Income security for older people: An Asian perspective

In Asia and the Pacific, as in other developing regions, the continuing growth of the aged population has a great impact on social security programmes generally and, in particular, on the income security of older persons. In societies where traditional support systems are breaking up, their need for social security protection is increasingly important. A system of social security for the elderly population exists in most countries of the region. Many are provident fund schemes, which are basically saving schemes, and their coverage is low. Where social insurance pension schemes exist, the levels of benefits provided are also low. The focus for future development, therefore, lies in converting the savings schemes into multitiered pension schemes, extending their coverage and raising the level of benefits. In this context the critical question concerns the role of the State and the type of schemes used. The need for public pension schemes is great in Asia and the Pacific, where the level of poverty is comparatively high. Building pension schemes, whether public or private, involves a set of issues that need to be addressed. This article considers the systems currently in place and the challenges and limitations faced when considering the future development of social security in this area.     

Health care as a social security benefit: Institutional approaches to extending coverage

Reaching universal health‐care coverage requires an appropriate mix of compulsory contributory social insurance schemes, with mechanisms to include the informal‐economy population, and tax‐based social assistance for those whose incomes preclude their own contributions. This article urges a reversal of the trend that favours the separate development of social health insurance by separate health authorities and makes the case for the extension of health‐care coverage using existing formal‐sector social security schemes, not least because they have the necessary political backing and institutional structures. The article reviews reasons for the slow pace of coverage extension to date, and stresses the added value of incorporating health care as a social security benefit while also acknowledging the importance of retaining linkages between statutory and well‐regulated community‐based or micro health‐insurance schemes.     

Poland: Social protection and the pension system during the transition

This paper argues that the brunt of the transition-induced increase in Polish social protection expenditures during 1989-93 has been borne by social insurance arrangements, particularly pensions, rather than by social assistance schemes targeted to the poor or more temporary social safety net schemes. This is largely due to ease of access to social insurance and its more attractive benefit structure. Much of the recent efforts to reform social protection arrangements had an ad hoc nature and was driven by the need to alleviate looming financial distress. A major policy challenge is to avoid further burdening the social insurance system, particularly pensions, by problems that should be addressed by basic income support and emergency assistance policies or by general transfers (e.g. family allowances). Current reform needs are illustrated by using the pension system as an example.     

Poverty and social trends in Russia

The article describes the socioeconomic situation of the Russian population and its dynamics in 1992. The analysis is based on series of regional sociological surveys led by the All-Russian Living Standards Research Center and on official Russian statistical data. The basic unit of analysis is the family, and hence family typology approbated both in research and in practical social work is introduced. Besides describing and discussing the growing poverty tendencies in contemporary Russia, the article also contains methodological recommendations for social policy bodies and social workers on the strategy of work in social maintenance and social support of the least secure population strata.     

The coverage of social protection in the Global South

About 73% of the global population is not, or is only partly, covered by social protection. Particularly across low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs), social protection coverage is highly heterogeneous. What explains the large differences in the inclusiveness of social protection across LMICs? By analysing 100 LMICs using retirement schemes as an example, this study shows that non‐contributory schemes in LMICs are, by far, more inclusive than contributory ones. Surprisingly, democratic institutions characterised by low levels of political corruption only promote the inclusiveness of non‐contributory social protection while reducing the coverage of contributory schemes.     

Trends in Social Security in East Africa: Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda

As elsewhere in the world and in Africa in particular, social security in the member countries of the East African Community (Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda) has long been provided through voluntary assistance under the traditional extended family system. Later, and more specifically after independence in the early 1960s, when the region had a major increase in the number of employees in the formal sector — both public and private — who were mainly located in urban centres, formal social security schemes started to gain recognition among employed workers. Thus over the years, the urban population became increasingly detached from rural communities where the traditional extended family system was most effective. In addition, their general standards of living rose to such levels that if they ceased to earn employment income for one reason or another their livelihood could not be sustained through the extended family system. The above social security development trends have resulted even today in societies examining and determining ways to improve social protection beyond the formal sector so as to ensure arrangements are put in place for a large part of the working population to be provided with social security insurance during their working life and after retirement.     

After Safety,What is the Goal of Child Welfare Services: Permanency,Family Continuity or Social Benefit?

Child welfare services have multiple goals, including child protection, family continuity, and achievement of legal permanency so children can end their involvement with child welfare services and have a lifetime family. These goals are not all achievable to the same extent in all cases. American child welfare policy has, in the last few years, become more definitive about the priority of child protection above family preservation. Now, situations which involve safety risks that are too great do not require any efforts at reunifying children to their biological homes. Less clear in American child welfare policy and practice is the value to be placed on other factors – particularly when a child cannot return home and will need an alternative adoptive family. Practitioners often emphasize family continuity – that is, the opportunity to maintain contact with the biological parent and extended family members – as a key decision making consideration. Yet, family continuity does not necessarily predict a successful transition to adulthood that is healthy for children or provides social benefits to the community. This paper explores the rationale for expanding child welfare decision making criteria by adding longer-term outcomes and the likelihood that children will eventually generate social benefits.     

