Changes In Welfare Policy Research Articles

Honoring Family: Using parent partner expertise to strengthen a child welfare coaching program

Increasingly, the child welfare system is acknowledging the importance of incorporating parent voice and expertise into changes in child welfare practice, policy, and research; however, there is limited knowledge on how to incorporate parents’ expertise into program-level change. This study sought input from parent partners on the shared principles of a statewide coaching program for child welfare supervisors. Two focus groups were conducted, an initial focus group (n = 17) and a member checking focus group (n = 14). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings included three key themes: (a) understand parent context, (b) activate engagement, and (c) bridge principles and practice. Strategies for incorporating parent partner input into the coaching program are discussed.

Alignment and specifics of Brazilian health agencies in relation to the international premises for the implementation of digital health in primary health care: a rhetorical analysis.

Digital health and sustainable development goals have had strong impacts with the COVID-19 pandemic. In Brazil, the health crisis scenario required changes in social welfare programs and policies, based on recommendations from international agencies, such as the UN and WHO. This study aims to analyze the alignment of the arguments of Brazilian and international organizations for the adoption of digital health in Primary Health Care based on the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a qualitative documentary study of the rhetorical analysis type, based on Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteca's Theory of Argumentation. The search for documents was carried out by two independent researchers, between December 2021 and June 2022, through the websites of the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and the Federal Councils of Medicine and Brazilian nursing, with the terms "digital health," "telehealth," "telemedicine," "e-health," "telehealth," "telenursing," "telemedicine," and "digital health." Twenty official documents were analyzed and identified in terms of context, authorship, authenticity, reliability, nature, and key concepts. The international and Brazilian arguments emphasize the applicability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the health field. In logical arguments, based on the structure of reality, international agencies emphasize the overlap between health needs and the conditions for the applicability of ICTs. In Brazil, however, there was a need to regulate the digital practices of health professionals. In the international discourse, in the structuring of reality, there are illustrations of the relationship between the context of the health crisis caused by COVID-19 and the concrete conditions for the applicability of digital health; while in the Brazilian discourse, the need to strengthen an environment conducive to digital health is explicit. The Brazilian alignment in relation to the international premises is evident. Yet, there is a need, socially and economically sustainable, to strengthen the inclusion of digital health in PHC policy.

Changes in health-related rehabilitation trajectories following a major Norwegian welfare reform

BackgroundIn this study we investigated the health-related rehabilitation trajectories of young Norwegian adults between 2004–2019. The study period is interesting because it overlaps with an extensive welfare system reform that occurred in Norway between 2006–2011. In parallel with the reform there was a substantial increase in health-related welfare dependency among young people due to mental health conditions.To better understand this group, we addressed three questions: 1) what were the most typical health-related rehabilitation trajectories for young Norwegians aged 23–27 between 2004–2019, 2) did the trajectories and composition of health-related benefit recipients change overtime and 3) in parallel with the welfare reform, do we see improved labour market outcomes in our study population?MethodsUsing high-quality Norwegian registry data, we established four cohorts of Norwegian health-related rehabilitation benefit recipients aged 23–27 in either 2004 (cohort 1), 2008 (cohort 2), 2011 (cohort 3) or 2014 (cohort 4). The follow-up period for each cohort was six years. We used sequence and cluster analyses to identify typical health-related rehabilitation trajectories. In addition, descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression were used to scrutinise the relationship between trajectory types, sociodemographic characteristics and cohort membership.ResultsThe majority follow trajectories consisting of welfare dependency, unemployment and unstable, low-income work. Both the trajectories and composition of the study population changed across cohorts. Over the observation period there was a 1) three-fold increase in the proportion following a trajectory ending in permanent disability benefits, 2) nine-fold increase in the proportion following trajectories characterised by long periods of health-related rehabilitation, 3) five-fold decrease in the share following unemployment occupational handicap trajectories 4) 6.9% increase in the proportion of early school leavers and 5) 8.9% decrease in the share with disabled parents.ConclusionOur study population is a vulnerable group with suboptimal mental health, functioning and employment outcomes. In conjunction with the welfare reform, we witnessed a significant drop in use of work-related benefits, accompanied by a substantial increase in uptake of health-related rehabilitation- and disability benefits. Thus, it appears that rather than improving employment outcomes, welfare policy changes have created a new problem by steering a greater proportion into disability benefits.

