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The paper investigates the role of information asymmetries and sensegiving processes of citizens claiming for social services. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relevance of applicants’ agency, since it has been generally neglected in the analysis of social services provision. On the contrary, the paper proposes an alternative view, considering applicants as actors who are able to develop dialectic strategies for claiming specific forms of social assistance.

The paper is based on a qualitative research, conducted following an inductive approach. The data have been collected in three different Italian municipalities, where the researcher has been the opportunity to perform a period of observation of the interviews between the social workers of the local social services department and the citizens applying for social assistance.

The findings of the research point out that informational asymmetries play an ambivalent role in the definition of applicant’s strategies, since they represent an ambivalent and dynamic factor, rather than a mere source of disadvantage for the user. From this viewpoint, the citizens’ possibilities to access to social assistance are shaped by both institutional and dialectic factors: on the one hand, access to social assistance relies on specific criteria of eligibility (institutionally defined), but on the other hand the access is the outcome of situated sensegiving processes, performed by both the applicants and the gatekeepers of social services during their encounters.

The research is based on the analysis of a small number of cases, within a context that is characterized by a high level of organizational and professional discretion in the regulation of the provision of social assistance.

The findings of the research urge policy maker to re-consider applicants as strategic actors and opens the space for the development of new options of regulation of the delivery of social services.

The paper suggests to consider the applicants for social services as people who, although in a condition of need, are capable to identify specific forms of assistance. From this point of view, informational asymmetries are not be considered as a stigmatic issue, but as a space which calls for further and less superficial investigation.

The paper challenges some of the most taken-for-granted theoretical assumptions in the analysis of the regulation of the access to social assistance. First, it proposes a dynamic interpretation of the notion of informational asymmetries, considering them as a space for action, rather than a binding factor; second, it emphasizes the relevance of user’s agency in the access to welfare services, that is generally neglected since most analyses focus on professional discretion disregarding the hypothesis of the user as a strategic actor.

This paper aims to present data about access to and use of health and social care services by adults with learning disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Data were collected in three waves between December 2020 and September 2021 and concerned the use of health and social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected at one or more time-points directly from 694 adults with learning disabilities and through separate proxy reports by family carers and paid support staff of another 447 adults with learning disabilities.

Many people with learning disabilities who reported regularly accessing services/supports pre-pandemic were not receiving them during the timeframe of this study. There were indications of increasing access to some services and supports between Wave 2 and 3, but this was not universal.

People in Cohort 2, who were likely to have severe/profound learning disabilities, were less frequently reported to access online community activities than people in Cohort 1, which is likely to exacerbate existing social isolation for this cohort and their family carers. Service providers should seek to ensure equitable access to services and activities for all people with learning disabilities in the event of future lockdowns or pandemics.

This is the largest longitudinal study about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and social care services for adults with learning disabilities in the UK. We primarily collected data directly from adults with learning disabilities and worked with partner organisations of people with learning disabilities and family members throughout the study.

This article discusses the results of a comparative evaluation of a social worker in primary care with her equivalents in an area team. Direct referral is found to be more efficient than referral to the area team, enabling the attached social worker to manage a higher workload and improved levels of contact with service users and the primary care team. The options available for service users are thus enhanced, with consequent cost advantages for the social services department.

The purpose of this paper is to map the current organisation and implementation of children’s services in three regions of Spain, to identify strengths and gaps and to suggest proposals for improvement in line with European recommendations.

Spain features a decentralised approach when it comes to the organisation of children’s services. This means that relevant themes for children’s services refer to decentralised policies, which diverge within the regions in the country and therefore to illustrate this the authors focus on three specific regions. The study used an exploratory case study design and relied on qualitative methods, including the answers to open questionnaires provided by senior civil servants at key regional child welfare agencies, children’s services directors and service providers.

The main finding from the review of the legislation and the answers to the questionnaires is that public social services still follow an assistance logic rather than a social investment approach in regards to children’s services. Although a significant development of laws and policies has taken place, ensuring the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes and services for children remains a challenge.

The answers provided by the respondents may be subject to limitations imposed by the agencies for which they work. A general disadvantage of qualitative research is the use of subjective criteria to interpret the relevance of the results. The study was further challenged by differences across regions when it comes to their legal and policy frameworks, development of provisions and implementation and outcomes’ evaluation.

The findings could be used to assess the state of play in regards to children’s services across the regions studied and beyond with a focus on children being placed at the centre of public services’ intervention, using a comprehensive approach and promoting critical thinking and reflective practice.

The three selected case studies provide additional insight into policy and legal developments, implementation and evaluation of activities and efforts to improve policy and practice in children’s services.

This paper contributes to the evaluation of the current situation of children’s services in Spain from a decentralised perspective with the aim to facilitate changes to improve planning, implementation and evaluation of children’s services and secure better outcomes for children.

