Processes Of Welfare Reform Research Articles

Moral narratives and mental health: rethinking understandings of distress and healthcare support in contexts of austerity and welfare reform

Associations between mental health and poverty are increasingly well established. Yet in neoliberally oriented contexts in which distress engendered through the everyday hardships of poverty is increasingly pathologised and medicalised, important questions are raised over the assumptions inherent within mental health policy and its implementation. Using the UK as a focus, this paper reviews and maps out key questions that require investigation in order to better understand the complex inter-relations between poverty and distress; explores how current paradigms might influence notions of individual responsibility and agency as well as health seeking behaviours; and examines the role of, and cultural and systemic expectations and constraints placed upon GPs as they respond to distress amongst patients from low-income communities. In so doing, we argue for recognition of the moral narratives that underpin both mental health care and processes of welfare reform, and call for an expansion of conventional notions of evidence-based healthcare to incorporate the understandings, experiences and priorities of people from low-income groups. We call for more detailed questioning and analysis of the interactions that lead to mental health diagnosis and treatment and better understanding of the relevance and effectiveness of current treatment options. As a central tenet of this, we argue for more flexible and nuanced healthcare responses that better reflect the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of poverty-related distress.

Social workers and intercultural mediators: challenges for collaboration and intercultural awareness

ABSTRACTSocial work in Europe is facing numerous challenges in terms of promoting the participation of migrants and their descendants in super-diverse societies. This study investigates collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators based on international debate and fieldwork in Italy. Does social work require collaboration with other professions specialised in intercultural relations? What are the characteristics of intercultural professionals? What are the pros and cons of collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators? This study shows that local social services need to work with intercultural mediators, allowing local social services to implement various strategies for tackling cultural and linguistic barriers with their clients and rely on professionals inside or outside their own. Furthermore, intercultural mediators tend to have weak and heterogeneous training backgrounds and working conditions. This article aims to contribute to the debate on the welfare reform process to support migrants and their descendants’ equal rights and participation in society, highlighting the need for collaboration between interculturally aware social workers and intercultural mediators to tackle institutional structural weaknesses in such professions as part of an organisational innovation process in social-welfare institutions.

Care in an Age of Austerity: Men’s Care Responsibilities in Low-Income Families

ABSTRACTDrawing on data from linked qualitative longitudinal studies, this paper considers the under-researched impacts of economic crisis and austerity on men with care responsibilities in low-income families. Recent debates indicate that recession and austerity provide the conditions for care arrangements in which fathers are more likely to engage in social reproduction, producing ‘caring masculinities’. In an austerity context that is permeating everyday life in the UK and producing significant hardships for citizens, however, care responsibilities are being further entrenched as the private responsibilities of individual families. The ‘responsibilisation’ of care as a result of processes of privatisation and individualisation produces numerous challenges for men that are evidenced in their discussions of their everyday caring practices. With reference to an ethics of care perspective and insights about the particular ways in which men with caring responsibilities are being affected by austerity, it is argued that processes of welfare reform and self-responsibilisation rely on men as individuals to rework their identities to reflect the values of care. The paper concludes that wider structural change and support for men to engage effectively and positively in care are required in order for these identities, and for men’s critical engagement in gender equality, to flourish.

Wither Social Citizenship? Lived Experiences of Citizenship In/Exclusion for Recipients of Out-of-Work Benefits

Drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study that examined experiences of welfare reform among a small group of recipients of out-of-work benefits, this paper considers how individuals’ social citizenship rights, responsibilities and status are all affected by processes of welfare reform. It discusses the ways in which welfare conditionality impacts upon targeted individuals’ citizenship status, noting a trend towards ‘conditioning’, where people seek to govern and manage their own behaviour(s) in order to meet the demands of contemporary citizenship. The paper considers the extent to which even a ‘modicum of economic welfare and security’ is now denied to so many Britons, concluding with a discussion of what if any emancipatory potential social citizenship still holds.

The Policies and Politics of Managed Migration: Exploring Mature Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe into the UK

Whilst studies have already focused on the inflow of labour migrants from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to the UK, most have centred on the experiences of younger migrants. Less attention has been paid to the motivations, experiences and policy impacts of ‘mature’ CEE labour migrants. This paper draws on a recent study in North-West England to highlight how structural factors and individual agency intersect in different ways for such groups. In particular, the analysis provides new insights into mature migrants' motivations, aspirations and expectations on decisions to come to or remain in the UK and how such issues inter-relate with new policies and politics of ‘managed migration’ and contemporary processes of welfare reform and labour-market participation.

