Managing Work and Care: A Difficult Challenge for Immigrant Families

This paper explores the strategies used by immigrant families to reconcile work and care for young children in Finland, France, Italy and Portugal. Drawing upon interviews with couples or lone parents who have children below age ten, it shows that immigrant families rely on a diversity of work/care strategies. These strategies include extensive delegation of care (mostly to formal or non‐familial informal care), negotiation of care within the nuclear family (both partners sharing the care responsibilities as well as older child care), mother‐centredness (mothers cutting back on working hours), child negligence (leaving children alone) and the superimposition of care upon work (taking children to work). Almost all immigrant families, but especially first‐generation ones, suffer from the absence of close kin networks to support childcare, strong pressure to work and from work (long or atypical hours) and various integration problems such as social isolation, lack of information on services, and problems with housing. However, our findings show that migration patterns, among other factors, have a significant impact on work/care strategies. Highly qualified “professional migration” is more associated with extensive paid delegation (often private and high‐cost), “marriage migration” with mother‐centredness, and “unskilled worker migration” with low‐cost solutions supplemented by workplace care, older child care and negligence. First‐generation unskilled worker migrant families are more exposed to occupational and residential segregation, atypical working hours, low earnings and difficulties in managing work and care for young children. Findings point to the still weak regulatory function of the different welfare states in the protection of these families.     

Social Inequality under a New Social Contract: Long-term Care in Japan

The 1990s saw the beginning of new developments in the social policy agenda of Japan. A combination of further cuts in social expenditure and increases in financial resources through various means has become inevitable in response to the increasing cost burden of an ageing society, the prolonged recession and changes in the Japanese family. In this context, “kaigo hoken” (long‐term care insurance) was introduced in 2000 to increase revenue and fill the gap vacated by the family. The scheme introduced a different concept to the public: that long‐term care was no longer “expected’’ from the family or “allocated” by the state, but has become part of a “social contract” based upon a system of mandatory contributions, uniform entitlements and consumer choice. This paper first explores the role of the new scheme in creating social inequalities among individuals (and families). A panel survey is used to highlight different patterns of care provision and the varying degree of financial pressure among different income groups. Second, based on qualitative research, the paper examines how the new scheme has transformed the relationship between older people and their families who have played a central role in this arena. The scheme has consequently divided “traditional” families and their liberal counterparts, as a result of care work being “commodified”. It is apparent that this scheme has not only responded to fill the existing care gap but may also help accelerate the changes that have been taking place for the last two decades.     

The gap in social care provision for older people in China

Because of its unprecedented sociodemographic changes, particularly rapid population aging, China faces huge challenges in social care. Using data from the 2012 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (n = 9,765), this article examines the need for social care, as well as the major sources of provision. The findings indicate that the majority of older people face some restriction in their daily living activities. From their perspective, however, the most urgent social protection services are related to health care and legal aid rather than services supporting daily living. Although Chinese Government policy since the 1990s has been a strategy of social welfare socialization, the role of government, both as provider and funder, is limited and focuses only on the most deprived and on urban areas. The result is a massive “care gap” between the need for social care and its supply. The primary responsibility for care provision is borne by the family. The direction of social policy in the future should focus on shared care between the family and the state, giving priority to expanding the coverage of social care services, especially in rural areas.     

From walls to homes: Child care reform and deinstitutionalisation in Ghana

In 2006, the Ghanaian government, in partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), began to reform the child welfare system. The main aim of this reform was to provide a sustainable and culturally appropriate system of care for children without parental care by shifting from an institutional‐based model to a family and community‐based one. Drawing on existing peer‐reviewed and grey literature, this article provides an overview of the major components of the reform, including reintegration with the extended family, foster care and adoption. In addition, the article discusses the prospects and challenges involved in achieving the reform's intended component. Key Practitioner Message: ● Use community development techniques to raise the resources needed to provide family support services for vulnerable families; ● Social work practitioners partner with non‐governmental organisations to train community members as para‐social workers; ● Social workers, especially in developing countries, understand the challenges they face when embarking on deinstitutionalisation.     

