ABSTRACT Homelessness in U.S. cities is a pressing civic issue, shaping residents' sense of safety and local policy debates. This study examines Los Angeles residents' perceptions of safety, their proximity to encampments, and attitudes towards mental health and substance use services. Using representative survey data from 4408 residents, we assess (1) support for welfare‐oriented services and their relationship to proximity to homelessness, and (2) how encounters with unhoused individuals shape feelings of safety. Findings show that residents closer to homelessness report more urgent support for mental health and substance abuse services, reflecting a shift towards decriminalization and public health approaches. By contrast, support for affordable housing remains polarized, with higher‐income and older residents more resistant. In a political climate favouring criminalization (Grants Pass v. Johnson), these results highlight the urgency of aligning policy with community‐driven, equitable solutions.
ABSTRACT How mental health policy is formulated shape interpretations of responsibility and actions, making language analysis crucial for understanding its impact on welfare practices. This paper explores how responsibility for educational and vocational support for young adults with mental health problems is constructed in Swedish mental health policy. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and legitimation analysis, three key national policy documents are analysed. Findings reveal that responsibility is constructed as collective yet expressed through language diffusing accountability. While moral legitimation strategies are prevalent, rationalization and neoliberal principles such as efficiency, activation and individual responsibility are prominent. Young adults are positioned as both vulnerable and responsible, expected to participate in education and employment, reflecting an activation discourse, instrumentalizing mental health as a resource for economic productivity. Neoliberal discursive patterns shift responsibility from central authorities to local actors and individuals, risking unequal support. Despite emphasis on education as a protective factor, higher education is notably absent risking to exclude support for young adults in this arena. National policy should strengthen clarity of responsibility to prevent diffusion and promote equality. Otherwise, mental health policy risks becoming an aspiration rather than a framework for justice. Social work practice should advocate structural solutions and inclusive policies that recognize mental health as a social right to prevent further marginalizing young adults with mental health problems.
ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of sustained retrenchment in China's Urban Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Scheme (Dibao), this study examines how digital eligibility verification systems and proactive identification mechanisms independently and jointly shape citizens' welfare receipt. Drawing on street‐level bureaucratic discretion and administrative burden theory, we hypothesise that digital verification has a negative relationship with welfare receipt, while proactive identification has a positive relationship with welfare access and may offset the above negative relationship. Using longitudinal administrative data from 2009 to 2023 and staggered difference‐in‐differences models, we find that digital eligibility verification systems are associated with lower Dibao receipt. Both forms of proactive identification (online tracking and offline seeking) are associated with higher Dibao receipt, but neither mechanism significantly mitigates the exclusionary effect of digital verification. By identifying both a key driver of and potential responses to Dibao retrenchment, this study contributes to research on welfare retrenchment, digital welfare and proactive public services and offers policy‐relevant insights for addressing the continued decline in Dibao coverage.
Across the Western world, joint legal and physical custody is increasingly becoming the default post-separation arrangement. While family policy and law encourage such arrangements, they may not suit every situation. In child-custody court disputes, courts must consider whether sole legal custody is the best alternative for the child in each case. Building on a unique dataset of 535 Swedish child-custody court decisions, this study examines how parents justify child-custody claims in court and which argumentative patterns are most likely to result in a court order on sole legal custody. Deservingness theory serves as an analytical framework for structuring parents' arguments. Latent Class Analysis identifies five distinct classes of court cases-referred to as 'dispute contexts'-based on how parents invoke different arguments: 'Victim-Offender', 'Mutual High-Conflict', 'Parenting Capacity Concerns', 'Lone Carer', and '(Re)-litigating Non-Resident Parents'. Regression analyses suggest that applicants are most likely to be awarded sole custody in the 'Victim-Offender' and 'Lone Carer' contexts, and less likely in the 'Mutual High-Conflict' context.
