Disability and employment policy in the Israeli welfare state: between exclusion and inclusion

Based on the social model(s) of disability, this article seeks to analyse the historical development of Israeli employment policy toward disabled people during the first decade and a half of its existence (1948–1965). Findings from primary and secondary sources suggest that throughout this period disabled people, mainly immigrants, found themselves at the lowest echelons of Israeli society and the labour market. Furthermore, the Israeli welfare state offers an interesting case study of the gap between a welfare state’s stated adherence to social justice and the more limited, and even contradictory, outcomes of its policies. Our discussion suggests that a valuable way of reframing our findings can be found in the critique of de-commodification as an inadequate concept and in the use of related concepts such as re-commodification and quasi-commodification.     

Revisiting Welfare States. Performance in Reducing Poverty through Longitudinal Multinational Comparison

This article presents the results of a comparative study on the effects of social welfare programs in selected developed countries. Using a fully comparable longitudinal data file from nationally representative household surveys, we estimate the poverty rate and poverty gap before and after social welfare transfers and taxes in order to identify the direct effects of social welfare on poverty. In general, the findings reveal that countries with conservative welfare regimes demonstrate higher poverty performance than do countries with liberal welfare regimes. In particular, the United States lagged behind through all periods under investigation, whereas Germany exhibited the highest performance in poverty reduction.     

Risk and the welfare state

The British welfare state developed as a state-centred response to the problem of handling the risks encountered in a typical life-course. The influential work of Giddens and others implies that the traditional welfare state is under attack from two directions: a changing international politico-economic environment limits the freedom of national governments to pursue independent policies involving relatively high taxation to finance social spending. At the same time, changes in the experience of risk and declining confidence in the expertise of welfare state planners and professionals undermine support for state-centred solutions. This approach fails to acknowledge that available non-state services are often inadequate to meet many everyday life risks and that the authority of private sector advisers, insurers and professionals is also increasingly open to question. This article discusses whether people reject welfare state solutions to problems of risk in the context of research on the perceptions and behaviour of people buying or selling their homes, considering provision for long-term care needs and defrauding social security carried out by the ESRC's Economic Beliefs and Behaviour programme. Individual responses endorse the continued provision of state welfare in order to meet unprovided risks alongside disenchantment with the record of both state and private professionals and planners and awareness that state retrenchment requires greater individual responsibility for meeting one's own needs. The theory of risk society requires development to recognize that citizens are not necessarily alienated from state welfare.     

Disability-policy models in European welfare regimes: comparing the distribution of social protection,labour-market integration and civil rights

This paper examines different models of disability policy in European welfare regimes on the basis of secondary data. OECD data measuring social protection and labour-market integration is complemented with an index which measures the outcomes of disability civil rights. Eurobarometer data is used to construct the index. The country modelling by cluster analysis indicates that an encompassing model of disability policy is mainly prevalent in Nordic countries. An activating and rehabilitating disability-policy model is predominant mainly in Central European countries, and there is evidence for a distinct Eastern European model characterized by relatively few guaranteed civil rights for disabled people. Furthermore, the Southern European model, which indicates a preference for social protection rather than activation and rehabilitation, includes countries which normally have diverse welfare traditions.     

The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states

Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centered concept--which we name social care--that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.     

The relative autonomy of the state and the origins of British welfare policy

This paper assesses the relative influence of organizational vs. class power in affecting the timing and the shape of the British welfare reforms of 1908–1911. Rather than viewing these reforms as either the outcome of the direct pressure of business or as an internal response from a newly bureaucratized state to solve social problems, this analysis finds more evidence for a perspective that emphasizes the more indirect, more mediated class biases inherent in the British state as setting the context within which action on welfare reform occurred. Specifically, I argue that state managers used their newly developed organizational capacity to shape the Liberal reforms according to their own purposes but these purposes were limited by several class-based factors. The historical conclusions point to a synthesis of the relative autonomy approaches to the capitalist state advanced in the neo-Marxist work of Poulantzas, Offe, and Block.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1988 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.     

