Using Private Social Care Services in Finland: Free or Forced Choices for Older People?

ABSTRACT

Use of private social care services among older people is increasing in Finland. This study aims to understand why older people choose private care in a comprehensive tax-subsidized social care system and examines whether people choose private service as a free choice or a forced choice as well as what factors contribute toward making these choices. Data for this study (N = 1,436) were gathered in 2010 from people aged 75 and above living independently at home in two Finnish cities: Tampere and Jyväskylä. Data were analyzed with several quantitative tests: chi-squared tests, multinomial regression analysis, and qualitative content analysis (for the open-ended responses from the survey questionnaire). Findings reveal that people chose private services mostly because of the effortlessness involved in its use and of the need for additional services that are unavailable through municipality; for example, cleaning. Majority of the respondents performed a free choice to use private services. People who lived in a city center with a higher level of income and who needed more services were more likely to be constrained toward using private support. Major concern, due to diminishing public service provision, is about service accessibility of economically disadvantaged groups; therefore, more research is required to understand the effects of the growing care market in Finland.     

Neighbourhood effects on young people's future living conditions: Longitudinal findings from Sweden

Brännström L. Neighbourhood effects on young people's future living conditions: longitudinal findings from Sweden Using extensive longitudinal data for three Swedish birth cohorts born in the late 1970s, this study asked whether the social characteristics of the neighbourhood affect future outcomes that are important for their living conditions (labour‐market participation, economic hardship and criminality). To assist decision‐making about the balance between area‐targeted policies and wider form of social interventions at the individual level, this study also assessed whether the estimated impact of neighbourhood context has any bearing on the effect of preventive interventions directed at distressed neighbourhoods. The overall findings suggest that there is no clear evidence that the impact of neighbourhood varies sufficiently between the different types of neighbourhoods when selection and other confounding factors have been taken into consideration. It is concluded that the estimated effect of neighbourhood on youth development does not underpin area‐targeted policies directed at distressed neighbourhoods.     

Coaching für Führungskräfte in der Sozialen Arbeit – eine empirische Bedarfsanalyse

Coaching for executives in social work – an empirical study on consultancy needs. Executives in social work see themselves under special demands to balance the necessity to cope with public cost cutting requirements on the one hand and the design of organization structures which are to master future challenges on the other. In order to adapt coaching to the consultancy needs in this field, 96 executives working in social facilities in Thuringia were interviewed with a view to their potential consultancy needs, in particular with respect to their management functions and leadership challenges. This investigation showed a high degree of acceptance for coaching and differentiated consultancy needs in the dilemma between economization and quality oriented social work. A preliminary competence profile for coaching personnel is derived thereof.     

Organisational factors, individual characteristics and social support: what determines the level of social support?

A large body of research has linked social support to health, but there are fewer studies that have focused on factors that influence the level of social support available and/or perceived by employees in different organisations. This cross-sectional study therefore investigated the relationship between on the one hand, organisational, individual and socio-demographic factors and on the other, the level of social support at the workplace, i.e., the degree of supervisor support and a supportive work atmosphere. Organisational variables (job demands, job control, job content), individual (self-esteem, mistrust) and socio-demographic variables (type of employer, occupational position, age, gender and educational level) were used as independent variables in the analyses. The sample consisted of 16,144 individuals at a variety of different organisations in Sweden, who had responded to a questionnaire covering different psychosocial and psychological stress factors ("the Stress Profile"). Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were performed separately for each of the two dependent variables, which yielded almost identical results, and indicated that organisational determinants, particularly perceived job control, had the largest impact on the degree of social support.     

Testing monotonicity of pricing kernels

The behaviour of market agents has been extensively covered in the literature. Risk averse behaviour, described by Von Neumann and Morgenstern (Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1944) via a concave utility function, is considered to be a cornerstone of classical economics. Agents prefer a fixed profit over an uncertain choice with the same expected value, however, lately there has been a lot of discussion about the empirical evidence of such risk averse behaviour. Some authors have shown that there are regions where market utility functions are locally convex. In this paper we construct a test to verify uncertainty about the concavity of agents’ utility function by testing the monotonicity of empirical pricing kernels (EPKs). A monotonically decreasing EPK corresponds to a concave utility function while a not monotonically decreasing EPK means non-averse pattern on one or more intervals of the utility function. We investigate the EPKs for German DAX data for the years 2000, 2002 and 2004 and find evidence of non-concave utility functions: the null hypothesis of a monotonically decreasing pricing kernel is rejected for the data under consideration. The test is based on approximations of spacings through exponential random variables. In a simulation we investigate its performance and calculate the critical values (surface).     

Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

Kröger T. Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter? Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article studies childcare patterns and day‐to‐day strategies of 111 working lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK, and asks whether their arrangements are prescribed by care regimes. Lone mothers' arrangements are grouped into five based on the availability and use of different formal and informal childcare resources. The article argues that, even though lone mothers have a more favourable starting point in Finland and France compared with Britain, Italy and Portugal where formal childcare coverage is patchier, childcare arrangements are not very dissimilar within different care regimes. Instead, similarities across care regimes are highlighted. Formal provisions have their limitations in all the countries studied and in all cases significant expectations are placed on informal childcare. The availability of informal childcare cannot, however, be taken for granted in any country, and working lone mothers whose informal and formal resources do not adequately meet their childcare needs were located in every care regime, facing care poverty.     

Different development trends in working life and increasing occupational stress require new work environment strategies

This article has a two-fold purpose. First, it provides an explanation for the increase in occupational stress and sick leaves in Sweden in terms of the structural and organizational conditions. Second, it discusses measures that address these issues. Results of a study of 72 establishments are presented. The study investigated these establishments at both the organizational and individual employee level. It examined management strategies and working conditions in the establishments, classifying these elements by type of operations and company position. Both classifications point to differences in how work is organized and in working conditions. The results indicate that management technologies distribute risks between segments of the labor market, thus, also between different groups of the labor force. The developments were most favorable in high tech and knowledge-based operations. The situation was least favorable in labor-intensive services and, the most negative development had taken place in human services. Establishments serving as contractors appeared to organize their work differently from those with core activities. Working conditions in contracting businesses were particularly problematic. Since organizational changes work differently from one company to the next, there is a need to develop a variety of strategies for enacting change in the work environment. This article proposes strategies for different segments of the labor market. These strategies are adapted to the particular problems facing each segment.     

Differences in mortality by marital status in Finland from 1976 to 2000: analyses of changes in marital-status distributions, socio-demographic and household composition, and cause of death

Being currently not married is more common today than 25 years ago. Over this period relative differences in mortality by marital status have increased in several countries, mainly as a result of a sharp decline in mortality among the married. Using Finnish census data linked with death certificates, we show that these increases are not explained by the non-married population becoming more marginalized in socio-economic status or household composition. However, the increases in marital-status differences in mortality from accidental, violent, and alcohol-related causes of death in the 30-64 age group indicate that changes in the health-related behaviour of the non-married population may play a role. The public-health burden associated with not being married has also grown. At the end of the 1990s about 15 per cent of all deaths above the age of 30 would not have occurred if the non-married population had had the same age-specific mortality rates as the married population.