Social workers' views on community involvement in child protection work in Italy

Involvement of the community is a topic that is gaining increasing importance in the debate on child protection social work. However, the empirical findings that help to understand the factors which enable social workers to involve community actors successfully are still scarce. The article presents the results of an empirical pilot study carried out on a sample of 24 child protection social workers employed in four public agencies in Italy. The results of the research highlight the complexity of the factors that influence the ability of social workers to involve the community in schemes involving children and their families and the importance of constructing a community‐based approach that directly involves local‐level institutions and policy programmes.     

Family policy and social order – comparing the dynamics of family policy-making in Scandinavia and Confucian Asia

This article compares family policies in two Scandinavian and three Confucian Asian countries. Through a general survey on schemes of child allowance and parental leave, it seeks explaining factors for cross-regime diversity of the welfare systems. In focus are the agents affecting the family policy-making process, including social classes, the state, women and families. In order to assess the roles these agents have played, this study retraces the preconditions of family policy development and its associated socio-cultural backgrounds. Results from such an examination will illustrate how the social order determines the patterns of family policy, which offers a new path to travel to these different cultural 'worlds'. Taking the Confucian Asian states into its frame of reference, the study will take a fresh look at Scandinavian welfare systems, which still have some general implications for the study of the dynamics, model and outcome of family policy in an international context.     

Micro‐pensions in India: Issues and challenges

This article aims to fill a gap in the social security literature on India by examining the role of micro‐pensions. The analysis suggests that because of the heterogeneity of the target population, micro‐pension products — with microfinance institutions (MFIs) as the main, but not only sponsors — should be voluntary and portable and permit experimentation in their design and in the delivery of services. Accordingly, decentralized micro‐pension schemes that operate within an appropriate regulatory framework and according to sound governance practices are deemed more fitting for the Indian context than centralized schemes with limited flexibility. The article discusses two case studies of recently‐initiated micro‐pension schemes in India, which reveal the need for rigorous analytical research on the micro‐pension sector, particularly concerning the structuring of pay‐out options and innovative delivery mechanisms. The article concludes that micro‐pensions have the potential to be one of the most useful components in India's multi‐tiered social security system, and should be encouraged.     

The rights of the child and ethnic minority families in Sweden

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was launched in 1989 and is ratified in most countries. The UNCRC is considered by child welfare authorities worldwide to be an essential document that aims to improve the rights of children. However, contemporary research indicates that the UNCRC is an obstacle to social work because it emphasizes the legal equality between children and adults. This finding prompts the question of how Western child protection agencies conduct child protection encounters with families with a non-Western ethnic background. The present article aims to examine if specific articles in the UNCRC can serve as a medium for improving social work with ethnic minority families within the child protection sector in Sweden. This article is based on a research project concerning youths with an ethnic minority background in out-of-home care. Relevant articles in the UNCRC are revealed to be potentially helpful to child protection programmes involving ethnic minority families because these articles emphasize considering the perspective of the child and strengthening parenting skills. However, child protection agencies must consider how the UNCRC can be used to teach parents or guardians to understand and acknowledge the perspective of the child without violating the values of the family.     

Social security in central and eastern European countries: Continuity and change

Continued social protection in central and eastern Europe is vital in order to compensate for the loss of rights previously provided by the State, to ease the process of economic change and, not least, to maintain social cohesion without altogether subjecting populations to the vagaries of the market economy system. Long steeped in the tradition of social insurance, many of these countries had adapted their systems of protection to the Soviet model, while reflecting certain universal trends of social security policy, with an emphasis on family assistance. More recently, schemes have been complemented by unemployment benefits and by mechanisms to better take inflation into account, without prejudice to the necessary guarantee of a minimum level of assistance. They must still be adapted to facilitate occupational mobility, to promote employment, to involve the people covered by them in their management, and to deal with deteriorating health services, while taking account of problems stemming from resource limitation. Although reform must not obscure the need for continuity, uncertainty remains as to its outcome.     

European schemes of social assistance: an empirical analysis of set-ups and distributive impacts

This article analyses the distributive impacts of various statutory and institutional settings of European schemes of social assistance. For this purpose, two sets of classifications of European schemes of social assistance are introduced, which classify the systems according to their level and statutory settings and according to their degree of centralisation, respectively. Subsequently, the distributive impacts of seven selected EU systems are calculated on the basis of Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data and their relationship to class assignment is investigated. We find that a high share of social assistance recipients in the population concurs with better distributive effectiveness, while a higher social assistance budget or higher benefit levels do not necessarily yield a better performance. Various forms of targeting seem to enhance distributive efficiency. Concerning centralisation, the results do not show that a certain degree of centralisation yields better results with regard to distributive effectiveness or efficiency.     

