We examine an early ‘red flag system’ in the Finnish social assistance system and its efficiency in reducing the length of social assistance spells. We utilise the age-threshold in the policy that requires notifying social services on beneficiaries under twenty-five years of age after four months of social assistance receipt. Using monthly administrative data covering all twenty-three to twenty-six-year-old social assistance beneficiaries in Finland in 2018-2019, we compare the social assistance receipt of those below and above the age-threshold. Our findings show that those who are ‘red flagged’ do not exit social assistance earlier than others. On the contrary, four months after the notification is sent to social services, they are more likely to still have social assistance as their primary source of income compared to the twenty-five to twenty-six-year-old individuals. Our results shed light on the little discussed question on how to combine social work with digitalised and automatised welfare.

Promoting access to suitable and affordable financial products and tackling financial exclusion has become a prominent feature of the political agenda in the UK, as the second annual ‘Financial Inclusion Report’ was published in November 2020 by the Department for Work and Pensions. This study provides an empirical analysis on financial exclusion and its association with ethnicity, using data from the UK’s Family Resources Survey. The analysis offers important new evidence on the significance of ethnicity, and it further identifies gender, family type and income as other key factors associated with access to financial products. The findings provide a valuable, new empirical dimension to our current understanding of financial exclusion and its links to ethnicity, inform the relevant political debate, and offer key evidence in support of policy initiatives targeted at enhancing financial security and well-being.

Universal Credit (UC) has been rolling out since 2013 to radically alter the UK welfare system. Several UC design features, and its changes to benefit generosity, can lead to claimants struggling to afford rent payments. This article uses fixed-effects panel modelling to investigate UC’s housing insecurity impacts within English local authorities (2014 Q1 - 2019 Q1) by bringing together official UC data and Citizens Advice ‘advice trends’ data on rent arrears/homelessness issues within the social/private rented sectors. The results suggest UC rollout is associated with increases in rent arrears advice issues (though not homelessness advice issues). This impact tended to be greater when UC had been rolled out for longer (and therefore reached more claimants), and was greatest in the social rented sector where people are more vulnerable to arrears. This highlights a need to increase the level of UC payments and address its long wait periods and harsh sanctions.

Ireland’s policy approach to personal insolvency went through sudden changes in 2012 after a lengthy period of stability. This article presents the findings of a study examining one of the remedies introduced with the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 (as amended), the Debt Relief Notice (DRN). The study examined the DRN’s effectiveness in addressing the financial well-being of over-indebted individuals. The results revealed a reduction in participants’ financial distress after obtaining a DRN, which in turn enabled increased control over day-to-day finances. Improved health, increased resourcefulness, and lifestyle improvements were also identified when the participants’ financial distress was reduced. However, participants were incapable of attaining long-term financial resilience, and, therefore, were unable to achieve high financial well-being. A negative impact on social mobility was also identified as an outcome. The short-term impact identified is similar to findings of earlier research (Stamp, 2012) examining Ireland’s previous policy approach to personal insolvency.

Studies on the development of social policies have provided us with a rich body of knowledge. However, being based mostly on class, gender or racial analysis, this body of work has seldom used disability as an analytical framework. This article proposes a systematic research agenda for addressing this lacuna. Drawing on the political and institutional approaches, this article illustrates how mainstream theories on social policy development cannot be assumed applicable to disability policies ‘as is’. To apply them effectively, we argue, students of social policy need to rework them in light of the insights of disability studies. Such conceptual work would involve closer attention to the uniqueness of disability as a socio-political category. Integrating these social policy theories with disability studies will allow us to better identify the unique political and institutional factors behind the trajectories of disability related policy. We conclude this discussion with suggestions for future research.

