Hugo Stranz

Risk factors of long-term social assistance recipiency among lone mothers. The case of Sweden : Ensamstående mödrar med socialbidrag—faktorer kopplade till överrisker för långvarigt bidragstagande

For decades, lone mothers have been vastly overrepresented among Swedish social assistance recipients. In Sweden, social assistance is administered in the personal social services. The study aims to explore and analyse factors associated with long-term recipiency among lone mothers. The empirical material consists of micro data on 875 randomly selected lone mothers receiving social assistance in any of the three major cities of Sweden in 2007. In the analysis, a distinction is made between household demographics (e.g. ethnicity) and individual factors (subdivided into individual impairments (e.g. psychosocial conditions) and financial vulnerability (e.g. unemployment)). The main findings are: (1) even though household demographics alone show low explanatory value for long-term social assistance recipiency, analysed factors remain significant when controlling for individual factors; (2) among individual factors, only variables indicating financial vulnerability are significant. A main conclusion in the study is that social workers should be attentative that subgroups within the larger population of lone mothers have higher risk of long-term recipiency (e.g. non-native origin). Furthermore, policy revisions should be considered for this group, since personal social services extensively address individual impairments whereas long-term recipiency is strongly associated with structural factors.

People processing in Swedish personal social services. On the individuals, their predicaments and the outcomes of organisational screening

Abstract By utilising data on nearly 1 200 individuals subject to investigations in the three Swedish personal social services (PSS) domains – child welfare (CW), social assistance (SA) and substance abuse treatment (SAT) – this article aims at describing and analysing the individuals processed in PSS as well as the outcome of the filtering process. Specific attention is paid to the extent the PSS domains differ in these respects. The main findings are: (i) a large proportion of clients subject to investigation are men, singles (most common without children in SA and SAT) and a born outside of Sweden (CW and SA). In terms of overall predicaments, SAT raw material seem more exposed than that of SA whereas there are fairly low concentration of abuse and neglect in CW; (ii) recidivism rates are high in all PSS domains: about half of the sample are already known by the agencies; (iii) out-screening are similar in SA and SAT (about 25%) but substantially higher in CW (about 50%). The investigative process is associated with considerably low external and in particular internal referring, indicating an apparent silo mentality between the PSS domains.

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

ABSTRACT 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.