Renate Minas

Decentralization and centralization: governing the activation of social assistance recipients in Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the governance of activation in relation to the decentralization and centralization of activation for social assistance recipients in Sweden, The ...

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.

Att möta globaliseringen

De nordiska landernas ekonomiska utbyte med omvarlden har okat dramatiskt. I debatten har globaliseringens foresprakare sett internationellt utbyte som en forutsattning for fortsatt valstand, medan ...

Organizing local social service measures tocounteract long-term social assistance receipt. What works? Experiences from Sweden

ABSTRACT Active labour market policies and programs (ALMPs) have over the last decades been established as main instruments to promote the transition from welfare to work. In this article we study strategies employed by Swedish municipalities to help recipients ending spells of social assistance take-up. By using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data we try to identify which approaches stand out as more successful than others with respect to social assistance duration. We have formed pairs of municipalities similar in important respects, but with different social assistance exit rates as predicted by a statistical model. Then we conducted case studies in the selected municipalities’ social assistance units, gathering information on how work is carried out and organized. Information was collected by semi-structured interviews with department managers and front-line social workers. In the interviews we identified various elements of practice that emerged as relevant, suggesting that shorter spells follow from activation with a focus on human resource development, programmes targeted at young adults, well-functioning collaboration, and use of sanctions or an overall approach characterized by systemized efforts.

The governance of poverty: Welfare reform, activation policies, and social assistance benefits and caseloads in Nordic countries

Social assistance benefits are the last resort in national social protection systems, and decentralizing reforms leading to increasing local discretion over implementation of national legislation was an international trend frequently referred to as devolution. More recent reforms have instead often implied recentralization and/or involved mandatory institutional cooperation between welfare agencies located at different hierarchical levels. In contrast to North America, there is little European evidence on the extent to which shifting responsibilities influence benefit levels and benefit receipt. Using individual level register data from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and applying a difference-in-difference approach, we link changes in legislation to changes in municipal benefits as well as caseloads during the period 1990–2010. We only find indications of reform effects linked to distinct benefit centralization, concluding that other reforms were too insubstantial to have an impact. Combined with earlier evidence, this suggests that in order to have an impact, welfare reform requires marked changes in authority.

Att möta globaliseringen : Utbildning, aktivering och social exkludering i Norden

De nordiska landernas ekonomiska utbyte med omvarlden har okat dramatiskt. I debatten har globaliseringens foresprakare sett internationellt utbyte som en forutsattning for fortsatt valstand, medan ...