Public Welfare Services Research Articles

Experiences of migrant parents of children with special health and welfare needs in Nordic countries: a scoping review.

The objective of this scoping review was to explore and summarise emerging themes in existing studies on personal experiences of migrant parents of children with special health and welfare needs and their interaction with health and welfare services in the Nordic countries. A comprehensive and systematic search for relevant articles in electronic databases was conducted in PubMed, PsycINFO and Web of Science between 2 April 2023 and 31 May 2023. The scoping review followed identified guidelines in conducting scoping reviews. Out of the initial 1836 study results, 62 studies were read and assessed as full text and a total of 13 studies met the inclusion criteria. Using thematic analysis, three key thematic categories were identified: (a) Initial responses to having a child with health and welfare challenges; (b) encountering the Nordic health and welfare services; (c) implications on social inclusion. The challenges to participation faced by migrants threatened their wellbeing, impacted their relationships and influenced their coping strategies and opportunities for social inclusion. The Nordic countries have accessible, affordable and well-equipped infrastructure for health and welfare services compared with the home countries of most migrants. Future research is necessary to explore alternative strategies and spaces to promote participation and involvement of migrant parents of children with special health and welfare needs to inform public health and welfare services development and research.

Enhancing Public Welfare Functions with Deep Learning Technology: A Quantitative Analysis of Strengthening Citizen Rights Protection in China

The rapid advancement of deep learning (DL) technology has profoundly impacted numerous sectors, particularly public welfare services, which encompass healthcare, social security, and legal rights protection. In China, where a vast population creates challenges in resource allocation and equitable service distribution, the integration of DL technologies offers promising solutions to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and fairness in public welfare functions. This paper explores how DL can be applied to improve these functions, with a specific focus on enhancing the protection of citizen rights. Through case studies and quantitative data analysis, this research examines how DL technologies can be effectively deployed in the healthcare, social security, and legal sectors, providing a roadmap for modernizing public services and ensuring that citizen rights are safeguarded more comprehensively. Five key references are used to support the analysis of DL’s role in transforming these critical areas of governance, aiming to present practical and actionable insights for policymakers and technology developers.

Civil society and governance. A survey of local authority and NPO collaboration from an institutional perspective

ABSTRACT There is a renewed interest in third sector organizations with hope for contributions to systems of new public governance and welfare services. This study is based on a survey to the local authorities in Sweden and aims to analyze how collaboration between public and third sector organizations occurs at the local level. A special focus for the study is idea-driven public partnerships (IOPs). The results indicate that collaboration mainly occurs outside of the core fields of welfare and also that the national level agreements set standards to be used in especially the larger local authorities who are more in need of formalized policies to handle the local relations. The institutionalized collaborative relations are diverse and mainly meant to promote a thriving third sector for its democratic values, but there are also certain welfare fields with less local remit such as sports, leisure time activities, and homelessness where NPOs are not crowded out by the public sector. Collaboration with IOPs are more common in larger local authorities and places with a larger proportion of immigrants.

Exploring citizens’ stances on AI in public services: A social contract perspective

Abstract This paper explores citizens’ stances toward the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in public services in Norway. Utilizing a social contract perspective, the study analyzes the government–citizen relationship at macro, meso, and micro levels. A prototype of an AI-enabled public welfare service was designed and presented to 20 participants who were interviewed to investigate their stances on the described AI use. We found a generally positive attitude and identified three factors contributing to this: (a) the high level of trust in government (macro level); (b) the balanced value proposition between individual and collective needs (meso level); and (c) the reassurance provided by having humans in the loop and providing transparency into processes, data, and model’s logic (microlevel). The findings provide valuable insights into citizens’ stances for socially responsible AI in public services. These insights can inform policy and guide the design and implementation of AI systems in the public sector by foregrounding the government–citizen relationship.