Drawing on interviews with disability and income support beneficiaries, the article examines the encounters of Israeli citizens with the National Insurance Institute. Using the administrative burden conceptualisation, our analysis highlights three known types of costs: compliance, learning and psychological. The current study provides further conceptualisation of these burdens by unfolding the role of three concrete elements involved in generating these burdens: waiting, communication breakdowns, and administrative errors. These elements are discussed in terms of their contribution to a better understanding of bureaucratic procedures that constitute administrative burdens in the context of the benefit claiming process.

The relationship between social policy and inequality has often been contentious in Latin America. In this context, this article analysed the relationship between social spending and income inequality in the region in the short, medium, and long run. For this purpose, data on sixteen Latin American countries in the period 1990-2017 were gathered and analysed through a panel data study. The results showed that, in line with the findings at a global level, increased levels of overall social spending are indeed associated with reduced levels of income inequality in this region. However, each one of the four main areas of social spending were observed to have different effects on income inequality. Additionally, the results showed that, despite the reforms and the increases in budgets, the social protection and social services systems still have problems reaching those at the bottom of the income distribution in the region.

Integration is widely considered to be difficult to define and even harder to facilitate. Whist the integration of migrants to the United Kingdom (UK) remains a ‘hot topic’ in policy, politics and public opinion it is also the subject of numerous attempts to conceptualise and measure it. In this article we draw on empirical research undertaken with a wide range of organisations working between refugees and powerful national organisations which perform everyday ‘integration work’. We present a possible framework for operationalising and enriching the day-to-day work of the integration of refugees. We explore this work through the lens of the Equality Act 2010. In so doing, we aim to demonstrate that more closely aligning ‘integration work’ within the framework of the Equality Act provides both greater conceptual and operational clarity about how to enhance the integration of refugees in the UK.

Despite serving as the Philippines’ main social protection strategy, debate continues surrounding the ability of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) to meet its long-term goal of breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty. To engage with this debate, this study brings together the constructs of entitlement and agency to analyse how different actors associated with 4Ps understand and experience the program. Drawing on forty-three semi-structured interviews with 4Ps beneficiaries, non-beneficiaries, and implementers, we provide a provisional explanation as to why a disconnect exists between the long-term goals of 4Ps and the experiences with the program among these different actors. In addition, this study highlights how challenges associated with the design and implementation of 4Ps, including limited transparency and communication of the program’s eligibility requirements, rigid monitoring of beneficiary compliance, and delays in receiving cash transfers, may constrain the transformational potential of this social protection strategy.

In Finland, older persons are entitled to needs-tested public home care services. Home care mainly assists with personal care, activities of daily living and medical needs. It is complemented with auxiliary services that offer help with instrumental activities of daily living. In Finland, municipalities are responsible for organising public home care services. These services are mainly tax-funded, but user fees are also charged. In this article, we examine the levels of user fees of home care and auxiliary services in Finnish municipalities in 2018. The data analysis consists of descriptive statistics and exemplary cases of costs to the service users. The results show that user fees may represent a significant share of older persons’ monthly incomes. Consequently, home care users, especially those with low incomes, are at risk of economic deprivation and non-take-up of the services. We also found substantial variation in user fees across municipalities, causing regional inequality.

There is widespread scholarly recognition that migrant long-term care (LTC) workers experience relatively poorer work conditions than local LTC workers. We focus here on the ways in which migration and employment regulation intersect in formal LTC markets to produce working conditions for migrant workers. Drawing on cross-national comparisons between Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom we explore: firstly, the forms of employment regulation that can protect migrant LTC workers or expose them to additional risks; and secondly, how migration regulation can work to amplify employment protection gaps for certain groups of migrant workers. We find that while historically there have been better employment protections in Australia and the Netherlands, the reshaping of work in all three LTC systems creates a context within which migration regulation can exacerbate the risks of precarious work for migrant workers and for those on temporary visas in particular.