代际气候正义中的历史责任沉思--兼与徐峰博士商榷

气候变化问题的生成既是一个具体的社会历史进程，也是一个不断地由地方性转向全球性的过程。作为现代工业文明的产物，气候变化问题是现代性的后果。代际气候正义处理的是代际之间在气候资源配置与消费上的正义关系，主要包括前代人应该承担什么样的历史责任和当代人对未来人具有什么样的义务。在代际气候正义的历史责任认定上，“可原谅的无知”不能为发达国家或前代人的大气污染行为免责。因为“无知”不等于“不知”，“可原谅的无知”带来了责任认定上的契约主义，不利于贯彻代际气候正义原则。发达国家承担历史责任的依据在于“合理的谨慎”。原因在于引发气候变化问题的各主体都存着道义上义务---“合理的谨慎”，这是代际气候正义得以实现的重要原则。人类必须在资源有限的条件下展开社会合作，“合理的谨慎”能够保证社会合作与社会发展的顺利实现；气候变化问题是现代性风险的重要体现，“合理的谨慎”是应对气候变化问题的有效理念；气候变化问题归责的立足点在于各方主体的行为，正是各方主体未能履行“合理的谨慎”义务，才引发了全球性的温室效应。     

Supporting care‐experienced adults' educational journeys: “Linked lives” over the life course

Research highlights the role of key actors and relationships in supporting the educational attainment and progress of children in care and care leavers. We know less about how relationships influence the educational journeys of people with care experience over time and how to support the educational progress and engagement of adults with care experience. The principle of “linked lives” is central to the life course perspective referring to the interdependence of human lives throughout the life course. This paper explores how the principle of linked lives can illuminate our understanding of how relationships positively influence the educational journeys of adults with care experience over time. Educational life history interviews were conducted with 18 care‐experienced adults (aged 24–36) in Ireland. Findings suggest that the principle of linked lives is a valuable conceptual tool for providing new insights on this issue. Four key themes were identified: (a) opportunities for educational support are present across the life course; (b) “family” is a central source of educational support; (c) there is intergenerational capacity for educational support; and (d) relationships beyond the “family” are supportive of education. Implications for practice, policy, and research are explored.     

The Choice Revolution: Privatization of Swedish Welfare Services in the 1990s

During the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state was declared by some to be in a “crisis”, due to both financial strain and loss of political support. Others have argued that the spending cuts and reforms undertaken during this period did slow down the previous increase in social spending, but left the system basically intact. The main argument put forward in this article is that the Swedish welfare state has been and is still undergoing a transforming process whereby it risks losing one of its main characteristics, namely the belief in and institutional support for social egalitarianism. During the 1990s, the public welfare service sector opened up to competing private actors. As a result, the share of private provision grew, both within the health‐care and primary education systems as well as within social service provision. This resulted in a socially segregating dynamic, prompted by the introduction of “consumer choice”. As will be shown in the article, the gradual privatization and market‐orientation of the welfare services undermine previous Swedish notions of a “people's home”, where uniform, high‐quality services are provided by the state to all citizens, regardless of income, social background or cultural orientation.     

Children against parents? The politics of intergenerational recalibration in Southern Europe

Traditionally, Southern European countries displayed remarkably elderly biased social policy arrangements. This article introduces the notion of intergenerational recalibration to capture reforms aimed at rebalancing the generational profile of Southern European welfare states via the expansion of family policy and social assistance schemes—both monetary benefits and care services—and retrenchment in the field of pensions. Then, it elaborates theoretically on the political dimension of this policy strategy, focusing on the implications of the peculiar combination of expansionary and retrenchment reforms, to advance the hypotheses that domestic politics would prevent the realization of such an agenda, whereas the latter would be favored by a major role of supranational actors, especially the European Union. To test these hypotheses, we systematically analyze policy trajectories in the field of pensions and social assistance in Italy and Spain between the mid‐1990s and 2016. This allows, first, to argue that investment in “pro‐children” measures has not adequately balanced the reduction of pro‐parents expenditure and, second, to question the idea that domestic political incentives to expand “pro‐children” policies are necessarily too weak as well as the “enabling” role of external pressures in pursuing intergenerational recalibration.     

Managing the Family: Productivity, Scheduling and the Male Veto

This paper argues that research, analysis and policy innovations focused on how households combine paid work with care responsibilities are driven to too great a degree by preconceptions of “the problem” that do not take sufficient account of how families themselves understand their work and care roles and the choices they are making. The evidence of 246 SOCCARE interviews across five European countries (Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK) is that the variables that are conventionally accepted as having fundamental significance (family‐friendly policies and generous care services, flexible working hours, women's work–life preferences, family type, national labour markets, cultural differences) are less important than is often suggested. More important are time pressures and the idiosyncratic factors that constrain the work and care timetables that families are able to construct. We characterize these as “scheduling problems”. They occupied a large part of the accounts of their lives provided by our respondents and are a primary dimension within which their combinations of paid work and care responsibilities need to be understood. The difficulties our respondents faced in coordinating the work and care activities of their families bear a striking similarity to the problems described in the operations research literature on small businesses. Within the context of these scheduling problems a second important factor emerged: the preferences and behaviour of men who played a critical, though often passive, part in the construction of work and care timetables of the families. We characterize this effect as the “the male veto”.     