Impact and Spatial Effect of Socialized Services on Agricultural Eco-Efficiency in China: Evidence from Jiangxi Province

Agricultural eco-efficiency (AEE) is a crucial indicator of the green development of agriculture. Agricultural socialized services (AS) provide services for the agricultural production process and they promote the effective input of production factors, such as science and technology, talent, information, and capital, into the agricultural production chain, deepening the division of labor and injecting vitality into agricultural development. We measured AEE based on field research data in Jiangxi Province, China. We also constructed an endogenous switching model to explore the impact of AS on AEE. Our results show that, based on the counterfactual assumption, the AEE increased by 13.19% among farmers who adopted the services compared to those who did not. From the perspective of scale and structural differences, the larger the scale of agricultural cultivation, the stronger the impact of AS on AEE. Furthermore, a large share of cash crops was found to inhibit the impact of AS on AEE. We also investigated whether farmers in close proximity to each other affect their neighbors through knowledge dissemination and technology spillover. The extent of the impact of AS on AEE depended on distance thresholds: it was more pronounced when we increased the distance threshold. Our results suggest that the government should improve the AS system, provide more public welfare services, and appropriately subsidize AS organizations. The AS for food crops should be emphasized; however, those for cash crops should not be ignored.

How Far does Prison Punishment Extend? Re-entry Processes in the Digitalised Society

This article questions how far punishment extends in a digitalised society, focusing on the complexities in relation to prison release and re-entry processes for people who have served a long prison sentence. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of “societies of control” and Nils Christie’s concepts of “dense and loose societies,” the article discusses re-entry within the context of the Norwegian digitalised society. Through person-centred, multi-site fieldwork, the analysis identifies three types of complexities regarding re-entry processes. The first is how small and unforeseen events can reset the time of release from prison. The second is how digital gatekeepers in public welfare services create obstacles in the re-entry process. The third is how the possibility of online tracking and monitoring provides new forms of social control and pain after release, which creates an environment where a person’s criminal past affects his or her everyday life. This article challenges binary scientific understandings between the inside and the outside of prison and provides insights into the processes of how digital punishment and new forms of control occur in digitalised society. In this way, the article analytically contributes to the discussion of how the normative demand of being a free person after completing sentences in Norwegian criminal policy has been further complicated in a digitalised society.

Exploring the "Time Bank" Mutual Support Model for the Elderly in Linyi City

At present, China is facing increasingly severe pension problems, the weakening of the family pension function, the pension security system is not perfect, the number of elderly and incapacitated elderly people is rising year by year, to explore the diversified pension model is the new era of China's characteristics of the positive response to the aging of the population road requirements. Based on this, this paper focuses on the willingness of the rural elderly to participate in the "time bank" mutual care model, and analyses their willingness to participate and the factors affecting them through the research on the rural elderly in Linyi City, in order to provide policy suggestions for the improvement of China's pension service system. This paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, combined with the current situation of the elderly in Linyi City, and analyses the reliability, validity and descriptive statistics of the collected primary data, focusing on analysing the willingness of rural elderly to participate in the "time bank" mutual support for the elderly and the influencing factors, and finally this paper proposes a deepening of the "time bank" model of elderly care, based on the problems found in the study. Finally, based on the problems found in the study, this paper proposes to deepen the awareness of "Time Bank", strengthen the standardised training for the elderly who participate in "Time Bank", as well as to realise the combination of public welfare and incentive service willingness to enhance the idea of gradually improving the enthusiasm of the participation of the elderly in rural areas, and to promote the "Time Bank". the sustainability of the "time bank" model of mutual support for the elderly.

Timely support for promoting mental wellbeing among families with young children –an interview study exploring the experiences of multi-professional practitioners in Finland

BackgroundChildhood is a critical period for promoting mental wellbeing and previous research suggests that various family-focused mental health promotion and early prevention initiatives are effective. The aim of the study was to explore Finnish health and social care practitioners’ views and experiences of mental health promotion practice targeting families with young children.MethodsIndividual semi-structured interviews with 14 practitioners representing various municipal services, faith-based and third sector organizations were conducted in 2021 and analysed using thematic analysis.ResultsVarious challenges and opportunities for supporting mental health related to both structural features of the health and social care landscape and the varying needs of families were identified. The lack of resources as well as the social stigma associated with mental health problems and with public welfare services, hindered proactive work approaches and timely support. However, low-threshold initiatives and adapted information to families as well as further training about mental health for practitioners together with multi-professional collaboration and teamwork were suggested as potential enablers for mental health promotion.ConclusionsThe study highlights the importance of reaching families in a timely manner in order to promote mental wellbeing and prevent mental health problems. The findings, bringing to the fore the practitioners’ own experiences and views, suggest how current practice could be developed in order to safeguard mental health and wellbeing for all families with young children. The practitioners’ views and experiences are key components when building future sustainable and proactive health and social care services.