Consumption taxes are a policy tool that shape the income distribution and potentially thwart the redistributive goals of social policy. Different household types might be affected differently due to diverging income positions and consumption levels. This study examines the change in poverty across household types when accounting for consumption tax payments. To this end, the study draws on harmonised data from eleven OECD countries in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). Implicit indirect tax rates are estimated from national accounts and poverty rates before and after subtracting consumption taxes are investigated. The results indicate significant variation across household types. In most countries, large family and single parent households experience the highest poverty increase. Ultimately, the increase in poverty across countries is positively associated with the consumption tax level.

This research examined the sociodemographic factors associated with preventive care utilisation among Chinese older adults. Using the latest 2018 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), preventive care utilisation was defined as an annual physical examination. In the final study sample, approximately 69 per cent of the older adults had a physical examination annually. Older adults who had received a high level of formal education (eleven years or above) were more likely to use preventive care (all p < 0.01). Participants with a rural social health scheme and residing in rural areas were also more likely to use preventive care (all p < 0.05). For the interaction effect, rural older adults who could not afford healthcare expenses were less likely to use preventive care (AOR = 0.37, 95 per cent CI: 0.16, 0.84). More reforms should be directed toward reducing social disparities regarding preventive care utilisation.

This cluster-randomised study analyses the implementation of a family intervention model (the HOLF model) on four target areas: parental employment, the financial and housing situations, and the social inclusion of children. The study compares family coordinators implementing the HOLF model including tools, schemes and supervision structures, with those implementing local family intervention practices. All twenty-nine participating Labour and Welfare offices received two family coordinators per office, with a caseload of twenty-one families. Of the offices, fifteen were randomised to implement the HOLF model, while fourteen implemented local family intervention practices. In a twelve-month follow-up of 862 parents, baseline and T2 questionnaires and administrative data show a significant improvement on financial situation and children’s social inclusion; however, with no differences between offices implementing the HOLF model and those implementing local family intervention practices. The results show the need for further analyses of key elements and implementation practices within family intervention projects.

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.

It is a global trend for nations to set forth various social policies to guide and regulate parents in their parenting practices as a form of family governance. In China, this trend is echoed by a number of ‘family education’ policies and guidelines. Drawing upon a critical discourse analysis of three family education documents, this article argues that the ideal Chinese parent is one with high suzhi who is responsible, rational and competent in science-based parenting knowledge and skills, conjoining closely with China’s nation-building agenda to produce high suzhi citizens who could contribute to the building of a strong nation. In reference to international scholarship, these discourses are understood as a form of family governance through parental responsibilisation and professionalisation. The article also calls for more empirical research to understand the implications of these official discourses for parenting and parent-child relations in diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts around China.

In England, the dominant policy narrative recognises no association between spending on children’s services and quality and a limited association between quality and deprivation. We combined 374 inspection outcomes between 2011 and 2019 with data on preventative and safeguarding expenditure and Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores. A multilevel logistic regression model predicting ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ judgements suggests each £100 increase in preventative spending per child was associated with a 69 per cent increase (95 per cent CI: 27.5 per cent, 124 per cent) in the odds of a positive inspection. A one-decile increase in deprivation was associated with a 16 per cent (95 per cent CI: −25 per cent, −5.7 per cent) decrease. Safeguarding expenditure was not associated with outcomes. Deprived communities have worse access to good-quality children’s services and government policies that have increased poverty and retrenched preventative services have likely exacerbated this inequality. Further, inattention to socioeconomic context in inspections raises concerns about their use in ‘take over’ policies.

The aim of this article is to look critically at the implications of gender equality concepts for individual freedom as conceptualised by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The scientific literature addressing the problem of freedom and gender equality with regard to public policy is considerably fragmented. Based on contextual literature, this article will offer four concepts of freedom that serve as analytical categories. I will analyse work/family reconciliation policy tools as introduced at the level of the European Union and reconnect them to three traditions of gender equality. The article reflects on historically embedded dichotomy between positive and negative freedom visible in gendered distinction between public and private. The main findings show that the relationship between freedom and equality is mediated by the selected policy tools suggesting that some policy tools expand freedom of all individuals while others indicate a possible limit for freedom.