International Journal of Social Welfare最新文献

Finland has reformed its social security to emphasise in-work benefits, which are intended to support part-time and low-paid employment. Drawing on total population registries, the present study analysed trends in the use of unemployment benefits, the general housing allowance and last-resort social assistance among Finland's working households. Logistic regression was used to analyse the factors associated with benefit recipiency among them. Throughout the analysed period from 2011 through 2022, the use of in-work benefits was most frequent among single mothers and people living alone. These working households stood out from the rest, particularly in terms of receiving the general housing allowance. Logistic regression analysis indicated that among working households, single-parent mothers had markedly elevated odds of receiving benefits. The results highlight that a significant number of single mothers and individuals living alone struggle to make ends meet with income solely from employment.

It is often assumed that the effects of cash transfer programs (CTs) could only be limited to temporary monetary poverty alleviation and consumption smoothing. According to theoretical discussions, such programs would not bear the potential to yield long-lasting and transformative effects in recipient communities. However, the available (even if scarce) post-program evidence seems to actually suggest that positive CT repercussions on a variety of outcomes can actually persist after the cessation of support. The existing proofs, however, mainly focus on the analysis of effects at the individual and household levels, while collective-level impacts have been largely overlooked. In this context, this paper resorts to a quasi-experimental matching approach to explore the sustainability (i.e., persistence after the end of exposure) of the impacts on collective-level variables—conceptualized as social capital, agency, and collective action—of a universal unconditional (as such, a basic income experiment) CT implemented in rural Uganda. The main findings relate to sustained or long-term impacts on social networks, life satisfaction, crime, and (both individual and collective) demand for services. The observed effects on cognitive social capital could be interpreted as a persisting increase in support for universal programs, in contrast to targeted ones. These results highlight the potential for short-term universal CTs to generate lasting shifts in relational and collective dynamics.

Individuals with intellectual, mental, and severe physical disabilities face significant discrimination and challenges in accessing the mainstream labor market. The China Disabled Persons' Federation (DPF) has offered alternative employment opportunities for these hard-to-employ people with disabilities (PWDs) by collaborating with social organizations. This study, grounded in resource dependence theory and utilizing a case study approach, investigates the resource exchange and dependence between local DPFs and disability service organizations, as well as the emerging forms of employment and subjective experiences of hard-to-employ PWDs. The findings reveal that an interdependent relationship has been emerging between DPFs and disability organizations. Disability organizations have maintained autonomy and played a pivotal role in introducing and testing innovative employment models, mainly Work Integration Social Enterprise (WISE) projects. Most PWDs showed a positive or neutral attitude, but some expressed dissatisfaction regarding their workload and income. However, due to resource limitations and the underwhelming economic performance of employment projects, disability organizations have often prioritized upward accountability to DPFs by focusing on job creation metrics, while paying insufficient attention to the experiences and needs of hard-to-employ PWDs. Future policy should provide disability organizations with a more supportive environment to develop WISE projects, and encourage them to establish institutionalized mechanisms for the participation of hard-to-employ PWDs in the design, implementation and evaluation of employment services.

This article examines the promotion of a regional strategy of physical activity for public health in Sweden. Based on focus group interviews, we explore the rationality of governing public health through the strategy and consider how the strategy and its rationality become intertwined in contemporary forms of governing welfare. The strategy operates through the dissemination of good examples and spotlights the role of various forms of cross-sector and inter-agency cooperation, underpinned by notions of trust and complementarity. We analyze the non-coercive and subtle modes of power, in terms of how facilitation and inspiration are assumed to operate. We conclude that the policy discourse promoted forms a biopolitics of inspiration. This rationality provides an intelligible response to a range of policy problems, of how the public health of the population can be governed in a time marked by social inequality, financial austerity, and decentralized and constitutionally limited government.

Accessing the US safety net depends on labour market participation and demonstrating behaviour policymakers deem responsible. These prescriptions create moral distinctions between deserving and undeserving recipients, generating stigma and shame. Despite increasing experimentation with unconditional cash, little data exists interrogating perceptions of deservedness among recipients and potential recipients. Using a Big Qual analysis of survey data (N = 1517) and interviews (N = 197) from eight guaranteed income experiments, this study explores how participants reflect traditional deservedness narratives. Respondents exhibited lessened internalized stigma, renegotiated or disengaged from dominant blame narratives, and presumed that widespread structural inequality rather than irresponsibility created financial stress.

