Asian Social Work and Policy Review最新文献

Social support is essential for improving the lives of older adults. However, some respondents of other literature reported receiving less adequate financial support from family, a lack of comprehensive policies to protect older adults, and a smaller social network as they age. In order to address this issue, more intense social support is required as older adults are at risk of obtaining insufficient social support from their social network. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the interventions and development strategies for social support for older adults. The qualitative case study method was used in this study, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 older adults aged 60 and above who participated in Pusat Aktiviti Warga Emas (PAWE), an activity center for older adults, for more than 5 months. Four PAWE supervisors and three policymakers from Department of Social Welfare Malaysia (JKMM) were also interviewed. The data were then thematically analyzed. The study highlighted three intervention and development strategies to improve social support for older adults namely in the areas of personal development, policy, and social connectivity of older adults. As Malaysia is expected to become an aging population by 2035, it is vital to establish a supportive environment for older people.

There is no doubt that the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 negatively impacted billions of people worldwide, and among them, people with disabilities became most susceptible. However, little is known about the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of people with disabilities in Nepal. Using empirical data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with people with disabilities, disability specialist, and community leaders, this study discusses the lived experiences of people with disabilities who have been affected by COVID-19 in Nepal. This study revealed that the outbreak of COVID-19 impacted people with disabilities by worsening their vulnerability. In particular, the majority of people with disabilities became further isolated, were disconnected from existing services such as access to information, education, and health care and many lost their income opportunities. Findings from this study further show that this pandemic affected the rights of people with disabilities guided by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Immediate financial and non-financial support for people with disabilities from government and other stakeholders, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is needed, indicating the need for policymakers to reassess policies to ensure that they adequately protect the rights of people with disabilities.

This paper analyzes and uses the National Solidarity Program (NSP) Afghanistan as a case study to question the idea of social capital building for poverty reduction. Specifically, it explores how development policy has been decoupled from its intended objectives as it hit the existing friction in the ground. The data draws from poor household experience in three different provinces of Afghanistan to assess how poor household is integrated into NSP and how existing social structure and relational dynamics shape the NSP outcomes. The finding reveals that household is experiencing a cluster of interlink disadvantages that make it impossible for them to draw on social capital to reduce their poverty. However, NSP failed to eliminate the asymmetrical relations which created poverty in rural society; instead, it boosted Neopatrimonialism culture.

This paper explored parental experiences of caring for children with disability (CWD) living in the Sylhet city corporation area of Bangladesh. This study applied a qualitative research approach. The purposive snowball sampling method was employed to recruit study participants. Twenty-one in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions with parents of children with physical, hearing, vision, and intellectual disabilities were conducted to learn more about their experiences and identify the difficulties and challenges they confront in their everyday lives. The results showed that respondents experience various disadvantages, for example, treatment-related challenges, financial incapacity, housing, and transportation issues. The study also indicates that parents are subjected to discrimination, experience stress, and tension, and become depressed when they consider the future distressing condition of CWD after their death. Poverty, the societal stigma associated with disability, and a lack of social supports exacerbate parents' mental anguish and limit their ability to care for CWD patients. Therefore, it is recommended to develop new services delivery strategy, including home care, respite care, and monetary transfers for CWD caregivers, as well as community mobilization and inter-professional collaboration, to enhance their current situation and overall well-being.

This article aims to raise and empirically test whether complexity and ambiguity would affect the intent to apply for public assistance in the case of South Korea. Results of regression analysis reveal that the complexity of the application process has led to a greater decline in the intent of the poor to apply, possibly because the present bias is relatively greater. These outcomes indicate that the ambiguity aversion attitude of the poor was not different from that of the non-poor. However, when ambiguity is combined with complexity, it has an additive effect, lowering the intention to apply. From these findings, understandable policy manuals should be provided to potential applicants of assistance services and multiple forms, and evidence materials should be simplified in public assistance. Finally, in terms of behavioral economics and social policy, decreasing the complexity and ambiguity could “nudge” the Non-take-up and encourage them to apply for selective welfare programs.