Public service interpreting and the politics of entitlement for new entrants to the United Kingdom

This article examines the function and perception of public service interpreting provision in contemporary Britain against the backdrop of conflict that has emerged in media and political circles as a result of the spiralling cost of such provision. Using an approach based on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2000, 2003; Fowler 1991) the article begins by examining a corpus of media reports in which the twin societal aims of community cohesion and integration are often seen as being hindered by translation and interpreting services. The issue of whether interpreting services play or should play a role in integration and cohesion amidst the ongoing processes of welfare reform in Britain is then examined and contrasted with a broader understanding of welfare that foregrounds the role of public service interpreting in the processes of resettlement and socialisation. The discussion also considers the relationship between public service interpreting, welfare reform and status of language services as a welfare entitlement for new entrants.

Employee welfare and restructuring in the public sector: Evidence from Poland and Serbia

Labour in Central-Eastern Europe is widely regarded as a uniformly weak actor. We challenge this view, and explore the conditions under which CEE labour can play an active role in the welfare reform process. We draw on evidence from education and health care in Poland and Serbia, and show that public sector unions have largely retained their ability to prevent major restructuring and to defend employment-related privileges of their constituencies. The unions’ resilience is explained by the fact that the public sector in these countries remains sheltered from competitive pressures by delayed privatization, and by the extensive structural and associational power enjoyed by public sector employees.

Leaving the Nordic Path? The Changing Role of Danish Trade Unions in the Welfare Reform Process

AbstractFor a long period, Denmark has been labeled a ‘model country’ with a comprehensive welfare state and a successful model of corporatist policy‐making. Danish unions are considered amongst the strongest in the world, and they have for a long time been a distinct part of the political system, and as social partners, they were strongly integrated into decision‐making processes. The analysis of the Danish welfare and labour market policy during the last two decades documents a profound change in the arrangement and in the status of the social partners (especially unions) in the Danish political system. The results show that two important pillars of the Danish model – the social partner basis and the collective trust in partnership – are eroding. Unions are no longer part of the law‐making process and, since 2007, they are formally excluded from the organization of the decision‐making process. Recent developments point at weaker unions that operate more as lobbyists instead of being strong corporatist institutions or part of the decision‐making process. The results of the study are thought‐provoking and the basis for a revised thinking of the Danish and the Nordic model.

Devolution, Diversity and Welfare Reform: Long‐term Care in the ‘Latin Rim’

AbstractUnderstanding long‐term care (LTC) reform is at the core of the study of European social policy. Particularly important are the effects of regional devolution on the development of LTC services, being one of the few areas only subject to limited welfare retrenchment. One important question is the extent to which a devolved system of welfare governance influences the process of welfare reform as well as the degree of diversity in the provision and financing of LTC. The article draws upon evidence from Italy and Spain, two ‘Latin Rim’ countries, both of which have faced similar demands over the last twenty years for reform of systems with limited entitlement to long‐term care. It argues that when there is a latent demand for reform, welfare devolution does not inhibit reform when fiscal blame‐avoidance opportunities arise at the central government level. Furthermore, we examine the extent to which devolution leads to increasing fragmentation and diversity. The article's findings indicate that by diffusing policy responsibilities, devolution has enhanced LTC reform and reduced pre‐existing welfare fragmentation in Spain. In contrast, the lack of countrywide reform in Italy is explained by the absence of political opportunities for the diffusion of the fiscal blame that has frustrated attempts to reform the existing national cash allowance.

Gender, Politics and Policy Change: The Case of Welfare Reform Under New Labour

AbstractPolitics and gender scholarship is increasingly seeking to understand the relationship between the presence of women in politics and gendered policy outcomes – the substantive representation of women (SRW). Yet its focus remains squarely on the activities of ‘critical actors’ in parliaments and women's policy agencies and on ‘feminist’ rather than ‘mainstream’ policy areas. In contrast, this article investigates the impact of feminist actors in a range of institutional settings on recent processes of welfare reform in the UK. It finds that the gendered welfare reform introduced by New Labour was initiated and pushed through by a coalition of committed feminist actors across a range of institutions. Crucially, the reforms relied on the existence of ‘strategic actors’ and ‘gate openers’, defined as feminist actors in positions of significant institutional power. It makes a contribution to the actor-centred SRW scholarship, develops an institutionalist approach to this research and identifies the need for a political economy perspective to understanding how women can shape policy outcomes.