Welfare regimes in twenty-first-century Latin America

AbstractA growing scholarship has documented changes in welfare policy in twenty-first-century Latin America, but no study yet has offered a systematic assessment, using a welfare regime approach, that captures the main trends across countries and over time. For a sample of 17 countries, this study offers a comprehensive tool to measure shifts in social policy regimes, highlighting three dimensions of welfare – inclusion, generosity, and equity – across four policy areas: transfers, health care, education, and family policies. Countries made significant progress in generosity and inclusion, but none improved equity. A cluster analysis based on the three dimensions of welfare offers a new, more precise classification of Latin American countries in welfare regimes in 2002 and 2017. Although the analysis shows minor shifts in country groupings, an increasing reliance on social assistance policies, particularly among the most advanced countries, marks a shift towards what I call compensatory regimes.

If unpartnered at the birth of a child, how would you fare? A life-course perspective on contemporary single motherhood

ABSTRACT In this article, we use population-based administrative data and multichannel sequence analysis to investigate the trajectories of single mothers in Norway who had a child while unpartnered in 1993, 2001 and 2008. Our observation period is from 1994 to 2015. This period covers several structural transformations in Norwegian society and changes in family policies and welfare policies concerning single mothers. Furthermore, the period saw the growth of alternatives to the nuclear family as the prevailing normative ideal. Our findings demonstrate both complexity and heterogeneity among single mothers and their trajectories. Even so, the population of this group of single mothers is both younger and have lower education than the comparable population of non-single mothers. Nearly half of the single mothers followed trajectories characterized by strong labour market integration and family re-establishment. The other half followed more precarious trajectories characterized by unemployment and health related benefits. Importantly, age and life stage have strong implications for the labour market and family trajectories. Thus, early parenthood combined with leaving school early increases the probability of following precarious trajectories. The results further suggest that both economic cycles and changing welfare state framework is of great importance for single mother trajectories.

Understanding the effect of universal credit on housing insecurity in England: a difference-in-differences approach

Existing research indicates an association between the introduction of Universal Credit in the UK and increased financial hardship among claimants. This policy change embodies key changes in welfare policy and ideology taking place across Europe and worldwide. This study investigates the association between housing insecurity and claiming Universal Credit in comparison to Housing Benefit and Jobseeker’s Allowance. To examine changes in housing insecurity trajectories before and after the introduction of Universal Credit, we apply a difference-in-differences fixed effects logistic regression research design to Understanding Society data (2009–2020) on benefit claimants in England. We compare how Universal Credit claimants’ likelihood of housing insecurity changes over time compared to other benefit claimants. We find that claiming Universal Credit does indeed have a significant effect on increasing housing insecurity in comparison to claiming Housing Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance. This effect varied across different scenarios, including a larger effect for people with disabilities and claimants moving from Housing Benefit to Universal Credit. These findings demonstrate that the Universal Credit system negatively impacts particular population groups more than others, placing these claimants at disproportionate risk of experiencing housing insecurity.

Seeking recognition for people with severe disabilities on benefits

This article examines how recent welfare reform in the UK has caused systemic violence to people with severe disabilities who are reliant on state benefits. It evaluates the underpinning discourse framings and changes in welfare policies, using concepts of debility and recognition to reveal the inherent contradictions in policies targeting people on the ‘wrong side of inequality’. To help contribute to a recognition of the impact of these changes, the article gives voice to six people with severe disabilities who, through their benefit stories, expose the impact of this violence. Despite these injustices, their stories reveal lives lived with great courage and resilience, and worthy of much greater recognition.

The Role of Physical Activity and Depression on Quality of Life in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Using Propensity Score Matching Approaches.

This study examined the association between achieving the recommended physical activity level and quality of life after controlling for depression. Health information from adults aged 65years and older, who had participated in the seventh 2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, was used. Five covariate adjustment models were used to derive robust estimates of the association between physical activity practice levels, depression, and older adults' quality of life. A total of 1,336 older adults was extracted from the seventh 2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and 31% of the older adults achieved the recommended physical activity level, whereas 69% did not. We found that the achievement of physical activity practice levels is significantly associated with the quality of life of the older adults (β = 0.024-0.031, all p < .05). Our results could be used for advocating for welfare policy changes that promote physical activity to prepare for the upcoming super-aging society.

Homemade State: Motherhood, Citizenship and the Home in Child Welfare Encounters

This article explores the relationship between migrant mothers and welfare workers in domestic space to argue the home is a site where the boundary between formal, social and affective aspects of citizenship is remade. Drawing on 14 months’ ethnography with migrant mothers, this article attends to state encounters in new migrants’ homes revealing how migration and welfare policy changes are reconfiguring their most intimate spaces. Mothers who can prove they are ‘appropriate’ subjects of care (through their mothering practices) are deemed ‘deserving’ objects of state care (and worthy of a form of citizenship and belonging). The deep gendered, raced and classed inflections of ‘deservingness’ and assumptions based on these norms are co-constituted by space and embedded social relations between mothers and welfare workers shaping possibilities of migrant mothers’ citizenship practices.