This study identified the acculturation trajectories of multicultural adolescents in South Korea along with those of their migrant mothers using a latent class growth analysis and examined the relationship between latent trajectories of adolescents and their mothers and the adjustment of adolescents. Data from a nationally representative sample of Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study (N = 1458, Girls = 50.62%, age range = 9.97–14.96) were used. Three latent acculturation trajectories of multicultural adolescents were identified, including integration, modest assimilation, and high assimilation, and four latent acculturation trajectories of migrant mothers were distinguished, including high assimilation, high separation, modest assimilation, and modest separation. The most favorable profiles were those of the integration of adolescents and high assimilation of migrant mothers. These findings suggested the importance of providing family-based prevention and intervention programs against the maladjustment of South Korean multicultural adolescents.

This paper examines the attempts to improve public accountability in the private-led Korean Long-Term Care (LTC) insurance system, illustrating their characteristics and limitations. Korea introduced universal LTC insurance in 2008, but with the purposeful exclusion of public provision, for-profit providers were able to take part without regulation, which caused problems such as low-quality services and widespread corruption. In response, the government tried to improve public accountability through various regulations such as new accounting/finance rules, but when such regulations had negative effects on their profits, they were met with stout resistance from providers. This case study of Korean LTC insurance illustrates the difficulty of implementing regulations to improve public accountability in a private welfare system.

Adopting the principles of managerialism, the Lump Sum Grant Subvention System in Hong Kong grants service organizations autonomy to deploy resources. Using organization- and individual-level survey data, this article examines the salaries of social workers under the managerialist subvention system and investigates its impacts on frontline service professionals. We found that when service organizations adopted flexible employment terms to hire social workers, they offered lower minimum wage. Smaller organizations, which are often believed to benefit more from the system, paid social workers lower minimum wage. When individual social workers made use of flexible employment terms and switched their jobs in the welfare sector, there was no evidence that their income levels would be raised—on the contrary, switching jobs for three or more times would in fact lower their income levels. Furthermore, while the system encouraged social workers to get more involved in management work, there was no evidence that increasing work hours on management-related work would increase the income of social workers. As organizational autonomy does not necessarily result in income justice for frontline social workers, clear guidelines, supervision, and policy interventions in the management of service organizations are still needed in social service planning and delivery.

The body of knowledge related to child well-being in Southeast Asia is sketchy and preliminary. Using standardized Z-scores, we computed the child well-being index (CWI) to observe how well 11 Southeast Asian countries take care of children. The overall result shows most countries in this region have “less” to “moderate” performance in terms of CWI realization. An exception is given to Singapore, which has achieved a higher degree of CWI. Further analysis on “child well-being regimes” suggests that examined countries have been combining productive and protective models with more emphasis on the former. The explanation for the low level of CWI and pervasive characteristic of productivism may rest on moral argumentation, in which child well-being is constructed as an intimate and private area. Public provisions to regulate child well-being, consequently, remain hidden behind the family unit as objects rather than subjects of social policy. Tied to low-performance countries, we call for generous welfare programs to support low-income families and intensified effort for the provision of quality education, healthcare, and basic facilities in order to enhance the well-being of children.

This study investigates the applicability of organizational learning in non-profit human service organizations for the management of outcome-based programs. The focus of this study was the organizational learning level of J Agency and the enhancement of outcome-based program planning capacity through organizational learning. The organizational learning conducted at J Agency consisted of training and consulting sessions to establish an outcome-based program management system by enhancing the capacity level of social workers. The result of this study shows the organizational learning level of J Agency being lower than other corporations or public organizations, but the program planning capacity through education and consulting to have enhanced positively. Social workers acquired program planning, management, and evaluation knowledge through the learning strategy of training and consulting, and shared and spread it at the team and organizational level. This organizational learning strategy contributed to improving the program planning capacity of social workers, and it can be confirmed that it is useful as an organizational management strategy of non-profit human service organizations.