The Social Construction of Reality in the Realm of Children's Mental Health Services

ABSTRACT

Across the United States, systems of care have emerged to provide mental health care to children and their families; fragmentation inhibiting the success of collaboration by stakeholders is common and compromises these systems of care. Survey data were collected from 1,428 respondents in a Midwestern state to examine problems that exist within systems of care from the perspective of the different stakeholder groups. Stakeholder group membership was based upon the respondent's employment or involvement within various child-serving systems and included those in child welfare, juvenile justice, and education, mental health providers, and consumers (i.e., caregivers/parents). Group differences revealed patterns of “finger pointing” by the stakeholder groups on where specific problems exist within systems of care. The findings provide insight into how the social construction of service delivery and practice emerges as stakeholder groups describe, understand, and evaluate problems within the system of care as a function of their own practice location within the system of care. Future research should consider exploring methods that might minimize the competitive nature of disparate child-serving systems and its potentially negative impact upon system performance and treatment outcomes.     

The Experiences of Reciprocity among Filipino Older Adults in Canada: Intergenerational,Transnational, and Community Considerations

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates the concept of reciprocity in the context of immigrant families. It recommends that definition of reciprocity account for exchanges beyond the immediate family, and render visible the simultaneous location of older people as care recipients and providers, and care arrangements across generations, borders, community, and time. Adopting a critical ethnographic study on the aging and care experiences of older Filipinos in Canada, this article analyzes data from extended observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 older people, 6 adult children, and 13 community stakeholders. Findings highlight the unique configurations of care among the Filipino community whereby older people engage in care exchange as active participants across intergenerational, transnational, and fictive kin networks.     

Developing Early Years Childcare in England, 1997–2002: The Choices for (Working) Mothers

The UK has long been near the bottom of the EU “childcare league”. Attitudes of policymakers towards employment for the mothers of young children were ambivalent up to and including the Thatcher years, and the problem of “reconciling” work and family was historically deemed to be a private decision. This changed in 1998, when the Labour government put forward the first ever national childcare strategy. This paper argues that the aims behind the strategy were intimately linked to the attack on poverty and social exclusion in that: (1) efforts to stimulate provision focused on disadvantaged neighbourhoods; (2) subsidy was provided for early years education , rather than care (in order to give children a better start in life); and (3) stimulating provision was intended to promote women's employment, especially among lone‐mother families, thereby improving the material welfare of poor families. The means of expanding childcare have taken the form of a complicated set of demand‐ and supply‐side subsidies, reflecting the ongoing commitment to a mixed economy of childcare. The paper argues that this has implications for access and quality, and that there are tensions between the social investment approach to childcare on the one hand, and the desire to promote mothers’ employment on the other.     

Factors associated with placement breakdown initiated by foster parents – empirical findings from Germany

This study investigates the effects of covariates on the probability of placement breakdown in non‐kinship family foster care. Breakdowns are distinguished according to the initiator: children, carers, foster parents and the local child welfare authorities. The children concerned had entered foster care at ages ranging from 0 to a maximum of 17 years (n = 14 171). A significantly higher risk of breakdown on the initiative of the foster parents is found in male children, children whose parents receive financial support, children whose parents were removed from the register of carers, children who were between 6 and 15 years old when they joined the foster family, children who had earlier lived in a different foster family or residential care, children from patchwork families and children whose joining of a foster family was the result of disruptive social behaviour. Two‐thirds of the children from non‐kinship family foster care who stay in the foster family was ended on the initiative of the foster parents are subsequently looked after in residential care. That is three times the rate for all terminated foster relationships. Breakdowns on the initiative of the foster parents thus indicate a high risk of unstable care history developing and accordingly necessitate prevention strategies.     

Choice and control in social care: Experiences of older self-funders in England

This paper considers the experiences of older self-funders in England in the context of policies promoting choice and control. Self-funders are people who are not state-funded; they pay for social care from their own resources. Choice and control have been operationalized through personal budgets, based on the assumption that managing resources enhances ability to access appropriate care and support. This paper uses data from 40 qualitative interviews with self-funders and their relatives, and 19 with professionals. It explores the impact of the financial and social capital that self-funders are assumed to have and asks how older self-funders experience choice and control. The study found that older self-funders drew on personal experiences, family, and friends for information; were reluctant to spend their wealth on care due to competing priorities; and felt they had more control over the timing of decisions than people who were state-funded. Personal wealth appears to be perceived differently to funds “gifted” to people through cash for care schemes.     

Child Welfare Policy in the United States

Recent developments in child welfare in the United States can be seen as enactments of state paternalism toward families. New programs and procedures in the areas of foster care and “in-home” family services aim to reinforce parents' and childrens' rights, but these rights are typically framed as protections against bureaucratic abuse rather than as rights to basic material resources. The prevailing cultural assumption toward child welfare in the United States is that the government should not intervene in family life unless there is legal evidence of functional failure. Families are still seen as autonomous units that essentially determine their own fates. This ideology serves to limit the public and political perception of more preventive and developmental options.     

