1. Estado del arte
4.1 Genealogía de las formas simbólicas (gif, sticker, emoji)
Many studies of welfare reform in the US and other countries acknowledge the significance of implementation issues and the role that local delivery might play in explaining variations in the impact of lone parent work-related requirements (Bloom et. al., 2003). Studies highlight the important role played by case managers and other front-line staff in both communicating requirements to lone parents and assisting clients with jobsearch, as well as support accessing services they might need, for example childcare, in-work benefits, and training. Some qualitative studies have sought to explore variations in the availability of such services and in the commitment of front-line staff to communicate and impose requirements.
There have, however, been few rigorous studies of the implementation process exploring how policy reforms are translated into practice through performance and/or contract regimes, and mediated through the local strategies and informal work cultures at different delivery sites.
Perhaps the most important policy research to consider such issues has developed from Lipsky’s (1980) work on ‘street level bureaucrats’. Such studies have identified the importance of ‘implementation gaps’ that arise from poor policy design or from ‘bottom up’ pressures within the organisational culture of front-line officials and their greater resistance to change than that of formal structures. These studies analyse the significance of informal ‘bureaucratic discretion’ and the front-line coping strategies developed to manage the mismatch between the demand for services and the capacity to deliver them and, in the context of welfare reform,
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manage the tension between enabling clients to access benefits while ensuring they meet mandatory jobsearch requirements. There have been several such state-based implementation studies in the wake of US welfare reform, whereas few such qualitative studies have been undertaken into welfare reform processes in Europe (Handler, 2004).
Riccucci (2005), for example, analysed the delivery of welfare reform in three front-line offices in Michigan. The state had a centrally prescribed work first model that gave very little formal discretion to local offices in how they ran their programmes.
In a two-step analysis of her data, including analysis of variance techniques, Riccucci found that the ‘street-level bureaucrats’ in the welfare offices did not see their own priorities in the context of the formal ‘work first’ objectives of the state, with variations between the local offices in the priority given to imposing work requirements and sanctions. A common finding in studies such as these is that it is both the formal and informal lower-level routines developed by front-line officials that create policy at the point of delivery and that informal bureaucratic discretion remains a powerful factor in explaining the impact of policy change and the quality of services received by clients (Lennon and Corbett, 2003).
4.13 Conclusion
The studies reviewed in this chapter consider mainly the impact of lone parent work-related requirements and related services in the US. This evidence suggests that the changes introduced in 1996, and the preceding welfare-to-work reforms, contributed to increased lone parent employment rates and a reduction in child poverty, albeit other factors, including the availability of tax credits and an expanding labour market, were also responsible. These impacts were greater in the period up to 2001 but the rate of improvement dissipated as labour market conditions changed.
Following the rapid reduction in caseloads the characteristics of those parents using the system changed. The caseload now includes a higher proportion of longer-term recipients who are not working or who are employed sporadically, alongside a smaller group of parents who use the system for a short period as they manage a change in their circumstances.
The evidence suggests that the lone parents who fared better from US welfare reform were those who were more employable, especially if they were able to make the transition to better quality and more stable employment. Among the groups who fared less well were: those with limited skills and employment experience, who usually entered low paid work and remained in poverty; those who were unable to retain employment; and those who were least employable, especially those who had significant and/or multiple barriers to employment. There has also been an increase in the population of disconnected families, many of whom are in deep poverty, and evidence that some of this increase reflects administrative barriers, an inability to meet work-related requirements, and high sanction rates.
Findings from the international evidence review
Evidence on the most effective combination of work-related requirements and services is mixed. Different approaches and sequences of support may be needed for the diverse groups who comprise the lone-parent population.
The cumulative evidence from the studies reviewed, including experimental evaluations, points to the effectiveness of a strong employment-focused ‘message’
delivered through well trained case managers with the flexibility to tailor employment assistance and support services, including work-focused education and training, to meet the needs of individual lone parents. This basic model requires supplementary specialist provision for lone parents who are harder to help or engage, who may need a different approach to tackling their barriers and a different pattern of employment assistance to enable them to enter employment.
Engagement with such services may be secured through clear communication of requirements, reinforced by varying sanctions, although care must be taken to ensure that such families do not become ‘disconnected’ from the services they, and their children, need.
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5 Lone parent work-related requirements in the US, Australia, Sweden and the Netherlands
This chapter comprises case studies of the design and implementation of lone parent work-related requirements in four countries. The countries have been selected purposively because each offered aspects of policy and practice relevant to the extension of lone parent obligations in Great Britain (GB). Each case study considers the welfare reform policies, benefit eligibility rules and employment assistance programmes that affect lone parents, and briefly reviews further evaluation evidence about the impact of recent changes. It should be noted that some of the policies discussed in this section are targeted at lone parents specifically, while others are part of wider welfare reform affecting lone parents as well as other groups.
The assessment of the United States (US) lone parent income support system provides a context for the studies reviewed in the previous chapter. The case studies of New York City (NYC) and Oregon provide greater detail of the different ways in which employment-focused reforms have been implemented in two contrasting localities. NYC was selected because of its comparative relevance to London; in that prior to welfare reform the city had a disproportionately high level of lone parent families on welfare and, relative to comparable US cities, a much lower level of workforce participation. These differences were reduced significantly after the reform of its welfare system. Oregon was chosen to explore the extent to which the successful ‘Portland’ model of welfare-to-work reform had been extended to the rest of the state after Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reform and how the system had changed over time.
Australia, by contrast, only introduced lone parent work-related requirements in 2006, offering insights into issues that arise in the early phase of such reforms in an institutional and cultural context that has perceived similarities with GB.
Lone parent work-related requirements in the US, Australia, Sweden and the Netherlands
The two European case studies offered other contrasts. In the Netherlands lone parent work-related requirements were first implemented in 1996 and have been amended since, but with little discernible impact on the lone parent employment rate, which is similar to that in the United Kingdom (UK) and below the Organisations for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (see Figure 2.1). This case study provides useful insights into the factors that have contributed to this outcome.
In Sweden, by contrast, the lone parent employment rate is high and work-related requirements are long standing, supported by generous social welfare arrangements and ‘family friendly’ employment and childcare policies.
While the four countries provide useful comparators for GB, they have distinctive labour markets, governance arrangements and welfare systems. These factors are important in understanding the context in which lone parent employment obligations are implemented and the effects they have. Sweden, for example, has high-quality public sector childcare provision with low direct charges for parents.
The other countries have more fragmented childcare systems that involve direct subsidies or tax credits for parents, with much formal provision delivered through fee-charging private and voluntary sector providers.
The case study countries also have different approaches to tackling child poverty.
In GB, for example, increased cash transfers to poor families have not all been conditional on employment, whereas in the US the only families that saw benefit increases were those who moved from welfare to work. An important consequence has been that while there has been a sizeable reduction in child poverty in both countries, ‘the reduction in child poverty in the US has been less’ (Waldfogel, 2007, p.iii). Another consequence is that in the US more of the increase in family income has been absorbed by work-related expenses rather than being spent on children.