Global–regional interaction to extend access to social protection for migrant workers: Insights from ASEAN and MERCOSUR

Universal access to social protection for migrant workers is emerging as a problematic issue in the implementation of free movement regimes at a regional level. This article focuses on the concept of regional governance as a possible mechanism to address the unsolved challenges of social security regimes to extend coverage. To this end, the article looks at current legal developments in two regional projects (ASEAN and MERCOSUR) to identify a creative approach to strengthen the development of national floors of social protection. The interest of using these case studies lies in exploring whether the regional integration process can play a major role in the progressive extension of social protection rights to migrant workers by facilitating the adoption of social security agreements.     

Absent Role of the State: Analysis of Social Support to Older People with Disabilities in Rural China

China is experiencing rapid population ageing and already has 44 million older people with disabilities aged over 59 years. Yet social support of these older people with disabilities is undeveloped and not well researched. This article contributes by using a disability rights framework (right to life and protection, economic security and social support) to analyze local cases in rural China. It finds that, although the family is still the main provider of economic and care support to rural older people with disabilities, the absence of a state role in welfare provision has negative impacts on the well‐being of older and younger generations in rural families.     

Australian child protection services: A game without end

Hansen P, Ainsworth F. Australian child protection services: A game without end This article argues that Australian child protection services are based on an error of logical typing. Across time, this has led to an over‐reliance on mandatory reporting legislation, a forensic/investigative/prosecutorial model of practice, a risk‐averse organisational culture and zero tolerance of any imperfections in parenting practices which are defined as child abuse and neglect regardless of their severity. All of these positions ignore powerful social stressors that surround complex family situations where abuse and neglect can occur. It is proposed that this error of logical typing is confirmed by the well‐documented fact that Australian child protection services have for more than two decades been unable to prevent or reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. For this article, New South Wales is used as the exemplar state.     

Psychiatric Non-institutionalisation: Whose Needs are Served?

This article outlines the social problems experienced by persons with a chronic psychiatric disability, and their families. The disabled person's lifestyle is characterised by poor social and vocational skills, poverty, inadequate accommodation and alienation. Many of these problems increase the dependence of the disabled person, emotionally and financially, on their family of origin. The author suggests that these social problems will only be ameliorated if family members are provided with active support and information, and if hospital and community services are integrated and complementary. The disabled person's quality of life can only be improved by accessible intensive social and vocational rehabilitation programs. As these issues are not being comprehensively addressed at the present time family self-help organisations such as the Association of Relatives and Friends of the Mentally III (ARAFMI) will need to politicise their plight.     

It Takes a Village: Community Practice,Social Work,and Aging-in-Place

The US population of older adults will increase significantly in the coming decades. Most of these individuals prefer to age in their homes/communities. However, most communities are not prepared to handle the long-term care needs of an aging population. This article examines one model that communities are using to help older adults age-in-place, the Village. A conceptual lens based in community practice and empowerment theory is offered to explicate this model and critically evaluate social work's role in it. It also presents challenges to social work roles in facilitation and evaluation of the model.     

It takes a Village: community practice, social work, and aging-in-place

The US population of older adults will increase significantly in the coming decades. Most of these individuals prefer to age in their homes/communities. However, most communities are not prepared to handle the long-term care needs of an aging population. This article examines one model that communities are using to help older adults age-in-place, the Village. A conceptual lens based in community practice and empowerment theory is offered to explicate this model and critically evaluate social work's role in it. It also presents challenges to social work roles in facilitation and evaluation of the model.     

Ageing and the changing role of the family and the community: An African perspective

Global ageing, the major social issue of the twenty-first century, will have greater social repercussions for developing countries. The fastest increase of older persons in terms of ratio in relation to younger people is happening in developing countries, and in Africa segregation of older people in rural areas will become manifest. While beneficial changes for women have accompanied modernization in many of the developing countries, the situation of older women appears to be particularly precarious. Social changes brought about by modernization are also profoundly affecting the traditional systems of care for older people. Even though most older people requiring care are still looked after within the informal structures of the family, this can no longer be taken for granted as we move into the new century. This paper critically reviews social protection systems and the resource constraints which characterize developing countries and warns against blind development of social security systems based on those of the industrialized countries. The paper argues for the design of intergenerational support back into mainstream social relations so that older persons are not marginalized and put at risk through social protection programmes which reinforce physical vulnerability stereotypes and stress welfare needs over and above older people's social and economic contributions to society