What Counts as Evidence in Child Welfare Research?

In this commentary, we respond to Barth and colleagues and critique their premise that Western-based research with population-level administrative data is the best and only valid evidence on which to base child welfare policy and practice changes. We offer an alternative viewpoint on what forms of evidence should be brought to bear as we consider re-envisioning the child welfare system, highlighting the importance of lived experience and the need to consider the evidence regarding all marginalized racial and ethnic groups. We argue that evidence should represent the perspectives of those with lived experience and that collaborative child welfare research can strengthen the validity of analyses and interpretations. We hold that Barth et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. We press for deeper critical reflection, a more nuanced intersectional lens, and urgent action to address structural and institutional racism in the child welfare system.

Monetary growth with the Solow, Tobin, IS-LM/AD-AS, and Dixit-Stiglitz models synthesized

Purpose: This paper is to analyze dynamic interactions between economic growth, capital and wealth accumulation, change in welfare, leisure time, inflation, and inflation policy, and government bond in an economy with monopolistic and perfect competition. It aims to integrate various economic mechanisms in different theories in a comprehensive framework to provide some new theoretical insights into complex of economic interactions with microeconomic foundation. Methodology: The work is a theoretical macroeconomic growth model, synthesizing a few influential mathematical models in modern macroeconomics. The growth mechanism and perfect competition are built on the Solow one-sector growth model. Money and growth with inflation are influenced by the Tobin growth model with money. The modeling of monopolistic competition follows the Dixit-Stiglitz approach. Our approach is also closely related to the IS-LM model and the AD-AS model. Findings: We build the model and simulate it to show behavior of the economic structural change. The system contains a unique equilibrium point. We describe the movement of the economy by simulation. We show the consequences of exogenous shifts in some parameters on the economic development in short-term transition. Implications: We find how monetary variables interact with real variables, whose connections cannot be explained by traditional models within a single framework. It also shows that the government inflation may have positive economic effects in short term, but uncertain consequences in the long term. The uncertainty is due to instabilities of the monetary economy. Originality: This paper makes an original contribution to the literature of growth theory with money by synthesizing some well-known models in a comprehensive analytical framework. The dynamic interactions between variables cannot be explained in the traditional separated approaches.

State Child Welfare Policies and the Measurement of Child Maltreatment in the United States.

State-level child welfare policies and practices affect what can be referred, investigated, and substantiated as child maltreatment, and these institutional factors vary across states and over time. Researchers typically have not accounted for these factors in analyses, confounding institutional features with the underlying construct they seek to study. The present study addresses this limitation by demonstrating how changes in specific state child welfare policies and practices influence reported and substantiated maltreatment in the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). Using negative binomial models with state and year fixed-effects to analyze data from 2005 to 2018, we found significant influence of state policy and practice changes on state-level rates of reported and substantiated maltreatment over time. If a state implemented three of the most common policy changes-adding mandated reporters, centralized intake, and staff-its maltreatment reports were an estimated 32% higher than they would have been in the absence of these changes. By contrast, most state policy changes decreased the number of reports that were substantiated-by 24% if they implemented both differential response and higher standards of proof. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

Are low-skilled young people increasingly useless, and are men the losers among them?

ABSTRACT Claims that low-skilled young people, and especially the men among them, are being excluded from the labour market have been influential over recent decades, contributing to an increasing concern over the issue of early school leaving. In this study, we use high-quality administrative data and sequence analysis to investigate the school-to-work trajectories of three birth cohorts of early school leavers in Norway between the ages of 16 and 26. Our observation period (from 1994 to 2015) covers several structural transformations of the Norwegian economy, such as increased migration, labour market polarisation and automatisation, widely held to have worsened the prospects of low-skilled young people. In accordance with expectations, we find some signs of increased labour market exclusion among early school leavers, relating to changes in welfare policy. However, the majority still follow trajectories characterised by employment and/or further education. Contrary to discourses on low-skilled men as losers, but in accordance with previous research, we find that male early school leavers consistently predominate in trajectories leading to middle and high incomes. Even in the comparatively gender equal country of Norway, the gender-segregated labour market consistently appears to be providing low-skilled men with more economically rewarding life course trajectories.

