Local Social Assistance Research Articles

Integrated long‐term care partnerships between government social care and health agencies in Brazil: The Belo Horizonte model

AbstractThe article sets out key elements of the policy agenda for enhanced integration between health and social care for older people in high‐income countries and demonstrates its wider relevance to low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). The article then explores the context for this agenda in Brazil, including growing demand for long‐term care (LTC) and current institutional arrangements. It goes on to discuss a case study project of partnering for LTC between local social assistance and health agencies in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. It identifies challenges and potential benefits of this partnership model, offering policy insights for LTC policy in Brazil and other countries.

A “Capital of Hope and Disappointments”

This article traces the history of specialized social housing for North African families living in shantytowns in Marseille from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. During the Algerian War, social housing assistance formed part of a welfare network that exclusively sought to “integrate” Algerian migrants into French society. Through shantytown clearance and rehousing initiatives, government officials and social service providers encouraged shantytown-dwelling Algerian families to adopt the customs of France’s majority White population. Following the Algerian War, France moved away from delivering Algerian-focused welfare and instead developed an expanded immigrant welfare network. Despite this shift, some officials and social service providers remained fixated on the presence and ethno-racial differences of Algerians and other North Africans in Marseille’s shantytowns. Into the mid-1970s, this fixation shaped local social assistance and produced discord between the promise and implementation of specialized social housing that hindered shantytown-dwelling North African families’ incorporation into French society.

STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING THE SOCIAL ASSISTANCE SYSTEM FOR THE ELDERLY IN IAŞI

The article is the result of a complex research activity. The starting point was to make a diagnosis of the Iasi community on the needs of social assistance. The interest of local authorities is to ensure optimal conditions for the provision of quality social services, leading to an improvement in the quality of life of people at social risk. This article makes a complex assessment of the social problems faced by the local community in Iasi, using the analysis of documents, questionnaires and focus groups. The special contribution is given by the development strategy of the resulting local social assistance system, with emphasis on the category of elderly beneficiaries.

Planning and evaluation of public social assistance policies

The main objective of the study is to analyse how the public policies in the area of social assistance are planned and evaluated in Romania. The first part of the study presents how the social assistance policies have been integrated into the social inclusion strategies, in a in try to identify the main priorities, as well as the way in which the strategic measures have been implemented in five key areas: broadening and development of public social assistance system, professionalisation of public social assistance services, connections between strategic strands in social assistance, social assistance financing, and monitoring and evaluation of social assistance system. The analysis is done in a broader context of planning an evaluation of public policies in Romania, a relatively new practice adopted by the public administration. The study underlines the state of the social assistance system from the perspective of each above mentioned area and tries to identify the main results of the implementation of the strategies. The available data shows that despite that, starting with 2002, the strategies from social inclusion area have included specific measures for social assistance, the results are modest, particularly in the area of community services, which has negative consequences on the capacity of the entire system to provide support for those in need. The public local social assistance services have a low rate of professionalisation, being weakly integrated into the county services system, which might generate an increase cost of the services, rather aiming to diminish the effects of the social problems than to prevent them. The social assistance remains marginalised, the previous achievements being rather a result of some incidental or particular investments, without a clearly defined vision about the role of public social assistance system.

Do Central-Government Grants Affect Welfare Caseloads? Evidence from Public Assistance in Japan

This study examines the existence of a loosening effect of central funding on a local social policy by exploiting a specific mechanism in the Japanese system of central grants and two institutional changes in categorical grants for local social assistance programs. Despite performing various types of estimations, we fail to substantiate the existence of the loosening effect. This result indicates the dominance of central control over local discretion in public assistance programs, and suggests that important factors are administrative rather than fiscal.

