Abstract
AbstractLocal state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID‐19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims‐making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations providing support to benefit claimants and those financially struggling during COVID‐19, this paper examines the increasingly situated nature of the claims‐making process across four local areas in the United Kingdom. We do so to consider what bearing ‘local ecosystems of support’ have on income adequacy, access and universality across social security systems. Our analysis demonstrates how local state and third sector actors risk amplifying inequalities that at best disadvantage, and at worst altogether exclude, particular social groups from adequate (financial) assistance. Rather than conceiving of social security as a unitary collection of social transfers, we argue that its operation needs to be understood as much more fragmented and contingent. Practitioners exhibit considerable professional autonomy and moral agency in their discretionary practice, arbitrating between competing organisational priorities, local disinvestment, and changing community needs. Our findings offer broader lessons for understanding the contemporary governance of social security across welfare states seeking to responsibilise low‐income households through the modernisation of public services, localism, and welfare reforms.
Highlights
Social security is typically understood as a collection of social transfers
This paper considers a wider range of local state and third sector actors that mediate social security policy to consider the nature and significance of their discretionary practice
Our focus is on the UK context, but our findings offer broader lessons for understanding the contemporary governance of social security in welfare states seeking to responsibilise low-income households through the modernisation of public services, localism and welfare reforms
Summary
Social security is typically understood as a collection of social transfers. These funds were widely recognised as necessary given the significant increase in the number of people seeking access to working-age social security: there were 1.8 million new claims for UC in the first 5 weeks of the pandemic alone (Summers et al, 2021: 7) In addition to their more-usual intermediary role, local statutory providers and third sector organisations were charged with identifying and responding to emerging community needs to cover basic living costs (e.g., food, clothing and utilities) in the face of disrupted earnings and employment. Despite the extraordinary nature of the pandemic, COVID-19 offers broader lessons about the displaced costs, crises and work undertaken by local ecosystems of support amidst welfare state restructuring and what bearing this can have on the claims-making process
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