The emotional encounter with child welfare services: the importance of incorporating the emotional perspective in parents' encounters with child welfare workers

The child welfare service (CWS) in Norway represents a growing field. In 2011 about 52,000 children received help. Families mainly received supportive services in their homes while around 8000 children were taken into the custody of the CWS. Although most actions taken by the CWS are deemed to be supportive and have the consent of the parents, many parents find being assessed by the CWS to be distressing, and there is a widespread feeling that there is a stigma attached to receiving help from the CWS. This article discusses the importance of parents' emotions, and how these emotions can influence their cooperation with the CWS by using the concepts of recognition and trust. The data are based on analyses of 385 interviews with parents in which they describe their emotional encounters with the CWS. The results show that certain emotions can create a barrier between the family's need for assistance and the CWS's actions and initiatives. The article concludes by discussing how the emotional encounter challenges child welfare practice.     

Decision-making about the adoption of information technology in social welfare agencies: some key considerations

Government and non-government social welfare agencies have invested heavily in information technology, such as electronic information systems (IS) but evaluations have shown that they may undermine rather than support frontline practice. In this article, the findings of research in which senior managers and information technology managers were asked to reflect on why a particular application failed to achieve its aims are presented. The insights they provide can be used to guide future decision-making about the adoption of information technology.     

Lorenz non-consistent welfare and inequality measurement

Typical welfare and inequality measures are required to be Lorenz consistent which guarantees that inequality decreases and welfare increases as a result of a progressive transfer. We explore the implications for welfare and inequality measurement of substituting the weaker absolute differentials and deprivation quasi-orderings for the Lorenz quasi-ordering. Restricting attention to distributions of equal means, we show that the utilitarian model - the so-called expected utility model in the theory of risk - does not permit one to make a distinction between the views embedded in the differentials, deprivation and Lorenz quasi-orderings. In contrast it is possible within the dual model of M. Yaari (Econometrica 55 (1987), 99–115) to derive the restrictions to be placed on the weighting function which guarantee that the corresponding welfare orderings are consistent with the differentials and deprivation quasi-orderings respectively. Finally we drop the equal mean condition and indicate the implications of our approach for the absolute ethical inequality indices.     

Creating Happier Children and More Fulfilled Social Workers: Neoliberalism,Privatization and the Reframing of Leftist Critiques in Britain

To differing degrees, governments in Europe, North America, and Australasia have, over recent years, given particular attention to the reform of services for children and families. However, the aim of this article is to focus on Britain and to examine plans to transform social-work services for children and young people who are “looked after,” that is to say, in public care. It is argued that these plans, focused on the introduction of what are termed social work practices, are best grounded and interpreted within an analytical framework that recognizes the centrality of neoliberalism. Furthermore, social workers and others working in related areas of human services provision should take account of how the plan to install social work practices is being discursively constructed and organized. Important here, it is maintained, is how this strategy seeks to deploy selectively leftist critiques of social work that have emerged over the past two decades.     

Framing a welfare reform: the social benefits reform in Russia and Kazakhstan

This article addresses the question of why some non-democratic governments are more successful than others at reforming their welfare institutions. Using the example of the Russian and Kazakhstani social benefits reform, the author will illustrate that in modern non-democratic regimes the importance of framing and effective communication with the public for the purpose of effective policymaking and regime legitimization is equal to, if not greater than, in established democracies. The successful implementation of the Kazakhstani social benefits reform, as opposed to Russia’s protracted experience with reforming its social benefits system, was determined not only by the configuration of various institutional and political factors, but also the skilful actions of the Kazakhstani authorities, who used effective communication strategies and framing techniques that resonated with the public and generated broad support for reform. Based on extensive research conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006–2010 as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto, this paper enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and non-democratic contexts and adds important details to our understanding of how post-Soviet autocrats run their countries and what methods they use to stay in power, manage their state affairs, and avoid public dissatisfaction.     

