Welfare System (welfare + system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Kinds of Welfare System

  • child welfare system


  • Selected Abstracts


    A CASE FOR REFORM OF THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM

    FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Issue 4 2007
    Miriam Aroni Krinsky
    There are more than half a million children in our nation's foster care system. While foster care is intended to provide a temporary safe harbor for abused and neglected children, too many of these youth spend years in foster care limbo,experiencing a turbulent life in motion as they move from placement to placement, community to community, and school to school. Youth in foster care commonly fail to receive basic health and psychological care, and nearly 20,000 youth age out of foster care every year to an adult path of homelessness, unemployment, and despair. Our entire community must work together to more responsibly parent these youth. This article will address how lawyers and child advocates can advocate for new approaches and enhanced support on behalf of the voiceless and most vulnerable members of our community. It will address existing hurdles and systemic challenges that have helped to create the current disheartening status quo. The article will then discuss strategies that advocates can employ to turn the corner on behalf of these youth at risk. [source]


    Primary health care nursing staff in Crete: an emerging profile

    INTERNATIONAL NURSING REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
    A. Markaki rn
    Background:, In 2001, the newly established Regional Health and Welfare System of Crete commissioned the first needs' assessment study of nursing personnel employed in the public sector of primary health care (PHC). Aim:, To capture the profile and professional needs of nursing staff working in Health Centers throughout the island of Crete and explore variations in nursing practice by educational preparation. Methods:, A newly developed, psychometrically tested questionnaire, was administered to all nursing staff in 14 rural Health Centers. Findings:, Vacancy rates are high, indicating a serious staffing deficit. The type of degree earned (2-year vs. 3 or 4-year program) does not differentiate nursing practice, with only two exceptions (obtaining a patient's history and counselling patients). The majority of respondents assess their existing knowledge and skills as ,adequate' while indicating a strong desire for continuing education. Job satisfaction is high in terms of interactions with clients and community recognition, while it is rated ,low' in terms of daily interactions with colleagues and support from work environment. Conclusion:, Cretan nursing staff in PHC operate within a restricted and task-orientated framework. Their educational preparation has little effect in practice role variations and professional needs. The Regional Health and Welfare System of Crete should address daily supervision and support issues, on-the-job training, continuing education needs, while taking immediate action to avoid potential turnover of existing staff and to aggressively recruit young, qualified nursing staff who will choose a career in PHC nursing. [source]


    Predicting juvenile delinquency: The nexus of childhood maltreatment, depression and bipolar disorder

    CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2009
    Christopher A. Mallett
    Background,It is important to identify and provide preventative interventions for youth who are most at risk for offending behaviour, but the connection between early childhood or adolescent experiences and later delinquency adjudication is complicated. Aim,To test for associations between specified mental disorders or maltreatment and later delinquency adjudication. Method,Participants were a random sample of youth before the juvenile courts in two Northeast Ohio counties in the USA (n = 555) over a 4-year time frame (2003 to 2006). Results,Logistic regression analysis identified a lifetime diagnosis of depression and/or bipolar disorder to be predictive of later youth delinquency adjudication, but found that childhood maltreatment (or involvement with the child welfare system) made delinquency outcomes less likely. Implications,Study implications are discussed as they relate to professionals working in the fields of child welfare, social work, mental health and juvenile justice. Awareness of risks associated with maltreatment may have led to effective interventions, while there may be less awareness of risks from depression in young people; however, studies tend not to take account of intervention variables. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Spaces of Encounter: Public Bureaucracy and the Making of Client Identities

    ETHOS, Issue 3 2010
    Lauren J. Silver
    I emphasize the material deficits, spatial barriers, and bureaucratic procedures that restrict the storylines clients and officials use to make sense of one another. This article is drawn from a two-year ethnographic study with African American young mothers (ages 16,20) under the custody of the child welfare system. I focus here on the experiences of one young mother and explore several scenarios in her struggle to obtain public housing. I argue that service deficits can be explained not by the commonly articulated narratives of client "shortcomings" but, rather, by the nature of the organizational and material conditions guiding exchanges between public service gatekeepers and young mothers. I suggest that this work advances narrative approaches to psychological anthropology by attending to the roles of social and material boundaries in framing the stories people can tell each other. [identity, adolescent mothers, public bureaucracy, service negotiation, narrative] [source]


    Comparing in-work benefits and the reward to work for families with children in the US and the UK

    FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2001
    Mike Brewer
    Abstract The income transfer systems for low-income families in the US and the UK try both to reduce poverty and to encourage work. In-work benefits are a key part of both countries' strategies through the earned income tax credit and the working families' tax credit (and predecessors) respectively. But tax credits are only one part of the whole tax and welfare system. In-work benefits, taxes and welfare benefits combine in both countries to provide good financial incentives for lone parents to do minimum-wage work, but poorer incentives to increase earnings further. But direct comparisons of budget constraints hide important points of detail. First, not enough is known about what determines take-up of in-work benefits. Second, the considerable differences in assessment and payment mechanisms and frequency between EITC and WFTC mean that low-income families in the US and the UK may respond very differently to apparently similar financial incentives. [source]


    Gender and Welfare Reform in Post- Revolutionary Mexico

    GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 1 2008
    Nichole Sanders
    This article discusses the impact a gender and woman's history conference had on the development of my own research and writing. ,Las Olvidadas' was a conference held at Yale in the Spring of 2001, and was the first in a series of Mexican women's and gender history conferences organised. My own research, on the gendered nature of the welfare state in Mexico, explores how class and race intersected with gender to produce a welfare system that, while particular to Mexico, also nevertheless had much in common with other Latin American countries. These conferences shaped both my views of gender, but also the importance of the transnational to historical research. [source]


    Assessment, intervention, and research with infants in out-of-home placement

    INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 5 2002
    Robert B. Clyman
    Infants constitute a large and increasing proportion of youth in out-of-home placement. These infants have very high rates of medical illnesses, developmental delays, and substantial risks for psychopathology. They receive varying amounts of services from a complex and poorly integrated service system that includes four principal service sectors: the child welfare, medical, early intervention, and mental health service sectors. These service systems are currently undergoing major changes in their policies, organization, and financing, such as the introduction of managed care into the child welfare system. In this article, we provide an overview of what is known about infants in out-of-home placement. We then summarize approaches to infant mental health assessment and intervention from a comprehensive perspective that addresses the infants' multiple problems and acknowledges that they need to receive services from multiple systems that are undergoing rapid change. We conclude by highlighting a number of critical areas in need of research. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health. [source]


    A great leap towards liberalism?

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 2 2000
    The Hungarian welfare state
    The article analyses the changing role of the Hungarian state by examining the principles and boundaries of government commitment in income maintenance. I test the hypothesis that the welfare regime is liberal and is becoming increasingly more so. The empirical analysis addresses three major issues: the reliance on universal schemes in family support, the nature of poor relief assistance, and the institutional structure of the pension system. I find that these different programs do not add up to constitute any specific type of welfare regime. Rather, the emerging, and still transitory welfare system appears ,,faceless''. I claim that a static welfare typology cannot be applied to the Hungarian welfare system and therefore reject the liberal hypothesis. [source]


    Anthropological Perspectives on the Trafficking of Women for Sexual Exploitation

    INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 1 2004
    Lynellyn D. Long
    Contemporary trafficking operations transform traditional bride wealth and marriage exchanges (prestations) by treating women's sexuality and bodies as commodities to be bought and sold (and exchanged again) in various Western capitals and Internet spaces. Such operations are also global with respect to scale, range, speed, diversity, and flexibility. Propelling many trafficking exchanges are political economic processes, which increase the trafficking of women in times of stress, such as famine, unemployment, economic transition, and so forth. However, the disparity between the global market operations, which organize trafficking, and the late nineteenth century social/public welfare system of counter-trafficking suggests why the latter do not effectively address women's risks and may even expose them to increased levels of violence and stress. Drawing on historical accounts, anthropological theory, and ethnographic work in Viet Nam and Bosnia and Herzegovina, this essay examines how specific cultural practices embedded in family and kinship relations encourage and rationalize sexual trafficking of girls and young women in times of stress and dislocation. The essay also analyses how technologies of power inform both trafficking and counter-trafficking operations in terms of controlling women's bodies, sexuality, health, labour, and migration. By analysing sexual trafficking as a cultural phenomenon in its own right, such an analysis seeks to inform and address the specific situations of girls and young women, who suffer greatly from the current migration regimes. [source]


