Current Welfare System Research Articles

: , , : (Building an Efficient Social Support System in Russia: Targeting, Neediness, Common Eligibility Criteria: Research Paper)

Russian Abstract: В докладе, который является результатом двухгодичной научной работы в рамках проекта «Развитие системы социальной защиты в Российской Федерации», представлены история развития адресной социальной поддержки в России, архитектура нынешней государственной системы мер социальной поддержки и бюджетные расходы на нее, дана оценка авторами эффективности российской государственной системы мер социальной поддержки, в том числе анализ текущей региональной практики, наконец, предложены управленческие, организационные и аналитические инструменты, которые должны способствовать достижению целей сокращения бедности за счет переориентации этой системы на адресную помощь гражданам с низким уровнем доходов. English Abstract: The paper presents the findings of a two-year research project dedicated to Strengthening the Social Protection System in the Russian Federation (Razvitie sistemy sotcial`noy zashchity v Rossiyskoy Federatcii). It summarizes the history of targeted social assistance in Russia, discusses the design of the current welfare system and trends in government social protection outlays, assesses the performance of social protection policies, including the sub-federal programs, and proposes some policy measures, as well as institutional and analytical tools that could help reduce poverty by re-shaping the existing welfare system to focus on income support of the poor.

Child protection and family support practice in Ireland: a contribution to present debates from a historical perspective

AbstractThis paper takes the opportunity of the current child welfare system change in Ireland to promote the value of learning from history to better understand the interface between family support and child protection. The paper draws from the histories of child protection and family support to illuminate the commonalities and differences that have come to define the two practices. Using findings from two historical studies – one on family support and the other on child protection – the paper demonstrates the unique features and the many integrated elements of family support and child protection in Ireland. It is argued that students and practitioners need to be provided with a stronger sense of the historical developments that have shaped the present. This will enable comprehension of the complex context within which current relations between ‘protection’ and ‘support’ are negotiated and help to avoid operating in a vacuum of a present only viewpoint. The paper concludes with reference to the need for students and practitioners to navigate the complex relationship between family support and child protection at practice, policy and organizational level through a well‐informed knowledge of the historical as well as the present context.

Overlooked and Unheard

Children with hearing loss are considered a low-incidence disability population, yet abuse among this population is up to 4 times that of children who are typically developing. The needs among this population are significant, but resources in communities across the nation are few. The authors discuss barriers to disclosure, school-based concerns, and problems with the current child welfare system. A case study offers readers insight into the experience of children with hearing loss in the system. Finally, specific recommendations for marriage and family counselors are offered to improve the foster care experience of children with hearing loss.

The development of the Welfare State in Portugal: trends in social expenditure between 1938 and 2003

AbstractThis paper presents a data series on social expenditure in Portugal for the period 1938-2003. The series was built with the aim of identifying and characterizing the most significant phases in the process leading up to the current welfare state system in this country. The establishment of a social insurance (Previdência) in 1935 was one of the founding pillars of the Estado Novo (New State). Reforms to Social Welfare (Previdência Social) in 1962, while in the full throes of the New State, policy measures taken after the revolution of 1974 and a new orientation for social policy following the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the mid-1980s brought about significant transformations in the institutional organizational structure that provided welfare and conferred social rights in Portugal. To understand this process, knowledge is needed of the transformations to the institutional structures governing the organizations that provided welfare, welfare coverage in terms of the type of benefit and the population entitled to social risk protection, the magnitude of spending on benefits associated with these risks, as well as how benefits were allocated between the institutions. We built a data series for the period 1938-1980, which can then be matched to data already published in the OECD Social Expenditure Database from 1980 onwards. As a result, a consistent series for social expenditure from 1938 to 2003 was obtained. The methodology used to create the series enabled us to measure the impact of the variation in population coverage for social risks and the average generosity of benefits on the relative share of social expenditure in GDP. We present an interpretive reading for the full period, covering the New State and the Democracy from 1974, of the process of building the welfare state in Portugal.