Social Welfare Policy Outputs and Governing Parties’ Left-Right Images: Do Voters Respond?

While previous research evaluates how citizens’ perceptions of governing parties’ ideologies respond to party policy rhetoric and the composition of governing coalitions, no extant study addresses whether citizens cue off of government policy outputs. We calibrate citizens’ Left-Right party placements against data on government welfare policies in analyses of 15 party systems for 1973–2010. We identify a welfare generosity effect where governing parties’ images shift further left when welfare policies are more generous; moreover, the public appears to hold the current government accountable for the welfare regime it inherited, in addition to the welfare policy changes to this regime it has enacted since the last election. However, we find no evidence that citizens react to governments’ manifesto-based policy rhetoric, which suggests that citizens prioritize actual government policies, not words. These findings have implications for parties’ election strategies and for mass-elite linkages.

‘Thou shalt be a (more) responsible tenant’: exploring innovative management strategies in changing social housing contexts

The nature of housing management has often been contested between two main orientations, business-like (i.e. economic efficiency) and social welfare (i.e. social support), reflecting the dual identity of social housing providers, as both private enterprises and welfare promoters. Research shows that housing management is particularly susceptible to transformations in the broader social housing sector. Considering the last two decades, the demand for social housing has increased across Western Europe, involving different social categories, e.g. low-middle income and, more recently, asylum seekers. On the supply side, housing providers have become keener to involve residents in delivering and managing housing-related services. This paper explores how innovative management strategies are emerging in the context of broader changes in social rented sectors and welfare policies in countries characterised by different typologies of housing systems, Italy and the Netherlands. By means of case studies and semi-structured interviews, this paper scrutinizes specific management approaches, i.e. Integrated Social Management and self-management, in two recent social housing projects in Milan and Amsterdam, which target socially mixed tenants, i.e. status-holders, low-income and young locals. Despite several differences, management approaches in both cases aim to increase tenants’ responsibilisation but with different focus: towards the community, i.e. social integration of vulnerable tenants in the housing project (Dutch case), and towards individual dwellings, i.e. boosting individuals’ self-agency in relation to the maintenance of properties (Italian case). This paper discusses how distinct, and sometimes normative, premises underlying tenants participation in housing management shape specific relationships between residents and housing providers.

Rola instytucji pozarządowych w opiece nad dzieckiem na Pomorzu Środkowym w latach 1945–1975 – zarys problemu

The activity of NGOs in Middle Pomerania after the end of WWII to the times of political changes and economic transition can be divided into two characteristic and distinct stages, i.e. one until the year 1950, and the other covering the years from 1950 to the political breakthrough of 1989. In the first stage, the activities directed at well-being of the child and the family were mostly undertaken by the Worker’s Society of the Friends of Children (Polish: RTPD), the Peasants’ Society of the Friends of Children (ChTPD), Polish Red Cross (PCK), Central Committee for Welfare (CKOS), the Polish Women League and the Society for Pupils’ Hostels and Scholarships. The above organizations kept sanitary and medical facilities, educational and care institutions, including children’s homes, correctional houses, preventoria, day care rooms, pupils’ hostels and boarding houses, crčches and kindergartens, ran summer camps for children, field kitchens, hospitals, night shelters, training workshops, catering establishments, outpatient clinics, ambulance services, health care establishments and mother and child care units. According to the data available at the archives of the Society of the Friends of Children in Koszalin covering the years 1946–1949, included in annual reports of RTPD and ChTPD, these organizations provided care to about 8,300 children CKOS attended to about 43,500 individuals, including children. The organization distributed clothing, footwear and medicine obtained within the framework of the structural assistance from the UN. According to data obtained from annual reports of the Polish Red Cross in Koszalin for the years 1945–1955, assistance was rendered to about 120,000 individuals. Towards the end of the first stage of the activity of NGOs, due to the changes in welfare policy of the country, many organizations were dissolved or had to change their profile. The most successful organization in the second stage was the Society of the Friends of Children. The Society provided social and vocational counseling services, ran day care rooms, kindergartens, village crèches, summer camps for children and summer and winter play centres. The available reports of regional TPD in Middle Pomerania for the years 1950–1975, state that there were 322 local associations of TPD in the region, amounting to 10,570 members. Work of NGOs in Middle Pomerania was basically determined by the long-run process of assimilation of the population that came from other regions of the country to new living conditions, by considerable war damages and lack of stability and security.

