the most generous welfare systems in the world. Following a substantial financial crisis in the early 1990s and action taken by a central government ori¬ented towards introducing a more neo-laissez-faire idea of urban development for its capital, the profile of the city was greatly modified. This paper describes the major transformations that have occurred, and in particular sheds light on how, alongside a process of economic rebirth of the city, which thanks to major infrastructural interventions became the most important hub in Northern Europe as well as one of the most liveable and sustain¬able cities in the world, transformations were begun that created a serious crisis for its social model.

Social Co-operatives in Italy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Depedri
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Organizational Form ◽  
Added Value ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Work Integration ◽  
Disadvantaged People

Starting from the 1970s, some co-operatives distinguished themselves for their interest in producing social services and for their social aims. They emerged in order to answer new needs arising in society, and specifically the difficulties faced by welfare systems. Co-operatives started to assume a new role as welfare providers and suppliers of general-interest services and work integration of disadvantaged people. This new co-operative form first emerged in Italy during the 1980s as a bottom-up phenomenon. The first regulation on social co-operatives was enacted in Italy by Law 381/1991. This chapter illustrates the emergence, the evolution, and the most recent trends of Italian social co-operation in order to define the main traits that helped social co-operatives become a successful organizational form in the provision of welfare services. This chapter also contributes to evaluating the added value of this co-operative form in the socio-economic context.

German Angst in a liberalised world of welfare capitalism: the hidden problem with post-conservative welfare policies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigrid Betzelt ◽  
Ingo Bode
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Welfare Reforms ◽  
Generous Welfare

This chapter provides an understanding of the emotional states of those experiencing welfare retrenchment. According to a widespread reading, Germany, subsequent to the financial crisis of the late 2000s, has seen a stunning comeback as a social model allowing for both a booming economy and generous welfare provision. However, in the recent past Germany has been facing a social crisis that is poorly understood in both the public debate and major contributions to welfare policy analysis. This crisis refers to the hostile reaction of parts of the population to the massive immigration of refugees starting in 2015, and is indicative of a more deep-seated transformation of Germany's social model — namely its creeping liberalisation. This transformation comes with a hidden problem, that is, emotional states of fear — or a new ‘German Angst’ — engendered by both path-breaking welfare reforms and a ‘de-securitised’ life course.

Time and change: UK social work and comparative European welfare policies since 1990

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Linda Bell
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Background History ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Work Education

This chapter gives a brief contextual background history to ‘social work’. It emphasises the years after 1990. This period encompasses many policy and political changes and theoretical developments in the UK and internationally, which affect social work practice and education. This is the time period encapsulating the author's involvement with social workers and social work education. The chapter presents some comparative geographical locations partly to reflect aspects of this involvement with social work and contacts with social work and social workers in those places, as well as to reflect different kinds of welfare regimes and to indicate some different kinds of welfare professionals.

Competition, Constituencies, and Welfare Policies in American States

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 414-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward T. Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
American States ◽  
Competition Hypothesis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Party Characteristics ◽  
Generous Welfare

This article examines the logic underlying standard formulations of the interparty competition hypothesis in the comparative state policy literature, suggests a reformulation which provides some new insights into the conditions under which we might expect state policies to change as a result of party characteristics, and undertakes an initial test of the reformulation.I develop two propositions. The first is that party systems which divide the electorate along economic class lines will generate more generous welfare policies than party systems which do not so organize the electorate. The second is that within states with class-based electoral systems, change in welfare policy will be positively related to the degree to which the party or faction with lower- and working-class support gains control of government.I analyze welfare policies of selected American states for the period 1938 to 1970. My analysis suggests that (1) the class basis of electoral politics does influence state welfare policies and (2) parties and factions which differ in their constituency bases produce different types of policies when they are in control of government.

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