Coordinated services are often seen as a solution to complex problems spanning organisational boundaries, such as preventing young people from being marginalised in education and employment. Based on secondary sources, we compare the three Scandinavian countries' paths from traditional public administration to new public management and then towards new public governance with its focus on service coordination. Our analysis shows: (A) Although the countries belong to the same welfare and activation regime, their shifts in governance paradigms are materialised in different coordination initiatives. (B) Given that coordination initiatives and their resulting organisational set-up may affect opportunities for delivering coordinated services at the frontline, we expect the Danish, and to some extent, the Norwegian system to provide better opportunities than Sweden, but this is still to be documented. (C) Four specific dimensions of an organisational set-up—authority, organisational integration, departmentalisation, and coordination mandate—can impact on opportunities to provide coordinated service provision.

This paper reports on the findings of a study that involved a scoping review of literature on rural social work published between 2020 and 2024 in high-ranked English-language social work journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports. The study aimed to examine what this published literature had to say about the nature of rural social work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that not only brought unprecedented challenges to rural communities worldwide, but also to rural practice as social workers attempted to address consequential socioeconomic and health-related issues. The huge increase in the literature, from 36 articles between 2009 and 2019, to 116 from 2020 onwards attested to rising interest in rural social work in the post-pandemic period. A thematic analysis of these articles revealed similarities across contexts relating to problem areas and client groups, rural practice and professional challenges. This paper discusses the nature of rural social work as defined by the nature of rural populations and the nature of rural problems and highlights the need for context-specific understanding of rural people's experience. In this way, it contributes to the development of culturally and context-appropriate knowledge, as well as broader understanding of rural social work as a distinct area of professional practice.

In the Netherlands, there are many households with long-term dependency on social assistance. Social policies and interventions for this population frequently utilise ‘work first’ and ‘human capital’ approaches, resulting in minimal positive outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to implement social work interventions that prioritise the unique challenges and well-being needs of long-term social assistance recipients (SARs). To develop interventions that align with this population, our study seeks to gain a deeper understanding of their lived experiences, challenges and needs. Through 29 in-depth interviews with SARs, we found that the accumulation of ongoing and emerging challenges often traps individuals in a cycle of adversity. Enhanced social support and self-management skills are crucial for improving their physical, mental and social well-being, and for combating feelings of shame, stigma and destructive behaviours. With these findings, this paper provides guidance for both policymakers and social workers aiming to offer better support to SARs.

Mixed findings are found on the psychological outcomes of anti-COVID policies during the pandemic. This study proposes a synthesized framework to connect the opposite findings and introduce a nonlinear relationship between anti-COVID policy stringency and people's subjective well-being. Employing data collected from the China Family Panel Study and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, as well as the lagged dependent variable multilevel regression model, this study found that people's depressive emotions initially increased along policy stringency before they started to decline after a turning point. This inverted U-shaped relationship was more pronounced among males than females. Females were more likely to have positive mental reactions to stringent policies, as their subjective well-being was positively associated with the level of policy stringency. The nonlinear and gendered findings expand the understanding of people's emotional experiences during the pandemic as well as under other social crises.

This study explores the challenges associated with sub-state welfare development in Wales, one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. It examines the Welsh Government's stated aim of creating a coherent and compassionate Welsh Benefits System (WBS) based on human rights and equality. The analysis reveals a broad array of Welsh Government-administered benefits yet argues that the current WBS is fragmented and arcane, with limited uptake. It shows the discursive ideological underpinnings of devolved benefits and how a distinctive body of law compels Welsh Ministers to uphold rights in benefits delivery in ways that contrast to elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We argue, the effectiveness of current moves towards a rights-based WBS will depend on overcoming formidable challenges. These include systemic reforms to integrate dozens of separate benefits currently administered by numerous different Welsh Government departments and public bodies, budgetary constraints, political will and intergovernmental agreement between the Welsh and UK Governments.