Parents living in poverty and the welfare system: the conditions for trust

ABSTRACT This contribution explores the experience of parents struggling with poverty when interacting with welfare services meant to support them and their families. Low-income families face ambivalent social attitudes as well as grudging social assistance, often linked to the fear of creating dependency, in a culture that values independence and competition. Scholars have highlighted how these representations have affected common sense discourses, as well as the design of policies and services. This study contributes to this literature, through an in-depth exploration of the parents’ modes of interaction with welfare services. Forty Italian parents were involved in a national research guided by a constructivist grounded theory methodology. The explanatory model emerged from the analysis is useful to shed light on factors that shape the encounters of families and welfare institutions, allowing different levels of trust among them. The parents’ voice helps to uncover several contradictions of the western societal systems, and the different roles welfare services can play in dealing with socially produced inequalities.