Social assistance in Austria: regulating the poor as in-between

Not only the concept of social inclusion is widely recognized as an important basis today for making social policy, but it also provides a platform for the policing of the poor. Thinking uncritically about social inclusion prevents us from seeing how it operates to re-inscribe subordination even as we help the poor overcome their marginalization. With an awareness of the paradox of inclusion, it is possible to examine how welfare policy today operates to discipline the poor as people who must accept their plight at the bottom of the socioeconomic order. While formal policy may not make this paradox apparent, the disciplinary effects of an inclusionary social assistance policy are starkly visible when we examine its implementation, where we can see how the excluded become included in ways that perpetuate their subordination. Social assistance recipients obtain a benefit, but the way they are treated does not correspond with full social rights, which is reminiscent of Georg Simmel's discussion of the poor. As exemplified by research at one local social assistance office in Austria, welfare recipients are ultimately neither included nor excluded. Welfare, as administered today, upholds the system of social stratification by perpetuating an ‘in-between’ status for the claimants of social assistance benefits at the frontline.

Social expenditures and public administration: are local social assistance costs in Sweden a matter of organisation?

Minas R. Social expenditures and public administration: are local social assistance costs in Sweden a matter of organisation? Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 215–224 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.This study examines the connection between organisational factors and local social assistance expenditures in Swedish municipalities. The organisation of social assistance units, particularly those for the intake of social assistance inquirers, and the possible implications for local social assistance costs are highlighted. The study is based on interview data from medium‐sized Swedish municipalities combined with register data covering the years from 1997 to 2001. The results show that socioeconomic factors have an overall dominant effect, but also that organisational factors co‐vary with local social assistance expenditures. The results show a cost‐reducing effect for special intake units: firstly, when these units are analysed together with other forms of specialisation and secondly, when staff resources are taken into account. Thus, specialised intake organisation by itself does not play a cost‐reducing role, but does so in combination with certain other factors that characterise the internal organisation of the social welfare office.

Out of welfare : Functioning of income support in Torino

This paper explores the opportunities provided by a file of longitudinal data regarding income support benefits for able bodied poor in order to understand the functioning of the local social assistance system in Torino. The features of this system, its ‘selective-categorized’ character and the differences from universalistic systems are analyzed. In this framework, the duration of the periods users receive benefits has been studied by means of event history analysis. The probability of exit from welfare is related to socio-demographic characteristics of recipients. In particular we observe a lower propensity to exit for female headed households and households with children. The probability of exit appears to be affected also by labour market conditions, being higher when these are more favourable. The exit rate does not decrease as time elapsed in welfare moves on. We observe the existence of different styles of assistance among the different social services within the city. Difficulties related to the interpretation of the empirical results, given the selective-categorized features of the social assistance system, are emphasized. Finally, we discuss some theoretical issues about evaluation of income support policies. All the sections of this paper are the result of the cooperation of the authors. Nicola Negri has coordinated the various steps of the work and has written Section 5 with Contini. Nicoletta Bosco has mainly worked with Nicola Negri to prepare the data archive and has written Sections 2 and 3. Dalit Contini has discussed with Negri and Bosco the model of empirical analysis and has implemented it; she has written Sections 4 and 6. All authors share Section 1 and 7.

Intergovernmental Social Transfers and the Welfare State: Menace or Promise?

A collaborative cross-national study involving teams from eight countries has examined how local social service officials and local politicians seek discretionary influence over targeted national grants for local social services in education and health. It is found that local need and local political orientation have little bearing on local success in obtaining discretionary concessions over rules, allocation, and reporting of such funds. On the contrary, local actors are valued for their ability to circumvent national guidelines, often with the assistance of intermediate-level officials. Administrators are rewarded for their skills in exploiting national grants for local purposes and in interpreting complex rules to fit local preferences. Politicians tend to see themselves as troubleshooters, but generally prefer not to become involved in local social assistance problems. The results show that, despite efforts to cut back social spending, an important reservoir of professional and administrative talent exists at the local level which has probably helped preserve local social services during a period of cutbacks. In more prosperous times, these same persons will be poised to revive the surge of local social spending seen in the early 1970s and thereby extend the institutional intricacy of welfare states.