(Re) Shaping Social Work: An Australian Case Study

Contemporary policy development via various nationally contingent processes of welfare reform poses significant challenges to social work. This paper explores the initial impact on one group of generalist social workers in working in the Australian income support agency-Centrelink. Positioning welfare reform within a theoretical framework of institutional change, the authors suggest that the associated policy developments have the capacity to seriously destabilize social work, particularly in that they promote values and rationalities at odds with those assumed by the profession. These assumptions are explored through exploratory empirical engagement with the Centrelink social workers, the results of which suggest that all social workers in those national contexts experiencing the same policy orientation have significant reason to be concerned.

Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law, by Ron Haskins. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2006, 450 pp., $32.95 hardcover.

August 22, 2006, marked the tenth anniversary of President Clinton’s signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, called, as Washington insists, PRWORA. PRWORA famously replaced welfare as we knew it, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Welfare policy history is told in many books; Work over Welfare is surely one of the best and most likely to become part of the enduring record of what many consider a watershed event in American social policy. Students of the policy-making process, the Congress, welfare programs, and welfare policy analysis should read it. This review tells why, and counsels caution—not about buying the book, but about buying the story. The author, Ron Haskins, is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and a consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. From 1986 to 2000, he was a staff member of the Resources Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff and eventually as staff director. He held the director post during the struggle over welfare reform that erupted during the Clinton administration’s first term. As is widely appreciated and absolutely confirmed by this book, Haskins served as architect, strategist, tactician, contractor, and day-and-night laborer in building the new law that the House of Representatives and Senate passed with extraordinary bipartisan majorities. No one is more qualified to write an “inside story” on the legislative politics and process of welfare reform. Haskins delivers what the book’s subtitle promises. The first of 15 chapters sets the stage by outlining American social policy at the beginning of the 1990s, identifying liberal (mostly Democratic) and conservative (mostly Republican) perspectives, summarizing key issues, and listing six factors that contributed to making 1996 the “moment of reckoning” when national social policy made a “complete U-turn.” The issues were long-term dependency and illegitimacy; the former and even possibly the latter were linked to separation of benefits from work. Contributing factors were (1) the failure of prior reform efforts, most notably the Family Support Act of 1988, to reorient public assistance toward work; (2) President Clinton’s emphasis during the 1992 campaign on the need for radical “welfare reform—ending welfare as we know it”; (3) Republican seizure of

Women's Political Agency and Welfare Reform: Engendering the Adult Worker Model

Welfare states in advanced, industrial countries are undergoing a significant process of reconfiguration that has wide-ranging implications for women. Yet, academic work on women and the welfare state tells us little about women's capacity to shape the contours of the emerging regimes. The existing literature has made important contributions on the gendered outcomes of welfare policies, on the agency of women as recipients of social benefits and beneficiaries of the welfare state, and a historical literature outlines the political roles of women in shaping nascent welfare states. However, a gap in the literature exists on women's political agency in contemporary processes of welfare reform. This article investigates the capacity of women with agency as political citizens to shape the outcome of current welfare reform processes. It argues that the recent spate of welfare state reconfiguration in the direction of the adult worker model presents a window of opportunity for women to shape the outcome of welfare rather than accepting existing gendered relationships. Furthermore, it sets up a framework for evaluating women's political agency in the process of welfare reform that assumes a dynamic interrelationship among agency, political institutions and discourse.

Social injustice and economic dynamism in contemporary Korea

This article examines the processes of labor market restructuring and welfare reform in South Korea since the 1997/98 crisis, arguing that the Korean state-capital complex has succeeded in effecting a substantial redistribution of income from labor to capital. This redistribution of income has played a critical role in enhancing Korea's international competitiveness and in facilitating a return to sustained growth. The principal mechanisms through which this redistribution has been achieved are the intensified exploitation of weaker sections of the proletariat and the reduction of the traditionally more protected organized sections of the workforce in major firms. At the same time, the state has strengthened welfare safety nets and sought to place concerns about structural competitiveness at the heart of the welfare regime through the promotion of vocational training. What has been most striking about the process of welfare reform, however, has been the capacity of the state to limit the growth of welfare expenditures/provision whilst simultaneously creating massive new labor market insecurities. As a result of the success of the Korean state in restructuring labor markets in order to effect a redistribution of income from weaker sections of the proletariat to capital and limiting the growth of social spending we have witnessed a marked increase in inequality since 1997. Korea's apparent success in transforming itself into a competitive, dynamic neoliberal economy must, therefore, be understood as being symbiotically linked to the intensification of inequality.