Activation-oriented welfare systems increasingly rely on frontline workers to make early diagnostic judgements about whether clients warrant further support. Yet it remains unclear whether these assessments are organised primarily around objective need or around conduct. Using a factorial survey experiment with 144 Czech public employment service workers and 2880 vignette evaluations, this article shows that jobseeker cooperativeness is the strongest predictor of support for further state intervention. It outweighs several indicators of disadvantage, including material hardship, care commitments and recent labour-market detachment. Although health limitations, dependent children and longer current registration increase support, their effects are substantially smaller. The article argues that, in the setting studied here, frontline diagnosis is shaped less by need than by conduct-related cues, especially cooperativeness.
COVID-19 was a mega-crisis that disproportionately affected vulnerable groups, with nursing home residents accounting for 30%-60% of COVID-19-related deaths in Europe during the Spring 2020. Despite these shortcomings, little is known about how individuals evaluate crisis management by governments compared to performance by service providers. To address these gaps, we surveyed family members of nursing home residents (n = 2060) in Spain through two survey waves (2022, 2024). We test three hypotheses: the first examines whether perceived quality of routine services provided by nursing homes is associated with a better perceived response during crisis episodes. The second and third hypotheses test how perceptions of national and regional governments' responses affect the perceived performance of nursing homes. Our findings show that in times of crisis, perceptions of performance are shaped more by the actions and visibility of political actors than by the day-to-day quality delivered by service providers.
ABSTRACT South Korea is known for its strong work‐centric culture, having long recorded some of the longest working hours in the OECD based on its norm of overtime work. Against this backdrop, the 52‐h working time reform, consisting of 40 standard and 12 overtime hours, was introduced in 2018. The current paper is the first qualitative study to document Korean employees' work experiences following the working time reform based on 32 interviews. The findings show that the reform produced divergent organizational trajectories shaped by firms' capacity and willingness to reorganise work. While a small subset of high‐capacity workplaces normalised a 40‐h working week through active organizational measures, most workplaces experienced more limited change, often with unintended consequences arising from reduced overtime without adequate workload adjustment or the displacement of work into informal and undocumented forms. In yet other cases, the reform had little relevance due to exemption, pre‐existing schedules, or structurally unbounded work. By offering an up‐to‐date picture of how policy interacts with organizational culture and practice, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of change and continuity in working time norms following a major policy reform in a hyper work‐oriented context.
Validating non-formal and informal learning is a key element of EU activation strategies, as emphasised in the 2012 EU Council Recommendation. This study examines the effects of Germany's MYSKILLS assessment for jobseekers without vocational credentials. Using administrative data on individuals referred to MYSKILLS, we estimate participation effects with inverse probability weighting under a selection-on-observables design. We interpret the findings in light of evidence from a companion qualitative study based on 41 interviews with public employment service (PES) managers, caseworkers, test developers and social partners. We find that test participation increases entry into Active Labour Market Programmes but does not yield immediate re-employment gains. Over the medium to long term, however, effects become positive. By year four, participants' monthly probability of regular contributory employment is up to around six percentage points higher than among referred non-participants. The findings suggest that skills assessments can support caseworker decisions and reduce reliance on formal credentials, but their effects depend on usability, uptake and institutional integration.
ABSTRACT Previous research shows that adults overestimate benefit overuse and that such misperceptions are associated with lower perceived deservingness, a crucial dimension through which welfare attitudes relate to broader welfare state legitimacy. Yet, the origins and malleability of benefit overuse beliefs remain poorly understood. This study addresses this gap by using original survey data from 1527 Swiss secondary school students (ages 13–18) and a follow‐up survey experiment pilot ( N = 130). We first demonstrate that adolescents severely overestimate unemployment benefit overuse: more than 60% believe that overuse is at least ten times higher than the most recent government‐issued rate of approximately 1% in Switzerland. Moreover, over one‐third are misinformed, holding incorrect beliefs with confidence. Notably, male and right‐leaning students are more likely to be misinformed than female and centre/left‐leaning students, but for different reasons: male students tend to be confident whether right or wrong, while right‐leaning students are more confident mainly when wrong, suggesting early traces of motivated reasoning. Crucially, it is the misinformed, not the uninformed, who perceive the unemployed as less deserving. However, the results of the experimental pilot study show that false beliefs are malleable. Providing students with proportional information about benefit overuse substantially improves accuracy and reduces the share of misinformed participants. Moreover, changes in overuse beliefs partly show in the higher perceived deservingness of the unemployed. Overall, the findings demonstrate that welfare misconceptions are widespread but not fixed among adolescents, suggesting that the impressionable years are an important window for investigating the informational foundations of welfare attitudes.