Longitudinal Evaluation of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics with Adoptive Families in Tennessee

ABSTRACT Purpose This study evaluated effectiveness of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) with adoptive families who received post adoption services in Tennessee. Methods Researchers obtained a sample of 552 families who received post adoption services in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Most families (77%) had adopted children through public child welfare services. A quasi-experimental design examined wellbeing outcomes for an NMT group (n = 319) versus a services-as-usual (SAU) group (n = 233) in intent-to-treat analyses. Then, the SAU group was contrasted to an NMT subgroup that had high adherence to the NMT model (n = 109) in an analysis of treatment-on-the-treated. Results Intent-to-treat models indicated no differences on outcomes between the NMT and SAU groups. However, the results of treatment-on-the-treated analyses showed slightly greater reduction on the Behavior Problems Index over time for the NMT with high adherence group as compared to SAU. Discussion and Conclusion Adoptive families may face challenges that could be addressed through developmentally sensitive, trauma-informed services, such as NMT. The results of this study suggest that the NMT might benefit adoptive families if greater attention is paid to implementation adherence, or fidelity.

Persisting inequalities in the digitalized society: migrant women facing coercive dimensions of everyday digitalization

ABSTRACT Understanding the ubiquitous digitalization of everyday life and associated inequalities presupposes rich conceptualizations of the associated social dynamics. Accordingly, we investigate digital service domestication as a social dimension of people’s lives, building on concepts that center users’ everyday lives and agency. We adopt the perspective of people who find the use of digital services difficult and examine the hurdles they face when attempting access. Our data consists of semi-structured interviews with migrant women (N = 22) living in Finland, where most essential services are digitalized. The study highlights the societal boundedness of the participants’ agency, which we maintain is a key dynamic of inequality. We classify digital services in four categories, interactive communication services; information, media, and entertainment services; private customer services, and public health and social welfare services. The first two are voluntary digital services that did not create insurmountable barriers for the participants, but enabled them to conduct action they valued. By contrast, essential private and public services require mastering more complicated service technologies, a foreign language, and complex contents. Our results highlight how diversity-blind essential digital services produce and reinforce inequalities. Our analysis emphasizes the need for researchers to consider the coercive dimensions of digitalization.

Undermining, defending or expanding EU citizenship? CSOs’ positions on providing humanitarian assistance to EU citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Norway

ABSTRACT This article explores the positions of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on providing humanitarian assistance to European Union (EU) citizens with limited rights to public welfare services in Norway through 19 interviews with leaders of humanitarian services run by CSOs in Oslo. The article shows a contradictory picture. On one side, leaders expressed awareness and concern regarding risks associated with the provision of humanitarian services in a country with a comprehensive and ambitious welfare state. These include creating parallel welfare services based on charity rather than rights, and that such services may hide structural violence, or give it a humane façade, thus potentially contributing to the legitimacy and preservation of exclusionary welfare policies and practices. On the other side, service leaders were sceptical towards granting all EU citizens equal access to public welfare benefits and services and reported advocating for the expansion of humanitarian services rather than inclusionary rights for all EU citizens in Norway. We suggest that this may indicate an acceptance of the EU’s principle of conditionality of welfare support on employment history, and a limited willingness or capacity of CSOs to engage in advocacy that could contribute to alternative narratives about EU citizenship and challenge structural exclusion.

‘A free position in midfield' – a qualitative study of faith-based social work with people who use drugs in Sweden

ABSTRACT Many faith-based organisations (FBOs) provide social work services to marginalised groups in need of care such as people who use drugs (PWUD), but little is known about how diaconal or faith-based social work with PWUD is carried out and how staff view their work. The aim of this study was to explore how social work with PWUD within FBOs in Sweden is conducted. This study is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 14 employees at a range of churches in Sweden. The empirical material was analysed with qualitative textual analysis. FBO staff channeled a personal calling to offer services through their organisations and found PWUD be in need mainly of emergency support. Staff engaged in boundary work such as differentiating between activities conducted at the church premises or on the streets. Staff accompanied clients to meetings with publicly funded welfare services to the benefit of the clients, and they appreciated their free role compared to social services staff. FBOs mainly act as stabilisers in relation to official public welfare services. The role of prophetic diaconal work aiming at social justice was limited and clients’ emergency needs were in focus, which indicates that FBOs in Sweden mainly complement welfare state services.