    Revisiting the welfare state system in the Republic of Korea

    INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
    Yong Soo Park
    Abstract The Republic of Korea's welfare system has undergone radical institutional expansion since the 1990s, largely as a consequence of the financial crisis of 1997. In spite of these changes, public social expenditure remains extremely low , particularly with regard to all other OECD countries , with the result that the overall social insurance system and social welfare service sector remain underdeveloped. Thus, the current welfare system can best be characterized as a residual model, in that state intervention as a provider of welfare remains highly limited and the family and the private market economy play the central roles in offering a social safety net. This situation is largely the legacy of the so-called ,growth-first' ideology, which has remained the dominant approach favoured by the majority of the country's political and economic decision-makers since the period of authoritarian rule (1961-1993). The adoption of Western European-style neo-liberal restructuring, implemented following the 1997 financial crisis, has also played a role. [source]


    Financial Crisis and Social Security: The Paradox of the Republic of Korea

    INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 3 2000
    Dong-Myeon Shin
    This paper seeks to answer the questions why and how the social security system in the Republic of Korea has expanded in the wake of the financial crisis. The author first reviews the characteristics of the Korean welfare system before turning to the social effects of the financial crisis, then examining the resultant changes to the social security system and highlighting the driving forces behind them. The paper argues that the development of the system can be mainly attributed to the change of policy networks from a symbiotic alliance between the State and business to a tripartite corporatismand growing social demands for social welfare. [source]


    Labour market institutions and employment in France

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMETRICS, Issue 1 2002
    Guy Laroque
    The purpose of this paper is to use individual data to study how the minimum wage and the welfare system combine to affect employment in France. Using the 1997 Labour Force Survey, we decompose non-employment of married women into three components: voluntary, classical (due to the minimum wage) and ,other' (a residual category). We find that the minimum wage explains close to 15% of non-employment for these women and that the disincentive effects of some welfare policy measures may be large. Our approach also allows us to evaluate various labour and welfare policy experiments in their effects on participation and employment. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Welfare, Work Requirements, and Dependant-Care

    JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2004
    Elizabeth Anderson
    abstract This article considers the justice of requiring employment as a condition of receiving public assistance. While none of the main theories of justice prohibits work requirements, the arguments in their favour are weak. Arguments based on reciprocity fail to explain why only means-tested public benefits should be subject to work requirements, and why unpaid dependant care work should not count as satisfying citizens' obligations to reciprocate. Arguments based on promoting the work ethic misattribute recipients' nonwork to deviant values, when their core problem is finding steady employment consistent with supporting a family and meeting dependant care responsibilities. Rigid work requirements impose unreasonable costs on some of the poor. A welfare system based on a rebuttable presumption that recipients will work for pay, conjoined with more generous work supports, would promote justice better than either unconditional welfare or strict requirements [1]. [source]


    Explaining Black-White Disparity in Maltreatment: Poverty, Female-Headed Families, and Urbanization

    JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 3 2005
    Amie M. Schuck
    The purpose of the current study was to assess a structural level explanation of racial disparity in child maltreatment. Using data from Florida counties (1998,2001) and the 2000 census, the effects of poverty, concentrated poverty, and female-headed families in poverty on Black, White, and the difference between Black-White rates of child maltreatment were assessed (N= 67). Results suggested that the structural covariates of maltreatment vary by race and that differences in female-headed families in poverty can explain some, but not all, of the Black-White racial disparity in child maltreatment. Increasing programs that focus on reducing poverty among female-headed Black families and the exposure of Black families to concentrated poverty should decrease some of the overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system. [source]


    Incentives, challenges, and dilemmas of TANF: A case study

    JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2002
    Barbara L. Wolfe
    This paper compares the incentives inherent in TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), the U.S. welfare system in place after the 1996 reforms, with those of TANF's predecessor, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), using the experience in one state, Wisconsin, as an example. Is the new program successful in avoiding the "poverty trap" of the old welfare system, in which the marginal tax rates imposed on earnings and benefits were so high that they discouraged work effort outside a narrow earnings range? As women receiving assistance begin working more hours and earning more, income-conditioned benefits (Food Stamps, EITC, Medicaid, and subsidies for child care) are reduced and withdrawn, in effect constituting a "tax" on earnings. Under TANF, there is more support for these families, at least in Wisconsin, and so economic well-being should be higher for most women with earning in this range than it was under AFDC. But marginal tax rates under TANF remain high, and in some income ranges they are higher than under AFDC. Once in the work force, former TANF recipients have earnings over the long run that expose them to very high marginal tax rates, which decrease the benefits of working harder and make it very difficult to gain full eonomic independence. Evidence from other sources suggest that most low-skilled women have earnings in the same range and so are likely to face similar reductions in benefits such as child care subsidies or the EITC as their earnings increase, even if they are not receiving welfare-related benefits. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [source]