ABSTRACT Street‐level implementation work routinely involves navigating resource scarcity while still meeting policy demands. Recent literature suggests that frontline workers cope with these challenges through informal practices, including the use of personal resources. This study expands contemporary knowledge by examining the role of street‐level managers and the impact of organizational resources. Using a mixed‐methods design, we examine why and how primary school principals in two Brazilian municipalities with different education budgets utilise personal resources. The quantitative survey of 92 principals shows that these informal practices are routine. Principals fundraise, solicit donations from families and communities, mobilise contributions from teachers, and donate their own money and unpaid time. The qualitative phase, consisting of 26 in‐depth interviews, demonstrates that rather than mere resource scarcity, principals mobilise personal and informal resources and engage in legitimising the use of informal resources from others as a managerial tool for addressing imperatives associated with multiple public sector reforms. The study contributes by demonstrating that the mobilisation of informal resources has become institutionalised as part of street‐level managerial work regardless of the level of formal resources available, as it allows managers to respond to local needs and implementation challenges that cannot be adequately addressed through formal resources alone.
Fiscal-occupational welfare is becoming an increasingly important feature of social protection systems and state-business relations in Europe, reflecting a broader trend towards outsourcing public functions to private actors. In Italy, the 2016 and 2017 Stability Laws significantly expanded its scope and relevance. This article examines the political dynamics that facilitate the adoption of these distinctive forms of social policy and shape their content-an important but underexplored dimension in the literature. Drawing on an in-depth reconstruction of the political process, based on interviews with key political and social actors, parliamentary documents and media sources, the study highlights the opacity of this policy domain: decision-making largely unfolded outside public debate, with minimal parliamentary involvement. In this context, although trade unions were formally consulted, the arena was characterised by 'quiet politics', allowing well-resourced economic actors, particularly the main employers' association, to exert strong influence on policy outcomes. The analysis shows that fiscal welfare benefits function not only as distributional instruments but also as strategic tools for securing the support of powerful interest groups, especially in a context of fiscal austerity and constrained public spending. The absence of overt conflict, despite the institutional and distributive implications of these measures, illustrates what can be described as the 'irresistible attractiveness of (micro-)distributive policies'.
Despite clear eligibility criteria, many older adults do not claim available financial and social benefits. Understanding the reasons behind low uptake is essential for designing more accessible and acceptable support systems. Guided by administrative burden theory, this study investigates why older individuals may be reluctant to seek support and explores factors that facilitate engagement with eligible benefits. A qualitative design was employed, involving three focus group discussions with 25 participants aged 50 and above living in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Participants were recruited through community networks, and discussions were analysed through thematic analysis. The findings reveal psychological costs of generational pride, perceived injustice and scepticism, as well as learning and compliance costs of institutional inaccessibility as the barriers to uptake. The findings also illuminate streamlined bureaucratic processes, organisational mediation, and social support as important motivators of benefits engagement. The findings carry important policy implications, particularly for designing welfare systems that are more accessible, relationally responsive, and capable of reducing psychological barriers that currently discourage benefit uptake among older people.
The study examines social service provision during emergencies, with the October 2023 war in Israel as a case study. Building on literature devoted to coping strategies adopted by frontline social service providers, which primarily addresses routine contexts, our research explores their adaptation during crises. Using qualitative methods, including 18 formal interviews and 50 informal conversations with social workers as main providers of social services and such secondary sources as news articles and TV reports, we investigated how social workers manage the widening gap between inadequate social policy and escalating public needs during a prolonged emergency. Data analysis, informed by constructivist grounded theory, revealed that social workers employed extensive volunteer practices as a core coping strategy, which evolved across three distinct phases of the crisis. We conceptualized these practices as 'coerced volunteering', a phenomenon whereby structural constraints and professional obligations oblige unpaid work. The study contributes to literature on public social service provision during emergencies vis-& agrave;-vis inadequacy of social policy. We discuss implications for policy and practice.