Diaconia as the Art of the Possible: Diaconal Engagement for Roma Migrants in Oslo, Norway

Itinerant Roma migrants travelling from Eastern European countries have featured across the European Economic Area (EEA) since the European Union’s eastward expansions in 2004 and 2007. Being unskilled, many Roma migrants engage in casual work and street work such as playing music, selling magazines, collecting and recycling bottles and cans, and begging, making them conspicuously visible in countries with public welfare services and low poverty levels. Citizens of EEA countries can enter and stay legally in other countries in the EEA for up to three months, after which they must register as workers or jobseekers, and generally leave. It is well documented how the countries Roma citizens of EEA countries travel to have enacted migration control measures, often in the form of complex and fine-grained regulations, that exclude them from public welfare services. This is also true of the Nordic countries, such as Norway, where they coincide with universalistic welfare states aiming to cover everyone living in their territories with the same benefits and services. In the Nordic countries, as in other countries, service provision for Roma migrants is largely in the hands of non-governmental organisations, many of them diaconal organisations running emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and other humanitarian services to alleviate suffering for people at the margins of the welfare state. The diaconal organisations also engage in case work and advocacy work to ensure the realisation of the Roma migrants’ rights. Many of the organisations depend on public grants, making their relationship to the welfare state ambiguous. This article investigates Christian social practice in the form of diaconal engagement for Roma migrants in Oslo, Norway at the intersection of migration control, the universalistic welfare state, and the theological underpinnings of the organisations.

The forging of moral leaders in social entrepreneurship: A comparative study from two public welfare organizations in China

Young people, including college students, are the main body for the main force of public welfare entrepreneurship and the effective force of future social entrepreneurs. How can college students, who are often self-made and lack entrepreneurial experience, social capital, and resources, grow up to be “moral leaders” of social entrepreneurship organizations? And what role does social entrepreneurship education play? Previous studies have not provided corresponding theoretical explanations to address these questions. This study uses as examples two public welfare organizations and their founders; namely, YinChao Pension Service Center in Yinzhou District, Ningbo City, and Ant Public Welfare Service Center in Yuyao City. The exploratory comparative research method of two cases is used, and the perspective is constructed based on personal significance. Through the open decoding analysis, this study refines the key elements of the individual growth of public entrepreneurs as “moral leaders,” including four stages: concept construction, moral conflict, relationship construction, and rule construction, as well as personal meaning construction strategy and public entrepreneurship education strategy. The research results not only explain how individuals grow up to be “moral leaders” in public welfare organizations through self-meaning construction in the context of public welfare entrepreneurship and the construction process from individual to organization morality systems but also provide a theoretical framework for cultivating successful public welfare entrepreneurs and a theoretical reference for the sustainable development of public welfare entrepreneurs and public welfare entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities.

Gendered identities and digital inequalities: an exploration of the lived realities of the transgender community in the Indian digital welfare state

ABSTRACT With rapid digitalisation and technological advancements, the emergence of digital welfare states worldwide has become a reality. Broadly, the term digital welfare state refers to the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digital tools to transform public and welfare services, such as biometric identification systems and automated systems to verify the eligibility of citizens for welfare benefits. This increased use of technological innovations and digital tools in governance is presented as a citizen-centric move that would improve accessibility and availability, and increase efficiency. However, one of the major critiques of the digitalisation of welfare systems is that it excludes people from disadvantaged sections who lack access to digital infrastructure and digital literacy from actively participating in society. In the context of the emerging Indian digital welfare state, this paper focuses on a particular marginalised community, that is, the transgender community in India, to understand their lived experiences of interacting with public digital systems. Historically, the transgender community in India has been socioeconomically marginalised, making them important beneficiaries of public welfare services. The Indian government recently introduced a gender identification digital system for the transgender community, which would be used to procure official gender identity cards and dispense social benefits and subsidies to them. This paper analyses the inequalities and exclusions faced by the transgender community in India in participating in the digital welfare system and highlights its potential human rights and policy implications.