    Welfare, Work and Banking: The Use of Consumer Credit by Current and Former TANF Recipients in Charlotte, North Carolina

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2005
    Michael A. Stegman
    Using data from a 2001 North Carolina household survey of low-income households, we analyze banking and credit behavior of current and recent welfare recipients in Charlotte, North Carolina. Other things equal, TANF families are 70% less likely than other low-income families to have a bank account and much more likely to have participated in a credit counseling program. Except for more frequent contact with bill collectors and credit counselors, leavers are no different from other low income families struggling to make ends meet. Race also matters when it comes to accessing mainstream banking and credit systems. Targeted programs help TANF families gain greater access to the financial mainstream. When it comes to specialization programs, however, those involved in the welfare system are not very different from other poor families. However, by virtue of their formal involvement with TANF, this population can be more efficiently served than other low-income populations. For this reason and the desire to keep families from recycling back onto welfare rolls, TANF programs should address banking and credit issues. [source]


    Enhancing the Foster Care Review Process: The Case of Kentucky's Interested Party Review Program

    JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
    Valerie Bryan
    ABSTRACT In order to promote timely permanency for children in out-of-home care, citizen foster care review programs employ volunteers to monitor progress for children in the child welfare system. In addition to case file reviews, Kentucky implemented an Interested Party Review system in which foster care review board members meet with family members and child welfare staff in order to glean more detailed and multi-faceted information to submit to the court. This article describes a mixed-methods program evaluation demonstrating the contribution of such a review process to judicial decision making and child outcome, as well as recommendations for program improvement. [source]


    Families of Origin, Foster Care Experience, and the Transition to Adulthood

    JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009
    Donna Dea Holland
    ABSTRACT The rising number of young adults transitioning to adulthood from the foster care system has been a focus of prior research. The current study explored foster care youths transitions to adulthood to identify factors that contribute to or inhibit prosocial adult outcomes. Structured data derived from interviews with foster care-experienced adults and child welfare professionals as well as focus groups with foster care-experienced adults and foster parents were analyzed using content analysis to examine the transition to adulthood from foster care. Positive or negative life outcomes resulted from two key mechanisms: a) issues related to family of origin (inadequate parenting, abuse); and b) foster care experiences (including a pattern of "drift"). We explore disidentification, a new social psychological concept. Throughout, key players provide policy recommendations for the child welfare system. [source]


    Zero to Three: Critical Issues for the Juvenile and Family Court

    JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2004
    JULIE COHEN
    ABSTRACT Infants are the fastest growing population in foster care. Without intervention they are at great risk of poor developmental outcomes. Juvenile and family courts have a unique opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of the babies in their care. This article outlines six critical issues that impact the development of very young children in the child welfare system and recommends strategies that juvenile and family courts can use to address the needs of this most vulnerable population. [source]


    Building Bridges for Babies in Foster Care: The Babies Can't Wait Initiative

    JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2004
    SHERYL DICKER
    ABSTRACT In 2001, the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children, chaired by New York State's Chief Judge Judith Kaye, developed the Babies Can't Wait Initiative to maximize the well-being and permanency prospects of infants in foster care. This court-based innovation became a path to healthy development for babies in foster care, a bridge to unprecedented collaboration among the New York City Family Court, child welfare system, and service providers and merged knowledge about child development with court and child welfare practice. This article tells the story of the Babies Can't Wait Initiative,its creation, implementation, successes, and lessons. [source]


    When the Bough Breaks the Cradle Will Fall: Promoting the Health and Well Being of Infants and Toddlers in Juvenile Court

    JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
    JUDGE CINDY S. LEDERMAN
    ABSTRACT Approximately one-third of the children in the child welfare system are under the age of six. These children are almost invisible in our juvenile courts. It is now clear from the emerging science of early childhood development that during the first few years of life children develop the foundation and capabilities on which all subsequent development builds. Living in emotional and environmental impoverishment and deprivation provides a poor foundation for healthy development. These very young and vulnerable children are exhibiting disproportionate developmental and cognitive delays, medical problems, and emotional disorders. However, there is growing evidence that early planned interventions can help. The juvenile court must take a leadership role in focusing on the very young child and learning more about risk, prevention, and early intervention in order to facilitate the healing process. [source]


    Youth leaving care: How do they fare?

    NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, Issue 113 2007
    Anne Tweddle
    Former youth in care show a disturbing pattern of poor outcomes after they leave the child welfare system. What can be done to promote more successful transitions? [source]


    Community as a factor in implementing interorganizational partnerships: Issues, constraints, and adaptations

    NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, Issue 1 2003
    Elizabeth A. Mulroy
    This article reports findings from a community-based study of collaboration among seven nonprofit human service agencies in a very low-income urban neighborhood. The project, funded by a federal demonstration grant, was developed to prevent child abuse and neglect as an alternative to the existing public child welfare system. Findings suggest that privatization, funding uncertainties, and community-level factors posed external stressors that constrained executives' ability to collaborate. The article identifies five key stressors, analyzes how each constrained the partnership, and then discusses specific adaptations made by executive leadership in political, technical, and interpersonal areas that facilitated strategic adjustment and realignment in a very complex interorganizational arrangement and set of relationships. Finally, implications are drawn for nonprofit managers, social policy, and nonprofit research. [source]


    Welfare dependency as a performance problem that requires a performance improvement approach

    PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT, Issue 7 2010
    Riad S. Aisami PhD
    Leaving the welfare system does not necessarily equate to a sustainable self-sufficiency of the dependents, as the welfare reform stipulates. Therefore, the success of the welfare reform program should be determined not by the number of dependents who leave the welfare system but by the change that the welfare reform creates in recipients' lives. From a performance improvement perspective, welfare dependency can be viewed as a performance problem that requires a performance improvement approach. [source]


    The Child Welfare System: Through the Eyes of Public Health Nurses

    PUBLIC HEALTH NURSING, Issue 4 2005
    Janet U. Schneiderman
    Abstract,Objective: This qualitative descriptive study investigates how public health nurses working within the child welfare system view the organization and the organization's effect on their case management practice. Design: Semistructured interviews were conducted utilizing the Bolman,Deal Organizational Model. This model identifies four frames of an organization: symbolic, human resources, political, and structural. Sample: A purposive sample of nine nurses and one social worker was selected to participate in comprehensive interviews. Results: Data analysis identified two main themes. The first theme was the presence of organizational structural barriers to providing case management. The second theme was the lack of political influence by the nurses to change the structure of the organization; hence, their skills could be more completely utilized. Conclusions: Public health nurses who work in child welfare will need to systematically analyze their role within the organization and understand how to work in "host settings." Nursing educators need to prepare public health nurses to work in non-health care settings by teaching organizational analysis. [source]


    Earned Income Tax Credits: Do They Have Any Role to Play in Australia?

    THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
    David Ingles
    Earned income tax credits (EITCs) have been used mainly in the United States. The Australian tax,transfer system is already very complicated and the aims of the EITC,notably reductions in effective tax rates for low income earners,might be achievable through reforms to existing components of the system. Such tax rates can be lowered either through reductions in social security tapers, or reductions in income tax payable. Action to reduce tapers affecting families is already proceeding through the social security component of the Government's tax reform package. To go further, by reducing tapers on the main allowances, like Newstart Allowance and Parenting Payment, would accelerate developments for such allowances to become forms of wage supplementation for the low paid. If it were not desired to go further down this path (and it does have problems), then relief of income tax burdens could be implemented through changes to the rate structure. While the EITC may make sense in the US context, a country with a well-developed welfare system like that of Australia has other options. In particular any EITC in this country is likely to be a supplement, not an alternative, to existing cash support for low income families. [source]


    The Politics of Social Harmony: Ruling Strategy and Health Care Policy in Hu's China

    ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2009
    Bin Yu
    This study seeks to explain the causes of social welfare policy change in a single-party authoritarian system. Using the evolution of Chinese health care policy as an example, it discerns why the Hu Jintao administration opted for a compensation-oriented welfare policy paradigm in the absence of adequate interest articulation and apparent electoral accountability, despite the virtual collapse of the Chinese social welfare system during the 1990s. I explore the hypothesis that a high level of political pressure, coupled with a high degree of economic openness, drove the Chinese Communist Party to alter its ruling strategy, a political paradigm that best ensures its monopoly on political power and consequently produces distinct implications for public policy outputs. This study suggests that authoritarian regimes can and do compensate the citizenry under certain circumstances. Further, it also reveals a self-adaptation process initiated by a single-party authoritarian system. [source]


