Personal assistance services as a workplace accommodation

This paper describes current US trends and practices regarding workplace personal assistance services (PAS) as part of available work accommodation options. Workplace PAS include task-related assistance at work, such as readers, interpreters, help with lifting or reaching, re-assignment of non-essential duties to co-workers, and other help related to performing work tasks; and personal care-related assistance such as helping someone with using the rest room, eating, or drinking while at work. The results reported here are based on forty-one telephone interviews conducted in 2004, which included 20 workplace PAS users and 21 US employers familiar with workplace accommodations. Employers and consumers described a range of workplace personal assistance currently used. Barriers to expansion of workplace PAS include negative co-worker or supervisor attitude, cost to employers and workers, waiting time for accommodations, employee attitude and knowledge, and confusing terminology. Development of organizational culture that encourages employment of people with disabilities and developing employer-employee partnerships in arranging for accommodations can contribute to workplace PAS solutions. The survey findings contribute to better understanding of current practices related to workplace PAS.     

Personal assistance at work: the Visual Assistance Service in Taiwan

'Personal assistance' is a key to equal and full participation by disabled people in society. In Taiwan, there are services provided to 'care for' disabled people, but not to support them at work. In view of this, a pilot scheme called the 'Visual Assistant Service' was developed in 2003. This study explores how the visually impaired users, project workers and Visual Assistants viewed the service. The findings show that this service has improved visually impaired workers' sense of control at work and reduced their enforced dependence on their informal support networks. However, users had little control over the way the services were provided. This reveals a lack of full understanding by professionals with regard to the western ideas of 'personal assistance' and the independent living movement.     

The wide-meshed safety net. Decision-making on social assistance eligibility in Sweden

This article explores and analyses, with the help of both client and social worker data on 423 applications for social assistance in Sweden, (i) the extent to which social assistance benefits and labour market strengthening measures are granted and (ii) factors concerning clients as well as social workers that are associated with the granting of benefits. Considering (i), the results show that social assistance is granted in about 74% of cases while only 6% of applicants are granted additional labour market strengthening measures. With regard to (ii), the results indicate that the granting of benefits seems to depend on a broad spectrum of factors at both the client and the social worker levels. For example, more experienced social workers are less willing to grant social assistance while chances increase when an applicant is already registered at the local public employment service and/or social insurance office. Moreover, the granting of benefits also co-varies with more or less invariable factors at the client level: social workers are in general more generous towards women and people born outside Sweden, but rather less generous vis-à-vis single parents. The findings are discussed in terms of workfare and professionalization among social workers.     

International migration and falling into the income 'safety net': social assistance among foreign citizens in Sweden

The author focuses on public assistance payments to international immigrants in Sweden. "One object of the article is to give a statistical overview of the subject; another is to discuss reasons why international migrants receive social assistance more frequently than others. The latter leads to the formulation of econometric models and the estimation for immigrants with different backgrounds." It is found that "the number of immigrants receiving social assistance has increased since the mid-1960s. We also found that immigrants are considerably more frequent recipients of social assistance than others...." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

From the employment office to the social welfare office: Social assistance recipiency among first-time unemployed in Sweden

Social assistance receipt among first-time unemployed in Sweden is investigated by analysing data files obtained by merging register data from the city of Goteborg. First-time unemployed males were observed during 1993 and 1994 and were followed in the register of social assistance recipients for 18 months after the debut. Many of the newly unemployed had no access to unemployment compensation. Slightly more than one out of five newly unemployed became social assistance recipients. Lengthy periods of unemployment combined with no access to unemployment compensation signify a high risk of becoming a social assistance recipient. This risk varies a great deal with age, citizenship, human capital and job search activity of the unemployed.     

Sifting the wheat from the chaff—the organization of telephone intake and the selection of social assistance inquirers in Sweden

In Sweden, the initial contact between help-seeking people and a social welfare office normally takes place over the telephone, with designated intake officers handling those aiming to apply for social assistance. Citizens seeking help are here sorted according to various eligibility criteria as well as according to different intake routines. The outcome of the sorting process is that some receive an appointment for a further assessment while others are sent away. This article describes and classifies the degree of selection at seven telephone intakes, discusses relations between the degrees of selection and reasons for selection and distinguishes several selection strategies.     

Personal assistance—direct payments or alternative public service. Does it matter for the promotion of user control?

Personal assistance organised as direct payments is seen as an important means for securing user control and freeing disabled people from their reliance on welfare professionals and unpaid carers. The hypothesis put forward in the article is that just looking at whether personal assistance is organised as direct payments or as an alternative service represents an overly restricted approach to judge how the user’s preferences are taken care of. By comparing models of personal assistance in the US, the UK, Sweden and Norway it will show that several other factors influence user control. In the final part of the article the question is raised as to whether paternalism is always negative for welfare service users. Since the users constitute a broad group it might be questioned if the assumption of the service users as rational, well informed and competent to make the best choices is always valid.     

Intergenerational Initiatives in Sweden

ABSTRACT

It is pointed out in this report that the intergenerational perspective is conspicuous by its absence in Sweden, compared to several other countries where specific programmes exist for activities across generational boundaries. Activities across generational boundaries have also been a specific area where financial incentives for local projects have been provided in recent years through the government's project, Freedom of Choice/Older People and Public Health. But despite these efforts, comprehensive and systematic measures to develop and strengthen contacts across generational boundaries have been few and far between in Sweden. Instead, official measures within various areas have targeted different groups, often defined in terms of their age and stage of life course.     