Is digitalisation of public health and social welfare services reinforcing social exclusion? The case of Russian-speaking older migrants in Finland

Governments are rapidly digitalising public services to increase cost-effectiveness of the public sector. This study examines older migrants’ use of digital public health and social welfare services from the perspective of social exclusion. The study uses a mixed methods approach, drawing on representative survey data of Russian-speaking migrants in Finland and qualitative interviews with third-sector representatives who assist Russian-speaking migrants with digital service use. Our quantitative results show that a sizeable proportion of Russian-speaking older adults are excluded from digital services. In particular, those with lower socio-economic status, poor local language skills and without Finnish education are at higher risk of exclusion. Our qualitative results describe the multiple ways the exclusion from digital services intersects with other disadvantages in the everyday lives of Russian-speaking older adults. We argue that digitalisation of these services may foster social exclusion and endanger the realisation of these people's social rights.

Las agencias de gobierno en Uruguay: características y autonomía de la administración descentralizada

The creation of agencies has become a popular trend in the world and in Latin America since the New Public Management reforms. Agencies are organizations with greater levels of autonomy from the center of government, which gives them, in theory, greater independence from political fluctuations while they are capable of being more efficient in the quality and management of their services. This article presents the application in Uruguay of the COBRA (Comparative Public Organization Data Base for Research and Analysis – network) project methodology for characterizing and measuring the levels of autonomy of decentralized public sector agencies. Based on the application of a questionnaire to qualified informants, the study analyzes 56 decentralized entities in Uruguay from 2015 to 2020. Among its main results, it shows that there are no significant differences in terms of autonomy in policy definition or resource management between entities governed by public law and those of non-state type. It also highlights that the largest decentralized entities, both those dedicated to the provision of public welfare services and those of a commercial nature, continue to operate predominantly within the framework of public law and enjoy significant levels of autonomy with respect to the center of government. On the other hand, despite their steady growth, the creation of agencies in Uruguay (or smaller administrative structures governed by or with similar characteristics to those of private law) does not evidence a search for greater managerial autonomy with respect to the organizational formats typical of public law. These institutional formats reflect a pattern of State functioning built on partisan control, negotiations and political co-participation, rather than a logic focused on efficiency or management improvements.

Welfare between Social and Human Rights – Charity in the New Social Landscape of Sweden

Welfare states in Europe and around the world are experiencing growing numbers of people with limited or unclear rights to public welfare within their borders. These are refugees, undocumented migrants, EU-migrants and other groups of displaced or deprived people seeking a better life. In Sweden, this situation is trying the highly held principles of social and human rights, as charities are becoming an increasingly important complement to rights-based public welfare services. This article will show how eight different City Missions in Sweden are seeing a new role for themselves in an emerging social landscape. The findings will be analysed in terms of social and human rights, using the classic theories of T. H. Marshall as well as more recent research.

Service Design on Reuse of Urban Surplus Food

With the goal of alleviating the pressure on social resources, to find the correlation between food waste at the consumer end and the food and clothing of the disadvantaged, and to create opportunities for the urban subsistence and unemployed people to "work for food" and re-employment, to explore Innovative help strategy. Understand the objectives, behaviors, and opinions of the research objects, summarize the content of questionnaires and interviews, establish user role models through user demand analysis, and draw user experience maps for functional conversion. The framework of food reuse service is established. Based on the visualized way of service blueprint, the physical products, user APP and operation process of urban food reuse are designed, which changes the original one-way development of the service into a sustainable and benign closed-loop development, providing a reference for the design of other social public welfare service.

Embracing and rejecting the medicalization of autism in Italy

Medicalization is increasingly recognized as a bidirectional process, with patients and their families as agents. The paper considers the specific case of the medicalization of autism in Italy, from the point of view of parents of autistic people with different levels of support needs. Through reporting and comparing results of two independently conducted qualitative studies, this paper aims to analyze how parents embrace and resist the medicalization of autism in their everyday lives and in healthcare contexts. Both studies involved participant-observation with services that targeted autistic people and interviews with parents, professionals, and autistic people. Results show that parents of autistic people both embrace and resist medicalization. While parents (sometimes ambivalently) accept the responsibilization inherent in their engagement with interventions (a sort of “therapeutization” of life) and reject lay expertise by deferring to experts’ knowledge, they also resist the application of medical labels, language and practices in various ways in their everyday lives. Both embracing and resisting medicalization can be useful for achieving overarching social goals of being a good parent, helping their children, and pursuing respect and social harmony. Medicalization derives not only from the cultural dominance of medical discourses, which seems to incorporate resistance to medicalization stances, but also from the absence of continuity and coordination of services, particularly in the Italian context of public (but increasingly privatizing) health and welfare services.