What is a family? Constructions of family and parenting after a custody transfer from birth parents to foster parents

The subject of stability for children in long‐term foster care is an emerging field within social work with vulnerable children. In Sweden, the adoption of foster children is not a common occurrence. Instead, when a child has been placed in foster care for 3 years, the local social welfare committee will consider whether the custody of the child should be transferred to the foster parents regardless of the circumstances of the birth parents, in order to secure stability and a sense of family belonging. Consequently, custody transfers raise questions such as “who is family?” and “who is a parent?” This qualitative interview study with custodians and young people who have experienced custody transfer highlights that who counts as family and as a parent is ambiguous. This article draws attention to how negotiations about family and parenthood revolve around biological, emotional, and relational dimensions. Furthermore, we show that stability for children in care has to be understood in terms of processes over time and not as the result of a single decision of custody transfer. Consequently, social workers need to take several aspects into account when they assess family belonging and stability for children in foster care.     

Protective legislation: The “third pillar” of the welfare state

Welfare states are built upon three central social policy pillars: (1) income programs, including an assortment of income maintenance and security benefits; (2) social services, comprising a diverse constellation of provisions, which furnish care such as health care and education, and “in kind” benefits; and (3) protective legislation, encompassing a dense web of proactive and preventative laws, rights, and entitlements, such as health and safety legislation, minimum wage laws, child protection acts, rent controls, and laws governing evictions and foreclosures. Despite its centrality to the welfare state and to our well‐being, this third pillar has received considerably less attention in comparative social policy research. The dominant welfare state typologies have focused almost exclusively upon income measures and, more recently, on social services, to construct their welfare state categories or “worlds” of welfare while largely neglecting this crucial third pillar. A greater focus on protective welfare legislation can help sharpen the distinctions among welfare states within and across the welfare worlds, which is particularly valuable in light of the ongoing erosion of the other two pillars over the past few decades.     

Peer relationships during late childhood in internationally adopted and institutionalized children

The aim of this study was to analyse the interpersonal relationships in the school context of children living in different care settings (adoptive families, residential care centres, birth families). Participants were 76 children between eight and fourteen years of age (M = 10.78, SD = 1.38), belonging to one of three groups: international adoptees, children living in residential care in Spanish institutions, and a comparison sample of Spanish children living with their birth families with no connection with child protection. Sociometric information was collected in the classroom of each child during school hours. Internationally adopted children from Russia showed considerable difficulties in their relationships with peers; they were more likely to be rejected and their peers described them as less prosocial and somewhat more aggressive. With a better sociometric position than the adoptees, children in residential care were rated by their peers as more aggressive and less prosocial than the normative population. Coordination and integrated work between the family, protection centres, schools, and other social services should be a strategic priority in the promotion of healthy social development in these groups of children.     

The Third Way and Social Welfare: The Myth of Post-emotionalism

The “passive” welfare state was accused of promoting a dependency culture. “Active” welfare and the “what works?” approach of Britain's New Labour government is allegedly implicated in an age of post‐emotionalism, in which people are largely indifferent to the needs of others and committed primarily to their personal well‐being. This article, first, seeks to extend recent debates about agency and motivation in social policy and relate them to the notion of post‐emotionalism. Second, it draws on a recent empirical study of popular and welfare provider discourses, which suggests that popular opinion can accommodate an appreciation of human interdependency, while welfare providers remain committed to a public service ethos. None the less, Third Way thinking is associated with a narrowing of solidaristic responsibilities. The problem for the future of health, social care and state welfare policies lies not with the imagined consequences of post‐emotionalism, so much as with an ideological context that perpetuates a distorted ethic of responsibility.     

Taking social policy personally: How does neuroticism affect welfare state attitudes?

The role of the “Big Five” personality traits in driving welfare state attitudes has received scant attention in social policy research. Yet neuroticism in particular—a disposition to stress, worry, and get nervous easily—is theoretically likely to be an important driver of welfare attitudes precisely because welfare states deliver social “security” and “safety” nets. Using cross-sectional data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we study three distinct attitude types (dissatisfaction with the social security system, feelings of personal financial insecurity, and preferences for state provision) and multiple social need contexts (including unemployment, ill health, old age, and nursing care). Controlling for established explanations such as self-interest, partisanship, and socialization, neuroticism does not systematically affect support for state provision. But it robustly increases general dissatisfaction with social security, as well as financial insecurity across various need contexts. Neurotic people are thus less happy with welfare state programmes across the board, yet they also appear to need these programmes more. This trait may be an important deeper layer driving other social attitudes.