Evaluating a Structural Model of Labor Supply and Welfare Participation: Evidence from State Welfare Reform Experiments

This paper assesses the ability of a structural labor supply model to predict the impacts of a welfare policy change by studying two state welfare reform experiments conducted in Minnesota (MN) and Vermont (VT) during the mid-1990s. I estimate and evaluate a static discrete choice model of labor supply and welfare participation that incorporates heterogeneity in preferences, fixed costs of work, and disutility associated with welfare take-up. Although this type of labor supply models has been commonly estimated and applied to welfare and tax policy simulations, there have been very few attempts to verify the predictive ability of the existing models. I use the experimental impacts of the welfare policy change in each state as a benchmark for the structural model’s predictions. This approach is similar in spirit to LaLonde (1986). The utility parameters of the model are estimated using data from the MN control group. First, based on the parameter estimates, I make predictions regarding labor supply, welfare participation, and government costs under the treatment group program in MN and compare them with the observed effects of the MN experiment. Next, I apply the parameter estimates to the VT control group and compare the predicted and observed impacts of the policy change in VT. The results show that the model fits the estimation sample very well, but is unable to replicate the observed treatment effects on labor supply and welfare participation outcomes of the two experiments. Consequently, the effect on net government costs is under-predicted by 31 to 93 percent in MN. The prediction biases are even larger for the VT sample.

Why Should I? Cybersecurity, the Security of the State and the Insecurity of the Citizen

Assumptions are made by government and technology providers about the power relationships that shape the use of technological security controls and the norms under which technology usage occurs. We present a case study carried out in the North East of England that examined how a community might work together using a digital information sharing platform to respond to the pressures of welfare policy change. We describe an inductive consideration of this highly local case study before reviewing it in the light of broader security theory. By taking this approach we problematise the tendency of the state to focus on the security of technology at the expense of the security of the citizen. From insights gained from the case study and the subsequent literature review, we conclude that there are three main absences not addressed by the current designs of cybersecurity architectures. These are absences of: consensus as to whose security is being addressed, evidence of equivalence between the mechanisms that control behaviour, and two-way legibility. We argue that by addressing these absences the foundations of trust and collaboration can be built which are necessary for effective cybersecurity. Our consideration of the case study within the context of sovereignty indicates that the design of the cybersecurity architecture and its concomitant service design has a significant bearing on the social contract between citizen and state. By taking this novel perspective new directions emerge for the understanding of the effectiveness of cybersecurity technologies.

Aiming to keep poor Mexican families at the breadline (but no higher): The effects of minimum wage, tax, and social policy changes between 1994 and 2012

AbstractWelfare policy in Mexico has been transformed in recent decades. During the years of the import‐substitution industrialization economic strategy and the hegemonic party political regime, social policy was based on social insurance programs of limited coverage to urban formal sector workers and their families. In the mid‐1990s, an unprecedented expansion of social protection through social assistance programs was triggered, along with social insurance reform. This article assesses the effects at the household level of social policy changes, in combination with changes in taxes and the minimum wage, which also impact the welfare of the population. The research applies “model families” to establish effects of social, tax, and minimum wage policy changes across population groups, and their combined potential to combat poverty. Findings show that although taxation and social policy changes increased redistribution towards poor families, their capacity to lift and keep them above poverty thresholds was limited by the drop in the real value of the minimum wage and by strict targeting mechanisms, which exclude families that do not meet eligibility criteria but still fall below poverty lines. Social policy expansion merely subsidized the drop in real minimum wage, and poor families at best remained at similar income levels. Hence, the logic of the design of welfare policy changes can be characterized as aiming to keep poor families on the breadline, but no higher.

Accounting for “moral betterment”

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of accounting within state-based agencies which interpreted the ideal of protection for the Aboriginal population as principally about the removal of children from the Aboriginal communities to institutions of training and places of forced indenture under government-negotiated labour contracts.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses the original archival records of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards (1883-1950) to highlight the link between pastoral notions of moral betterment and the use of accounting technologies to organise and implement the “apprenticeship” programmes.FindingsThe analysis reveals that accounting practices and information were integral to the ability of the state to intervene and organise this domain of action and, together with a legal framework, to make the forced removal of Aboriginal children possible.Social implicationsThe mentalities and practices of assimilation analysed in the paper are not unique to the era of “protection”. The study provides a history of the present that evokes the antecedents to recent welfare policy changes, which encompass a political rationality directed at the normalisation of the economic and social behaviours of both indigenous and non-indigenous welfare recipients.Originality/valueThe paper provides an historical example of how the state enlisted accounting and legal technologies to construct a crisis of “neglect” and to intervene to protect and assimilate the Aboriginal children.