Using qualitative data with older (50+) EU-migrants and NGO representatives, this study investigates the drivers of old-age poverty and retirement insecurity for low-income EU-migrants. Our findings indicate that the nature of work that many are/were engaged in and education, along with timing and age of arrival to the UK, influenced poverty risk, placing older and more recent migrants at a disadvantage. These risks were exacerbated by poor awareness of the legal rules and procedures surrounding social-security coordination and pensions portability following the UK-EU Withdrawal and UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreements. Our research found that living with family members could provide reciprocal advantages such as intergenerational support and facilitate dual-earning households, although such arrangements could also be precarious for older EU-migrants due to labour market and financial instabilities of family members. Pensions and retirement insecurities were further compounded by immigration and welfare bureaucracies; the complexity of pensions coordination and a lack of accessible information about pensions portability and support.
This paper examines how healthcare fragmentation produces institutional displacement for Singapore's aging population, a phenomenon we conceptualise as 'aging out of place'. It examines how older adults become systematically disconnected from care coordination while remaining physically in place. Analysis of Singapore's healthcare system reveals that institutional displacement operates through three reinforcing mechanisms: structural fragmentation across independent providers; financing arrangements in which insurance covers less than a quarter of long-term care costs, and administrative complexity that systematically excludes those with limited literacy, digital skills or family support. Current reforms like Healthier SG are constrained by voluntary participation and parallel financing mechanisms which limit their potential to address systemic fragmentation. The study recommends three parallel changes: unified governance cutting across ministry boundaries, a shift from fee-for-service to population-based payment, and operational infrastructure built around interoperable records and simplified administrative processes. Theoretically, the analysis extends aging-in-place concepts to encompass institutional dimensions of displacement. Practically, it shows that coordination must be built into system architecture for the aged. The study's findings have implications for aging societies worldwide confronting similar fragmentation challenges.
Young people not in employment, education, or training (NEET) often face complex and overlapping challenges, yet the welfare services intended to support them are fragmented across organisational boundaries. This article contributes to the literature by exploring how street-level bureaucrats in a Swedish municipality understand and navigate this paradox, using a qualitative case study informed by wicked problems theory. The findings show how structural complexity in the form of interconnected needs and limited knowability interacts with stakeholder complexity, where fragmented knowledge, divergent institutional framings, competing organisational priorities, and diffuse authority shape how support is organised and delivered. Practitioners described how coordination across sectors was difficult to sustain, particularly when support relied on partial information, narrow mandates, and systems that prioritised measurable outputs over meaningful progress. The study confirms the analytical value of wicked problems theory, while also extending it by highlighting the temporal instability of coordination processes. While the typology helps explain why coordination and collective action are difficult in fragmented welfare systems, the findings show how joint efforts are difficult to sustain over time in the face of staff turnover, shifting mandates, and short-term initiatives. For policy and practice, the findings underscore the importance of governance arrangements that facilitate flexibility, cross-sectoral collaboration, and continuity of support.
Drawing on institutionalist political economy, this paper argues that education should be conceptualised as a foundational institutional determinant of health rather than a contextual socioeconomic factor. Utilising data from Scotland, which faces some of the most profound health challenges within Europe, this paper uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore data at the intermediate zone level from two of its major cities, Dundee and Aberdeen, to explore education and training alongside work, income, access to health care, crime and housing, and relating them to a composite outcome measure of health. These results are then compared to those for Glasgow city, which is perhaps the most heavily-researched, in terms of health, in the UK. It finds deprivation in education and training to be a necessary condition in areas of poorer health, especially where income and housing deprivation also occur, a finding requiring an urgent policy response.