The Changing Attractiveness of European Higher Education in the Next Decade: Current Developments, Future Challenges and Major Policy Issues

This article focuses on the different senses of the attractiveness of European systems and institutions for students, academics, the labour market and the economy, drawing attention to emergent tensions between different university stakeholders. Universities not only need to be attractive to increasingly differentiated student populations, but they also need to be attractive workplaces and provide attractive career opportunities for academics. Both public and private institutions are under multifaceted pressures to change today. At a time of imminent reformulation of current welfare state systems in most parts of Europe, attractive systems will be able to balance the negative financial impact of the gradual restructuring of the most generous types of welfare state regimes in Europe on public funding for higher education. Ironically, the more successful public entrepreneurial universities are today, the greater the chances are of them following this entrepreneurial direction in the future. The promotion across Europe of a more substantial inflow of both private research funds and student fees can be expected. The possible redefinition of higher education from a public good to a private good is a tendency which may further undermine the idea of heavy public subsidization of higher education, as the economic rationale for higher education is changing. The expected developments may fundamentally alter relationships between university stakeholders, with the decreasing role of the state (especially in funding) and the increasing role of students and the labour market. The expected differentiation-related developments may alter the academic profession in general, and have a strong impact on the traditional relationships between teaching and research in European universities.

Equal rights and social inclusion: actions for improving welfare access by rural migrant workers in Chinese cities1

In recent years the government and the public have given more attention to formulating a social welfare policy for rural migrant workers in China's cities. However, in protecting their well‐being an inclusive policy and institutional reform will be needed. This paper explores the needs of rural migrant workers living in the cities and the basic principles upon which an institutional framework could be developed for incorporating them into the urban social welfare system. It argues that political commitments made by the government, both in welfare provisions and in making appropriate institutional reform in the current dualistic welfare system separating the rural and the urban, must be in place before their welfare needs are met and welfare benefits are accessed. 近年来， 中国政府和公众对城市中的农民工的社会福利政策给予了更高的关注。 然而， 要提高农民工的福利水平还需要有更具包容性和制度化的改革。 本文探索农民工在城市中的生活状况， 以及将农民工纳入城市社会福利体系的制度构架、基本原则和社会经济环境。 作者认为， 要从根本上解决农民工的社会福利问题， 应该将他们纳入到城市社会福利体系之中。 为达到此目标， 在政府对农民工的社会福利做出了政治承诺的基础上， 关键是要针对农民工当前和将来在对社会福利的基本需要， 以及他们在城市中就业和生活的特点而设计合理的制度安排。 同样重要的是应该采取相应的社会行动而改善其社会环境， 以便使农民工能够真正融入城市社会。

Revisiting the welfare state system in the Republic of Korea

Abstract The Republic of Korea's welfare system has undergone radical institutional expansion since the 1990s, largely as a consequence of the financial crisis of 1997. In spite of these changes, public social expenditure remains extremely low — particularly with regard to all other OECD countries — with the result that the overall social insurance system and social welfare service sector remain underdeveloped. Thus, the current welfare system can best be characterized as a residual model, in that state intervention as a provider of welfare remains highly limited and the family and the private market economy play the central roles in offering a social safety net. This situation is largely the legacy of the so‐called ‘growth‐first’ ideology, which has remained the dominant approach favoured by the majority of the country's political and economic decision‐makers since the period of authoritarian rule (1961‐1993). The adoption of Western European‐style neo‐liberal restructuring, implemented following the 1997 financial crisis, has also played a role.

Revisiting the Welfare State Regime in Korea

Korea's welfare system has undergone radical institutional expansion since the 1990s, largely as a consequence of the financial crisis of 1997. In spite of these changes, however, public social expenditure remains extremely low. As a result, the overall social insurance system and social welfare service sector remain underdeveloped. Thus, the current welfare system in Korea can best be characterized as a residual model, in that state intervention as for provision of welfare remains highly limited and the family and the private market economy play central roles in offering a social safety net.