An Interview with Donna Shalala

Biography Donna E. Shalala became the fifth President of the University of Miami on June 1, 2001. President Shalala has more than 25 years' experience as an accomplished scholar, teacher, and administrator. She is also a professor of political science, epidemiology and public health, and education. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, President Shalala received her A.B. in history from Western College degree from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. A leading scholar on the political economy of state and local governments, she has held tenured professorships at Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), and the University of Wisconsin. She served as president of Hunter College of CUNY from 1980 to 1987 and as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1987 to 1993. In 1993 President Clinton appointed her Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) where she served for eight years, becoming the longest serving HHS Secretary in U.S. history. At the beginning of her tenure, HHS had a budget of nearly $600 billion, which included a wide variety of programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Child Care and Head Start, Welfare, the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As HHS Secretary, she directed the welfare reform process, made health insurance available to an estimated 3.3 million children through the approval of all State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP), raised child immunization rates to the highest levels in history, led major reforms of the FDA's drug approval process and food safety system, revitalized the National Institutes of Health, and directed a major management and policy reform of Medicare. At the end of her tenure as HHS Secretary, The Washington Post described her as of the most successful government managers of modern times. Before becoming HHS Secretary, President Shalala served as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She led what was then the nation's largest public research university, raising more than $400 million for the university's endowment, and spearheaded a $225 million state-private partnership program to renovate and add to the university's research facilities. In 1992 Business Week named her one of the top five managers in higher education. She joined the Carter administration as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1980, she assumed the presidency of Hunter College, City University of New York. She is a Director of Gannett Co., Inc. (an international news and information company in the print, television, and Internet industries), UnitedHealth Group (a diversified health and well-being enterprise), the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Lennar Corporation (a home-building company). She was recently selected for ex officio membership in The Florida Council of 100. President Shalala has more than three dozen honorary degrees and a host of other honors, including the 1992 National Public Service Award and the 1994, Glamour magazine Woman of the Year Award. She has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and has been elected to the National Academy of Education; the National Academy of Public Administration; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the National Academy of Social Insurance; The American Academy of Political and Social Science; and the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Interview Nance Lucas: Looking back at all your various leadership positions and roles that you've had, what would you say are some of the leadership lessons that occurred over time? Donna Shalala: I certainly matured as a leader. Lesson one - don't jump on every issue immediately just because it looks like you have to make that decision immediately because you may not have to. …

From Welfare to Work? Social Policy for Disabled People of Working Age in the United Kingdom in the 1990s

Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the United Kingdom, but this has received little attention from mainstream social policy analysis. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced measures to promote labour force participation among disabled people, whilst discouraging dependence on welfare benefits. Whilst this new approach has been justified in terms of reducing poverty, its underlying imperatives are essentially inegalitarian. The welfare reform process has been driven by a number of official concerns including a perception of unsustainable fiscal pressures and a belief that perverse incentives in the social security benefit system have undermined economic efficiency. Moreover, it has been legitimated by an ideology of citizenship, which has shifted the moral responsibility for needs satisfaction away from the state to the individual. The paper concludes by identifying a better approach to welfare reform for disabled people of working age.

The role of tripartite concertation in the reform of the welfare state

Tripartite concertation, which has reappeared in several European countries, plays an important role in the current process of welfare reform. This article discusses the need to combine three different policy aims via social pacts between government, employers and trade unions: reducing labour costs, improving work incentives and increasing labour market flexibility. The article analyses two examples of successful social pacts: the Netherlands and Italy, both countries that first found a consensus on wage policy and then moved on to further reforms of welfare and employment policies. Thereafter, two examples of uncoordinated reform policies are discussed: Germany and France. We argue that two factors are particularly important for the success of concerted reform policies: the co-ordination capacity of collective organisations and the credible threat potential of state intervention in collective bargaining and social insurance governance. La concertation tripartite, qui est réapparue dans plusieurs pays européens, joue un rôle important dans le processus actuel de la réforme de l'état providence. Cet article soulève la nécessité de combiner, via des pactes sociaux entre le gouvernement, les employeurs et les syndicats, trois objectifs politiques différents: réduire les coûts du travail, améliorer la motivation au travail et augmenter la flexibilité du marché du travail. L'article analyse deux exemples de pactes sociaux réussis: aux Pays-Bas et en Italie, deux pays qui ont d'abord trouvé un consensus sur la politique salariale et ensuite entrepris des réformes des politiques en matière d'emploi et de sécurité sociale. Par la suite, deux cas de politique de réforme non coordonnée sont discutés: ceux de l'Allemagne et de la France. Les auteurs affirment que deux facteurs sont particulièrement importants pour le succès des politiques concertées portant sur la réforme: la capacité de coordination des organisations collectives et le potentiel de crédible d'intervention de l'Etat dans les négociations collectives et la gestion de la sécurité sociale. Konzertierungen zwischen Regierungen und Tarifparteien, die in den letzten Jahren in mehreren europäischen Ländern wieder zu beobachten sind, spielen in der Reform der Wohlfahrtsstaaten eine wichtige Rolle. Regierungen, Arbeitgeberverbdnde und Gewerkschaften versuchen, durch die Vereinbarung sogenannter sozialer Pakte drei unterschiedliche politische Ziele zu kombinieren: die Reduzierung von Arbeitskosten, die Verbesserung von Anreizen zur Arbeitsaufnahme und die Flexibilisierung der Arbeitsmärkte. Der Beitrag analysiert zwei Beispiele erfolgreicher sozialer Pakte: die Niederlande und Italien. In beiden Ländern wurde zunächst ein Konsens in der Lohnpolitik erzielt und später weitergehende Reformen in der Sozial- und Arbeitspolitik durchgeführt. Anschlieβend werden zwei Länder unkoordinierter Reformpolitik am Beispiel Deutschlands und Frankreichs dargestellt. Zwei Faktoren werden als besonders bedeutsam für den Erfolg konzertierter Politik herausgearbeitet: die Handlungsfähigkeit der Verbände und die glaubwürdige Androhung staatlicher Intervention in die Tarifpolitik und die Systeme sozialer Sicherung.