Social welfare in the light of topic modelling

With an increased focus on social well-being in response to a burgeoning global economy exposing the weaknesses of social welfare policies, research output in the field has grown exponentially. Keeping track of the evolving research themes proves difficult due to the steady rise in the number of studies published in the interdisciplinary field of social welfare. Therefore, researchers need a comprehensive overview to confirm the current shape of the field based on the published research. Using a latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm as a topic modelling technique, this study identified 12 prominent themes from more than 10,000 research outputs on social welfare published from 2000 to 2020 in Scopus-indexed journals. Such an exploratory text-mining approach to literature review provides broad insights into the diversity of research and may serve as a foundation for further in-depth studies. Identifying these 12 thematic areas and their sub-themes allows us to articulate the complexity and diversity of social welfare issues, which go far beyond the field of well-established welfare economics or social work. The study shows that the topic of ‘social welfare’ has not only evolved over time but has significantly broadened its meaning. It can no longer be solely synonymous with institutional social security. We contend that research in this area needs to take into account a broader and more systematic range of determinants constituting the dynamic character of social welfare.     

Innovating the provision of welfare services through collective action: the case of Italian social cooperatives

Social cooperatives are the most widespread social enterprise type in Italy. Their evolution has stimulated the development of diverse interpretative frameworks of social enterprise determinants: the mainstream one is that social cooperatives are the outcome of contracting out policies. Through a critical investigation of social cooperatives’ emergence, integration into public policies, and reaction to the financial crisis, the authors refocus attention to one of the key modes of creation of social enterprises that has not gained the attention it deserves: the bottom-up dynamic. The analysis carried out sheds light on the contribution of citizens’ mobilization to institutional change and confirms that social enterprises can also emerge in an unprepared and hostile ideological, economic and political context.     

Dynamics of the intergenerational transmission of welfare receipt in the United States

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article expands upon earlier empirical efforts to understand intergenerational welfare participation in the United States. Empirical studies have suggested that growing up in a household that receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) increases the probability that a child will receive AFDC, although little insight exists on the dynamics of this relationship. In particular, no one has formally examined how the time a daughter spends on AFDC varies from the time her parents receive welfare. By observing the behavior of parents and their daughters for five years, this study examines the length of participation in AFDC across generations. The results imply that growing up in a household that receives AFDC increases the amount of time that a daughter will also receive aid, although the time a daughter receives AFDC is not affected by the length of time parents receive AFDC. His research interests include welfare programs, tax policies, local public finance, and econometrics.     

Pioneering Health Care for Children with Disabilities: Untold Legacy of the 1916 Polio Epidemic in the United States

In 1916, the United States experienced its first polio epidemic, resulting in 6,000 deaths and 21,000 injured individuals. Medical practices were ill prepared to stop the disease and treat survivors. Historians have documented the creation of the polio vaccine during the 20th century, but less is written about efforts to provide rehabilitation services to children afflicted with polio. This research looked at Polio After-Care Committees, a new form of community practice that provided care to children with disabilities. The Committees worked to change community-level systems of care while providing medical care, demonstrating that new forms of community-based service organization could reach children.     

New roles for families in child welfare: Strategies for expanding family involvement beyond the case level

This paper examines the strategies and approaches child welfare agencies used to integrate meaningful family involvement into their service delivery systems, under the Children's Bureau Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care demonstration initiative. Through a series of retrospective interviews with child welfare agency staff, systems of care project staff, family members actively involved in implementing the systems of care initiative, and local program evaluators, researchers investigated the family involvement planning and capacity building activities of child welfare agencies during the initiative's implementation. Findings indicate that child welfare agencies' capacity building efforts primarily centered on human resource development, focusing on three areas: program staffing, family engagement, and agency buy-in. These findings illustrate the importance of developing the capacity of child welfare agency staff and family members before fully implementing family involvement programs and activities. Although more research is needed to document the impact of family involvement, the lessons learned from these grant communities' experiences provide critical information and can inform development of policies and practices to help child welfare and other child- and family-serving systems promote and implement meaningful and sustainable family involvement.     