This paper aims to present data about access to health and social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic for adults with learning disabilities across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Data were collected directly from 621 adults with learning disabilities and through separate proxy reports by family carers and paid support staff of another 378 adults with learning disabilities. The data were collected between December 2020 and February 2021 and concerned the use of health and social care services since the start of the first COVID-19 national lockdown in March 2020.

Access to and use of health and social care services significantly reduced for adults with learning disabilities across the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2021, with many people not receiving any services at all during that period. Similar patterns were seen across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. However, data suggest some variations between countries for some services.

Future pandemic planning must ensure that access to these essential services is not completely lost for adults with learning disabilities and their family carers, as it was in some cases during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

This is the largest study about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and social care services for adults with learning disabilities in the UK. The authors primarily collected data directly from adults with learning disabilities, and worked with partner organisations of people with learning disabilities throughout the study.

Local welfare governance is approached from the vantage point of informal carers caring for older people. A bottom‐up perspective is used to construct a critical view on welfare provision and governance practices at the local level. The paper aims to discuss the issues.

The data consist of 23 in‐depth interviews with informal carers. Universal access to services and equal treatment of citizens is discussed.

The analysis illustrates how informal carers share care responsibilities with the municipality and gain access to services both as service providers and service users. Informal care comprises a complex mixture of public and private responsibilities that poses a challenge to universalism. There are new inequalities emerging among informal carers, while access to public resources is easier for resource‐rich carers positioned as service providers. Resource‐poor carers identify themselves often as service users in relation to municipality.

The use of original data provides important knowledge on informal carers' dual position in the local welfare governance and contributes to both theoretical and empirical understanding on shifts within Nordic welfare governance. Informal carers' dual position reflects the essence of mixed governance and represents future social policies.

Since the 1960s, the health system has seen the professionalisation of a new occupation, carer of the elderly. The form and result of this process differs between countries according to their welfare systems. In this paper, the differences will be analysed in a comparison between two countries, Germany and Sweden, the representatives of two prototypical welfare systems. Sweden is renowned for its state‐oriented universal welfare system, whereas Germany is considered to be an example of a conservative, family‐oriented system. The process of professionalisation and its consequences for the carer and the care receivers will be looked at from the perspective of gender and social inequality. On a theoretical basis, this paper includes gendered and mainstream welfare state approaches and thus combines issues of gender and social inequality, as well as theories in the area of professionalisation. Empirically, the development of the new occupation is examined in two phases. In the first step, it looks at the time‐period between the 60s and 80s, when the stateoriented vs. family‐oriented principles of care for the elderly were established. The 90s brought about change in both countries. In Germany, with the introduction of the Long‐term Care Insurance, a new mode of care has developed, shared between informal family care, and public or private providers. In Sweden, budget restrictions in the 90s in this area led to a reorganisation, restructuring and reduction of the role of the welfare state. The consequences of the different processes in both countries will be discussed from the perspective of the predominantly female employees and the receivers of care. The results reveal a complex interaction between patterns of gender and social inequality and welfare state policies for the carers and care receivers.

This paper explores the links between the PGO and social services in relation to abuse and to local authority management of the finances of vulnerable people. It also reports a small‐scale study of adult protection co‐ordinators in social services departments, which explored the nature of and contact between the two agencies in the context of adult protection inquiries.

This study aims to examine the role of Islamic social finance (ISF) instruments such as Zakah, Sadaqah and Waqf in the provision of social services by Islamic faith-based organizations (IFBOs) in Southwest Nigeria.

This study adopts exploratory approach based on field interviews conducted with leaders of IFBOs, whereas purposive sampling technique was used to select three case study organizations. Data collected from interviews and documents of case study organizations was analyzed using content and narrative analyses.

The first findings indicate faith in the Unseen God, scriptural texts and socio-economic factors as major motivation that accounted for the IFBOs’ concern for social services. The second finding shows that the ISF strategies used by the IFBOs to improve access to social services include Zakah, Awqaf, Sadaqah and gifts. The third finding reveals that the IFBOs have efficient stand-alone and windows operational structures that align with IFBOs corporate governance. The fourth finding also reveals the challenges facing the IFBOs such as inadequate funding, dearth of manpower, lukewarm and uncooperative attitude of Muslims and attitudinal behaviour of givers and takers.

Absence of documented directory about the role IFBOs usage of ISF in providing social services in Southwest Nigeria affected the study. Many IFBOs were eliminated during the process of selection because of lack of records to indicate their social services relevant to the study. As such, information that could have been collected from the eliminated IFBOs could have contributed significantly to the study.

The major implications of the study are that ISF has been reinvented as an ethical social welfare framework for supporting the disadvantaged members of the society with ISF instruments and also highlighted the dichotomy existing between IFBOs in the North and Southwest Nigeria with respect to the legal and operational activities of IFBOs usage of ISF.

This study has contributed to a better understanding of the role of ISF instruments in the provision of social services in an area that is largely under-researched in Nigeria.