Family policy in Sweden

Sweden has a well-developed family policy, organized around the goals of family economic security and physical well-being, voluntary parenthood, gender equality, and children's rights. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of family policy in Sweden, beginning with a brief history of the development of family policy goals and a consideration of the reasons for the consensus on family policy goals that has arisen. Details are provided on programs designed to reach goals, and the success of these programs is evaluated. The impact of recent economic and political developments on the future of family policy making in Sweden is also discussed.She is also Adjunct Professor of Women's Studies. Her research interests focus on work-family linkages in industrial societies and their implications for gender equity. She is currently researching the impact of corporate culture on men's participation in child care in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.     

Family Studies in Sweden

Research on family in Sweden has recently focused on developing the concept of family. Trost has suggested the utility of conceptualizing family as a set of dyads, thus allowing for many families within a family. Qualitative methods have been used to examine family from this perspective in research and clinical practice. Research on family in Sweden has focused on change, particularly in such areas of investigation as marriage and cohabitation, gender roles, divorce, remarriage, stepfamilies, sexual behavior, birth, and child development. The influence of American sociologists has been strong in Sweden.     

Peer assistance for personal assistance: analysis of online discussions about personal assistance from a Swedish web forum for disabled people

This paper describes and analyses a community of disabled people in Sweden that use an online forum to discuss personal assistance issues. The forum is a community of practice (CoP) that has its roots in everyday living with personal assistance. The contributions to the forum were studied over a 4½ year period, including a total of 2755 postings from 146 persons. The levels of the CoP learning system were analysed using the FACE tool, which examines function based on attitude, control and enabling. The results indicate that a learning system was established within the CoP that made it possible for disabled people to complement, confront and counterbalance the influences of existing learning systems, theories and methods of professionals in the area of personal assistance.     

Personal

Since Labor came to power in December 1972, increased and novel opportunities have been created for social workers in contexts in which, however, other occupations are also being offered similar opportunities within the same operational territory. This situation has urged social work to take a close look at itself as a collectivity, a social system for which effective communication and interchange with its environment—internal and external—is essential to survival and adaptation.     

Assessing non-use of social assistance

Non-use of income tested social benefits has many causes. Three hypotheses on non-use of social assistance based on data for Sweden collected in 1985 and 1997 are investigated. The results indicate some support for the view that it is more socially acceptable to apply for social assistance when a larger proportion of the population are receivers. Non-use of social assistance seems to be widespread. There are no signs of non-users as a fraction of those eligible changing across the years. Among the eligible, household income per capita as recorded the year before the interview was found to be negatively related to use. This indicates that people who expect to receive larger sums of social assistance are more likely to take up social assistance than those who expect smaller amounts.     

Political preferences for redistribution in Sweden

We examine preferences for redistribution inherent in Swedish tax policy during 1971–2012 using the inverse optimal tax approach. The income distribution is carefully characterized with the help of administrative register data, and we employ behavioral elasticities reflecting the perceived distortionary effects of taxation. The revealed social welfare weights are high for non-workers, small for low-income earners, and hump-shaped around the median. At the top, they are always negative, especially so during the high-tax years of the 1970s and ’80s. The weights on non-workers increased sharply in the 1970s, fell drastically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and have since then increased.     

Occupational Mobility for Immigrants in Sweden

MOBILITÉ PROFESSIONNELLE DES IMMIGRÉS EN SUÈDE
À l'aide de données uniques provenant du programme Marché du travail pour les immigrants, Compétences linguistiques et Réseau social, fondées sur des entretiens avec quatre groupes d'immigrants réfugiés (Éthiopiens /Érythréens, Chiliens, Iraniens et Roumains / Hongrois), l'auteur analyse la mobilité professionnelle en comparant la profession dans le pays d'origine, la première profession en Suède et la mobilité professionnelle au cours des quinze premières années en Suède. D'après cette étude, la mobilité professionnelle suit une courbe en U: pour beaucoup de gens, le premier métier exercé en Suède a un statut inférieur à celui exercé dans le pays d'origine. Cette situation peut s'expliquer par l'absence de transférabilité internationale du capital humain et/ou par la discrimination. Par la suite, le statut professionnel connaît une mobilité ascendante. La courbe en U est plus marquée pour les réfugiés qui jouissaient d'un statut professionnel élevé dans leur pays d'origine. La mobilité ascendante est également plus forte chez les réfugiés qui ont suivi un enseignement supérieur en Suède et chez ceux qui ont appris à parler couramment le suédois.     

Social Classes in Contemporary Sweden*

Survey data from Gavle, Sweden, are examined to determine whether the three Swedish occupational groups reflect actual social classes. Analyses reveal that (a) occupational status is heavily influenced by educational attainment; (b) education and amount and source of income all differ significantly among the three social groups; (c) upward generational occupational mobility is largely restricted to the top two groups; (d) Sweden is generally perceived as having three social classes; (e) most persons in all three groups identify with Group II; and (f) Swedes in all social groups desire to increase economic and social equality. The argument is made that Sweden may indeed contain a three class structure based primarily on occupation, but many Swedes view this class structure largely in economic terms. Recent marked rises in income across all social classes in Sweden have therefore left most people relatively satisfied with their society.     

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non‐citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self‐esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio‐economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition ‐‐ does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish‐born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.