Romanian social workers facing the challenges of neo-liberalism

ABSTRACT

With a history of almost 90 years, professional social work in Romania once flourished up until World War II. The Communist Party disbanded the profession in 1968 and it was reinstated after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Within the context of the socio-economic transition from a centralised to a free-market economy, Romanian social policy and social work have evolved from a Marxist/socialist-type ideology, one that advocates for state intervention, to a libertarian/neo-liberal-type ideology, which promotes both state withdrawal from welfare provision and individuals taking responsibility for their own welfare. These two trends continue to co-exist subject to sometimes divergent forces such as international institutions and internal Romanian social pressures. Using a qualitative approach, we explore how Romanian social workers are adapting to the neo-liberal realities and identify three types of perceived challenges: 1. those related to regulation, 2. linked with collaboration in social work activity and 3. those related to the social worker-client relationship. Under neo-liberal pressures, the social worker's role of agent of social change becomes marginalised in daily practice, leaving little power to influence agency policies that negatively impact clients.     

Stakeholder identities in Britain's neoliberal ethical community: Polish narratives of earned citizenship in the context of the UK's EU referendum

This article examines the narrative strategies through which Polish migrants in the UK challenge the formal rights of political membership and attempt to redefine the boundaries of ‘citizenship’ along notions of deservedness. The analysed qualitative data originate from an online survey conducted in the months before the 2016 EU referendum, and the narratives emerge from the open‐text answers to two survey questions concerning attitudes towards the referendum and the exclusion of resident EU nationals from the electoral process. The analysis identifies and describes three narrative strategies in reaction to the public discourses surrounding the EU referendum – namely discursive complicity, intergroup hostility and defensive assertiveness – which attempt to redefine the conditions of membership in Britain's ‘ethical community’ in respect to welfare practices. Examining these processes simultaneously ‘from below’ and ‘from outside’ the national political community, the paper argues, can reveal more of the transformation taking place in conceptions of citizenship at the sociological level, and the article aims to identify the contours of a ‘neoliberal communitarian citizenship’ as internalized by mobile EU citizens.     

在国家与市场之间寻找中国社会政策改革的逻辑——“社会发展与社会政策:国际经验与中国改革”国际学术研讨会评述

综观东亚新兴经济体和欧美发达国家在社会政策领域的路径变迁,可以得出"两个转型"的基本结论,即东亚新兴经济体从单一追求经济增长逐渐向追求经济与社会平衡发展转型;欧美发达国家从倚重国家福利向倚重社会投资与国家福利平衡发展转型。这两个处于不同社会发展阶段的转型,对中国当前的社会发展和社会政策改革都有着非常重要的启示意义。中国作为具有后发优势的全球最有活力的新兴经济体,当前既需要解决经济增长与社会发展之间的失衡问题,也需要未雨绸缪,避免陷入欧美国家福利陷阱而背上沉重的财政包袱。因此,在国家与市场之间找到一条最具效率性和合理性的社会发展路径,才是符合当前中国社会政策改革的逻辑。     

Modernization, globalization and the welfare state: a comparative analysis of old and new convergence of social insurance since 1930

Convergence of policies and institutions across countries has been a recurrent theme within social sciences. 'Old' and 'new' convergence hypotheses have been associated with changing concepts and catchwords, such as modernization, logic of industrialism, post-industrialism, post-Fordism and globalization, but share some underlying theoretical perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to analyse tendencies towards convergence of social insurance systems in 18 OECD countries between 1930 and 1990, a period which has seen our sample of countries develop from predominantly agricultural societies to industrial or post-industrial market democracies. Data from the Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP) are used to examine the development of institutional variables within the various national social insurance systems. Sub-samples of larger and smaller countries are examined separately, in order to test the open-economy hypothesis that smaller countries, being more exposed to international pressures than larger ones, could be expected to show higher degrees of social protection and also more convergence. Hypotheses on differentiated institutional barriers against pressures from the processes of transnationalization of the economy, as well as possible convergence effects of the supra-national policy making within the European Union, are discussed in the last section.