    Social Welfare Reform Since the 1997 Economic Crisis in Korea: Achievement, Limits, and Future Prospects

    ASIAN SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2007
    Inhoe Ku
    Social welfare reform has been implemented in Korea since the 1997 financial crisis. A dominant concern of the reform was on equality and social solidarity. A major means to this end was establishing universalistic social insurance programs like those in developed welfare states. The reform efforts produced some positive results but were not greatly successful. Income polarization and the deteriorating economic status of low-income families have become big social issues. Many low-income families have not gained many benefits from the reformed social security system. The rapid aging of the population is creating an exploding demand for social spending, risking the fiscal sustainability of major social insurance programs. The reform experience suggests that a social welfare system based on western-style universal social insurance may be too expensive to sustain and not very effective in protecting disadvantaged families in Korea. More attention is being paid to expenditure control and efficiency. Social insurance programs may need to be leaner than those in traditional welfare states. Targeted programs, such as the "making work pay" policy, are likely to be expanded more broadly to low-income families. The future of the Korean welfare state may hinge on successful employment support for working families and extensive investment in their human capital. [source]


    Why is the rate of single-parenthood lower in Canada than in the U.S.?

    CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009
    A dynamic equilibrium analysis of welfare policies
    Restricting aid to single mothers, for instance, has the potential to distort behaviour along three demographic margins: marriage, fertility, and divorce. We contrast the Canadian and the U.S. policies within an equilibrium model of household formation and human capital investment on children. Policy differences we consider are eligibility, dependence of transfers on the number of children, and generosity of transfers. Our simulations indicate that the policy differences can account for the higher rate of single-parenthood in the U.S. They also show that Canadian welfare policy is more effective for fostering human capital accumulation among children from poor families. Interestingly, a majority of agents in our benchmark economy prefers a welfare system that targets single mothers (as the U.S. system does), yet (unlike the U.S. system) does not make transfers dependent on the number of children. Une question critique dans le design des politiques sociales est à savoir s'il faut cibler l'aide selon la composition du ménage, comme on le fait aux Etats-Unis dans le cadre du programme Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) ou s'en remettre exclusivement à une enquête sur les ressources disponibles. Limiter l'aide aux mères monoparentales, par exemple, peut influencer le comportement à la marge selon trois axes démographiques: mariage, fécondité, divorce. On compare les politiques canadienne et américaine dans le cadre d'un modèle d'équilibre de formation des ménages et d'investissement en capital humain dans les enfants. Les différences dans les politiques portent sur l'éligibilité, la dépendance des transferts sur le nombre d'enfants, et la générosité des transferts. Les simulations indiquent que les différences dans les politiques peuvent expliquer le plus haut taux de monoparentalité aux Etats-Unis. On montre aussi que la politique canadienne est plus effective pour encourager l'accumulation du capital humain dans les enfants des familles pauvres. On note qu'une majorité des agents dans l'économie de référence préfère une politique qui cible les mères monoparentales (comme on le fait aux Etats-Unis) mais qui (contrairement à ce qui se fait aux Etats-Unis) ne rend pas les transferts dépendants du nombre d'enfants. [source]


    Young people leaving care in Sweden

    CHILD & FAMILY SOCIAL WORK, Issue 1 2010
    Ingrid Höjer
    ABSTRACT The transition from a placement in care to an independent life can be a problematic phase for young people. In Sweden, special care-leaving services are almost non-existent. What then happens to young people when they leave a placement in out-of-home care? This paper draws on the results of a study in which 16 young care leavers between the ages of 18 and 22 years were interviewed. Telephone interviews were also performed with the young care leavers' parents, social workers, foster carers and institutional staff. The aim of the study was to investigate how young care leavers perceive the transition from care to an independent life. The Swedish welfare model, the prolonged transition to adulthood and the family-oriented welfare discourse have been used as analytical perspectives. The results show that young care leavers have a pronounced need for social, emotional, practical and financial support. Whilst such support is occasionally provided by foster carers and residential staff, it is seldom given by social services or biological parents. This group is at risk of facing severe problems in the transitional phase from care to independent life, a fact that is not acknowledged by the Swedish welfare system. [source]