Contentious Freedom: Sex Work and Social Construction

In this article, Brison extends the analysis of freedom developed in Nancy J Hirschmann's book, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, to an area of controversy among feminist theorists: that of sex work, including prostitution and participation in the production of pornography. This topic raises some of the same issues concerning choice and consent as the three topics Hirschmann discusses in her book—domestic violence, the current welfare system in the United States, and Islamic veiling—but it also raises some distinct ones concerning the social construction of sexuality and possible conflicts between the freedom of some women (who may choose to engage in sex work) and the freedom of others (who may be harmed by the contribution of such work to the social construction of categories such as “women” and “sex”).

MYTHS OF WELFARE REFORM

In Australian welfare reform debate, a range of approaches and policies has been advocated. Regardless of their diversity, I argue that the debate has an unnecessarily narrow framework resulting from the widespread acceptance of at least three welfare reform myths. First, is the idea that the current system is anachronistic and in disrepair. Instead of this narrow focus on welfare policy, I argue that the welfare reform debate must be widened to include other domains of public policy to involve a ‘joined up’ approach to addressing poverty and disadvantage. The second myth is that welfare recipients need to be the focus of policy attention. Policy reforms focus on changing the behaviour of recipients and their communities. Because structural changes underlie increased benefit receipt, such reforms will only have minimal consequences. The third welfare reform myth is the false notion that the current welfare system lacks obligation.

Die Krise der sozialen Sicherung und die Globalisierung – Politische Mythen und ordnungspolitische Wirklichkeit

Zusammenfassung Zunehmender Standortwettbewerb und höhere Mobilität der Faktoren als Folgen der Globalisierung stellen die bisherigen Wohlfahrtssysteme in Frage, ein Prozeß, von dem vor allem die entwickelten Wohlfahrtsstaaten Westeuropas betroffen sind. Technologisehe sowie politische Entwicklungen machen zunehmend institutionelle Alternativen erreichbar. Die seit langem bestehenden Mängel der Wohlfahrtsstaaten werden offensichtlich, wenn er sich dem Wettbewerb der Systeme stellen muß. Dieser Wettbewerb wird jedoch vielfach eher als Bedrohung denn als Erweiterung der Wahlmöglichkeiten verstanden. Die Gefährdung erreichter Wohlstandspositionen bestimmter Gruppen oder Staaten fuhrt dazu, daß in den einem härteren institutionellen Wettbewerb ausgesetzten Wohlfahrtsstaaten die Neigung zunimmt, diese Positionen durch Wettbewerbsbehinderungen oder Markteingriffe zu garantieren. Dieser Artikel untersucht, welche Mythen sich über den Wohlfahrtsstaat in der Globalisierung als Rechtfertigung solcher Behinderungen und Markteingriffe gebildet haben. Die politischen Rechtfertigungsgründe beziehen sich dabei auf die Abwehr eines vermeintlich unsozialen globalen Kapitalismus. Dieser Kapitalismus führe zu einer Angleichung wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Tätigkeit auf niedrigstem Niveau. Damit würde sich sowohl national wie international eine Spaltung der Gesellschaft beziehungsweise der Staatengemeinschaft ergeben. Planvolle staatliche Tätigkeit, nämlich der Schutz der Wohlfahrtsstaaten durch nationale Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen und internationale Koordination von wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Standards könnten diesen Prozeß aufhalten. In diesem Artikel wird statt dessen vorgeschlagen, den Wettbewerb der Sozialsysteme als eine Chance zu begreifen, bessere Lösungen sozialer Probleme zu finden. Dazu ist ein Ordnungsrahmen notwendig, der den Wettbewerb der Systeme nicht beschneidet, sondern ermöglicht. Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen gehen mit der Sklerotisierung der Wohlfahrtsstaaten einher. Prozeßpolitische Eingriffe stellen eine Anmaßung von Wissen dar und führen zu einer Interventionsspirale. Dagegen können die Wohlfahrtsstaaten Westeuropas durch eine Öffnung ihrer Sozialsysteme neue, im institutionellen Wettbewerb überlebensfahige Institutionen finden.

Proposed initiatives for healthy children orphaned by AIDS.