Evaluation of Food Assistance, Nutrition Education Programs, and Physical Activity for Limited Resource Families

The effectiveness of federally funded nutrition programs, such as Food Stamps, Head Start, and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), has been and continues to be questioned; however, these programs have demonstrated some positive outcomes. The welfare reform process established in 1996 poses a serious threat to the continuation of the nutrition education portions of the federally funded nutrition programs. In an attempt to show the positive effects and outcomes of nutrition education in conjunction with federally funded nutrition programs, a pilot study was conducted in Lincoln, Nebraska. Primary care givers (PCG) and their 3-10 year old children were recruited from community centers, Head Start, and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). At the end of data collection, 20 PCG and 54 children participated in the food recalls and 25 PCG and 47 children filled out questionnaires. Of the PCG participants, 17 were limited resource as defined as using some sort of assistance for food or housing. Information in the questionnaires involved types of programs being used, nutrition knowledge, food security, physical activity, resource management skills, and demographic data. The programs the PCG most frequently reported using were WIC, Free or Reduced School Breakfast and/or Lunch, Food Stamps, and Head Start. Adequacy of the diet was assessed using the food recalls. Of the PCG, only 2 participants were male and only 2 of the female participants were under the age of 25. The PCG were low in calories (mean of 1922.12), dietary fiber (mean of 15.66 gm), iron (mean of 13.52 mg), and zinc (mean of 8.04 mg). The children were low in dietary fiber (mean of 15.97 gm) and zinc (mean of 8.20 mg). In conclusion, federally funded nutrition programs in Nebraska are making a positive impact in the lives of its participants.

Workfare in the sun: politics, representation, and method in U.S. welfare-to-work strategies

Focusing on a critique of America's most-touted model of work-based welfare reform, or ‘workfare’, the Riverside, CA Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) program, the paper explores the political economy of the U.S. welfare reform process. The Riverside model concentrates on moving welfare recipients into work as rapidly as possible and with the minimum of cost and service support. Evaluations have shown it to be successful in driving down costs and accelerating the process of labor market reentry, although there is no evidence that it has lifted participants out of poverty. The interest that the Riverside model has excited in policymaking circles can be explained by its appeal to principles of ‘true’ workfare: it is a no-frills, high-volume, low-cost means of enforcing work participation and work disciplines. However as the Riverside approach is fast becoming the norm in America's ongoing process of state and local level welfare reform, much uncertainty remains over its social and labor-market consequences in general and its effects on innercity areas in particular. And this is about more than welfare reform: the Riverside model of workfare is concerned with the establishment of anew mode of labor discipline, locally enforced. Its effect is to conscript the poor into low-wage work. In the words of a program manager, the approach is simple, ‘We literally put ’em to work’ © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Postwelfare Massachusetts

By way of a critical analysis of welfare reform initiatives in Massachusetts, the paper explores the complex interplay between federal- and state-level factors in welfare policy discourse and practice. I argue that, despite being represented as both home-grown and innovative, the recent package of reforms in Massachusetts is neither. Rather, it is the outcome of a self-inflicted hollowing out of the nation-state, coupled with a dramatic increase in federally orchestrated policy transfers between states, themselves anxious to appear active in the welfare reform process. The apparent consensus on work-based welfare reform is more a symptom of this structural context than it is an outcome of ideas that work at the local level. As a result, the postwelfare settlement in Massachusetts is an unstable one.