The epidemiology of AIDS has changed greatly in recent years and increasing numbers of poor, minority women with children now contract HIV/AIDS. As infected women succumb to AIDS, many of their children become orphans. The paper explores the ability and appropriateness of the current child welfare system to care for healthy children orphaned by AIDS, and the likelihood of adoption for this population. The study includes a wide-ranging literature review of information about children orphaned by AIDS, and relevant information about the child welfare system, including racial bias. To determine current support for children orphaned by AIDS, the author surveyed social service departments and private agencies in eight major cities about programs available. Based on this information, the author proposes a series of policy initiatives aimed at alleviating the flight of children orphaned because of AIDS.

Was there a nineteenth century welfare magnet in the United States?: Preliminary results from New York City and Brooklyn

This paper examines the inter-jurisdictional migration effects of a very specific and localized shock to the distribution of outdoor poor relief (a precursor to the current welfare system) during the late nineteenth century. In 1878, the city of Brooklyn decided to eliminate all outdoor relief payments leaving only the highly undesirable option of entering the poor house. One option for poor Brooklyn residents was to travel to nearby New York City (at this time still different cities) and claim outdoor relief payments. The results of this early natural experiment suggest that the welfare magnet was not operating in the sense that there is little evidence to suggest that Brooklyn residents migrated to New York City to claim public outdoor relief.

Services for adults who have experienced child sexual assault: Improving agency response

Adults who experienced child sexual assault are likely to be present in all parts of the health and welfare systems both as clients and as staff. Research studies and accounts by survivors indicate that their experiences of seeking help are often not positive. In failing to acknowledge and deal with the issue of childhood sexual assault for adult clients and to be aware of its correlation with current problems, the health and welfare system reflects the larger society by avoiding knowledge of the impact of violence and abuse on health and well-being. This paper begins with an overview of studies on the prevalence of childhood sexual assault in adult populations and in clinical populations and of literature on the long term consequences of child sexual assault. It goes on to consider, with particular reference to an Australian context, how service providers can respond to the needs of survivors within their own agencies and notes the resources they may need to do this well.

Editorial: The Church-State Implications of the New Welfare Reform Law

On 22 August 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the controversial welfare reform bill, radically altering the current welfare system. This legislation, titled The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (the Act), contains a new scheme for carrying out assistance to the economically disadvantaged by allocating to each state block grants to be used by the state to con struct and carry out its own welfare programs, and by enacting system wide requirements that recipients obtain employment or lose benefits. While this basic scheme has many salient features, it also raises serious Establishment Clause questions by allowing state governments to con tract with private charitable organizations, including churches and other religious institutions, to administer the new system. The Act is a bold challenge to prevailing U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Establishment Clause which place considerable restrictions on govern ment assistance to churches and other pervasively sectarian organiza tions. These restrictions have traditionally been imposed to preserve the integrity and autonomy of religious institutions, keeping them free from the government regulation which would inevitably accompany government funding. The Act substantially ignores this commitment, however, and operates under the premise that houses of worship and other pervasively sectarian institutions are not only capable of adminis tering social welfare programs, but should be given every opportunity to compete with secular welfare deliverers for government funding to administer them. This dramatic change in the method of funding of welfare programs in the United States raises a number of practical problems and constitutional questions deserving of close analysis.

Get real! Look to the future, not the past

In our response to the points raised by Linda Gordon, Robert Haveman, Betty Reid Mandell, and Gwendolyn Mink, we describe the Help for Working Parents Plan in greater detail, explaining the advantages of the HWP program over both the current welfare system and the proposed Republican welfare plans. We argue that the Help for Working Parents Plan would garner public support by encouraging work through nonpunitive measures, such as guaranteeing child care and health care, benefits that are lacking in many low-wage jobs. We point out that the plan increases, rather than reduces, benefits for at-home parents. We note that the HWP plan would move U.S. welfare policy in a more universalistic direction, by including working parents, near-poor parents, and married parents as well as the poor single mothers currently targeted by AFDC. We suggest that those who believe poor single mothers can get recognition and higher levels of income support for the family care-giving work they provide are unrealistic and misguided.

Enabling Public Child Welfare Agencies to Promote Family Preservation

In criticizing my proposals to restructure public child welfare system (Pelton, 1991), Barth (1993) likened care and discipline of children by parents to helping and policing of families and parents by state. He did so while disputing a claim I never made--that it is not possible to be an authority and helper at once. What I do argue is that results of combining helping and policing roles within context of public child welfare agency have been unsatisfactory, and we should examine how each role might be hindering successful execution of other. During past three decades, increasingly wider spheres of child welfare problems, many of which are related to poverty, have been characterized as child abuse and neglect. These terms are accusatory and, when used as a lens through which to view multiply caused problems, promote an overfixation on parental fault and blindness to varied help that is needed. This orientation led to reporting laws and public awareness campaigns that encourage reports based on vague definitions of child abuse and neglect, thereby swamping child welfare agencies with complaints and rapidly reducing role of child welfare workers to investigators of wrongdoing by mostly impoverished parents. Budgets were spent on investigation and increasingly on foster care, with little money left over for relevant preventive services. These continuing trends are reflected in increase in national foster care population to an estimated 447,000 children by end of fiscal year 1992 (Tatara, 1992), a figure rapidly approaching a record for this century. More depressingly, no evidence exists that children are better protected. However, remedy for child welfare system is not only to narrow laws, although that is necessary. Although I have just spoken of unfortunate developments of past few decades, nostalgia for more distant past is not warranted. From beginning of this century children have frequently been placed into foster care, and agencies have always spent far greater proportions of their budgets on placement than on prevention. It is not for naught that impoverished immigrant parents, fearing public agencies' predecessors (the societies for prevention of cruelty to children), yet having nowhere else to turn for help, viewed such agencies as the Cruelty and as child-snatchers. Such agencies, both public and private, have always had a dual role, and investigative, policing, coercive, and child-removing role has always greatly diminished helping role. This failed paternalistic strategy toward impoverished families experiencing child welfare difficulties should be ended. My proposals call for transformation of current public child welfare agencies into family preservation agencies by divesting them of their investigative, child removal, and foster care roles. I proposed that police functions, such as investigation of possible law violation, be shifted to police. Child welfare workers would no longer serve as society's police. In addition, I proposed that foster care system be made independent of new family preservation agency. This system, whose function is to protect children who cannot be protected in their own homes, should be placed under family court system and be operated by social workers specially trained as foster care workers who would also advise court on all decisions concerning entry into and exit from foster care. All family preservation, preventive, and supportive services would be offered and delivered by new family preservation agency, whether it be to biological, foster, or adoptive families or to children living with relatives. Let us build a new system based on a more positive philosophy. In fact, social work has philosophy, but structure of current child welfare system is incompatible with it. Much of professional child welfare community favors empowering families, focusing on strengths rather than deficits, and providing supports. …

Voting with one's feet: A brief note on the case of public welfare and the American Indian

This brief Note has found that the location decisions of the American Indian are influenced by geographic AFDC differentials. In particular, the American Indian population is apparently strongly attracted to high welfare areas. This finding may be interpreted as yet further support for the Tiebout hypothesis of ‘voting with one's feet,’ with the Indian consumer-voter in this case ‘balloting’ in terms of welfare services. In addition, like the studies by Cebula (1978), Chao and Renas (1975), Glantz (1974), Greenwood and Anderson (1974), Pack (1973), and Sommers and Suits (1973), this set of results provides additional evidence that the current welfare system distorts spatial resource allocation; presumably, such distortions are avoidable under a standardized welfare system.

Income Maintenance Alternatives and Family: An Analysis of Price Effects

There is some current public concern about the effects of welfare programs on participants' decisions about marriage and divorce or having children. This paper discusses one way in which family composition may be affected by income maintenance program benefits, through what are called effects. After discussing price incentives hypothetically, the paper presents measures of the price incentives in our current welfare system and in the cash component of President Carter's welfare-reform proposal. No income maintenance program can be entirely marriage-neutral, but it is found that the reform generally reduces the destabilizing incentives of the current system.

Child-Caring Institutions, 1966: Selected Findings from the First National Survey of Children's Residential Institutions

The article presents findings of the first national survey of programs and services of chil- dren's institutions throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. It identifies deficiencies in the current child welfare system which adversely affect children and summarizes the priorities of institution administrators for improving care.