5 results
5 - Beyond COVID-19 Lockdown Compliance: A Gender Analysis
- Edited by Sabrina Germain, City University of London, Adrienne Yong, City University of London
-
- Book:
- Beyond the Virus
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 17 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 16 March 2023, pp 97-116
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
COVID-19 and the subsequent initiatives put in place to suppress the virus are predicted to have a negative impact on gender equality in both the immediate and medium-long term. There has already been a wealth of research that, on the one hand, points to women being more likely to endorse and be compliant with social distancing measures put in place to suppress the COVID-19 virus since late March 2020 (Galasso et al, 2020; Carreras et al, 2022). But on the other, there is also evidence of how the social distancing measures themselves are damaging for women. Namely, how nationwide ‘lockdowns’ have exacerbated existing gender disparities in caring, with women more likely to pick up home learning and caring to fill the gap of physically closed educational and childcare establishments, and with informal grandparental care strongly discouraged. Thus, the very social distancing measures that women endorse have impacted women negatively more than men, and have led to increased gender inequality, both intra-household and in the labour market, with women being more likely to have been made unemployed or furloughed (ONS, 2021; Wielgoszewska et al, 2021). Work has been undertaken to understand why women are more compliant than men. It suggests that dispositions that existed prior to the pandemic have increased COVID-19 compliance, such as women tending to be more rule-compliant (Tom and Granie 2011; Grosch and Rau 2016) or risk averse (Carreras et al 2022). It has also shown that COVID-19-specific factors explain women’s increased propensity to be COVID-19 compliant, such as women being more likely than men to see COVID-19 as a serious health problem (Galasso et al, 2020).
What these studies overlook, however, is how compliance to COVID-19 restrictions can actually be challenging for women, precisely because of their caring responsibilities, given that ‘the regulations and guidance assumed that households were separate units and ignored the interdependencies which exist between households and between individuals and wider society’ (Gulland, 2020: 329). Writing prior to the pandemic, Bowlby et al underscored the potential for ‘individual stress or societal stress’ to heavily disrupt existing caring arrangements (Bowlby et al, 2010: 1).
Falling through the cracks’ – the role of assertive alcohol outreach teams in treating comorbid mental health problems in people with addictions
- E. Naomi Smith, Emily Finch, Colin Drummond
-
- Journal:
- BJPsych Open / Volume 7 / Issue S1 / June 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 18 June 2021, p. S277
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- Open access
- Export citation
-
Aims
Input from Assertive Alcohol Outreach Teams (AAOTs) reduces the ‘burden’ on already overstretched community mental health teams (CMHTs).
AAOTs are specialist addictions services. This project focuses on an AAOT based in the London, which engages with people with severe alcohol and illicit substance misuse problems.
Previous research has shown that input from AAOTs reduces hospital admissions. This project examined the impact of AAOT input on reducing the ‘burden’ on CMHTs.
MethodThe full caseload of the Southwark-based AAOT was reviewed, including mental health records, general practitioner notes, hospital notes and discharge summaries. We collected data on diagnoses and previous hospital admissions. Patients were assessed to determine whether they met criteria to be open to a CMHT (the presence of complex or serious mental health problems, in addition to addictions).
ResultThe caseload was made up of 39 patients, 85% of patients were deemed to meet criteria for being under the care of a CMHT. Only 15% of patients are currently under the care of a CMHT. 87% of patients had at least one comorbid psychiatric diagnosis. 72% of patients had had at least one emergency department or medical hospital admission due to mental health-related problems. 39% had previous admissions to mental health wards. 21% of patients has been admitted under Section of Mental Health Act.
ConclusionThe majority of AAOT patients have severe mental health problems in addition to addictions. The patients are complex and often have a history of disengagement from standard mental health services. Formal diagnosis and treatment of comorbid mental health problems is challenging in the presence of protracted drug and alcohol misuse. AAOT input appears to address a serious ‘gap’ in supporting patients with complex mental health needs who are often ineligible for CMHT input or disengage from CMHT support.
two - Changing labour markets, changing welfare across the OECD: the move towards a social investment model of welfare as a response to competition
- Edited by Dan Horsfall, John Hudson, University of York
-
- Book:
- Social Policy in an Era of Competition
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 30 June 2017, pp 33-52
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The rise of the social investment model in the OECD?
The notion of a ‘social investment welfare state’ has gained increasing ground over recent years (Morel et al, 2012a), playing an important role in the discourse of international organisations such as the OECD and EU (Mahon, 2013; Deeming and Smyth, 2015). As Taylor-Gooby et al (2015, pp 83–4) note, it forms of one a number of concepts – others include ‘active social welfare’, the ‘new welfare state’ and ‘new risk welfare’ – that might be grouped under the label ‘new welfare’. All are based around a shared view that developed welfare states have begun to place less emphasis on income protection and more emphasis on investing in human capital. Put differently, they stress the growing importance of the ‘productive’ (as opposed to ‘protective’) elements of social policy (compare Hudson and Kuhner, 2009), chiefly on the basis that this may square the circle of maintaining social expenditures while responding to increased economic competition. Indeed, as Deeming and Smyth (2015, p 298) put it ‘“Social investment” arguably represents the very latest justification for social policy to guide the development of the economy and society in the twenty-first century.’
Jenson (2010, p 62) argues that the social investment perspective breaks with past understandings, ‘represent[ing] an approach to social policy different from the social protection logic of post-1945 welfare regimes as well as the safety-net stance of neoliberals’, but notes rather different models have been advocated and implemented in practice, such as Giddens’ (1998) Third Way-rooted ‘social investment state’ and Esping-Andersen's (2002) more expansive Nordic child-centred social investment model. Other scholars have made similar observations. For instance: Deeming and Smyth (2015) draw a distinction between a liberal ‘light’ and Nordic ‘heavy’ social investment strategy; Morel et al (2012c) differentiate between social investment strategies that are matched with strong social protection and those that are not; and Mahon (2103) identifies a ‘neoliberal variant’ along with ‘inclusive liberal’ and ‘social democratic’ versions of social investment.
fourteen - Reciprocity, lone parents and state subsidy for informal childcare
- Edited by Caroline Glendinning, Peter A. Kemp
-
- Book:
- Cash and Care
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 25 September 2006, pp 187-202
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The Labour government in the UK aims to increase the lone parent employment rate to 70% by 2010. To help achieve this aim, a state subsidy for childcare through Tax Credits has been introduced. However, the subsidy has been restricted to formal childcare, despite evidence that the majority of lone parents use informal care, are more likely to rely solely on this form of care than couple families, and that deficiencies in formal childcare provision in relation to quality, suitability and affordability still act as a significant barrier to lone parents’ employment.
This chapter investigates the potential of a state subsidy for informal childcare. Utilising evidence from a study of 78 qualitative in-depth interviews and eight focus groups with lone parents, it explores preferences for informal care and how such care is negotiated in families. The study found that lone parents held deeply embedded preferences for informal childcare based on trust, commitment, shared understandings and children's happiness. It is important, therefore, for government to support informal as well as formal care. However, the evidence also shows that the way informal childcare was negotiated involved complex notions of obligation, duty and reciprocity, suggesting that a subsidy could potentially intrude upon private family relationships. Yet, on closer examination, we found that care was negotiated differently depending on who was providing it, with lone parents tending to favour paying for childcare provided by other family members and friends than by grandparents. This has implications for the state childcare subsidy, and this chapter seeks to cast light on the potential complexities by relating the findings to theoretical explanations on how negotiations between kin work.
Background
A variety of labour market policies have been introduced by the Labour government that focus on increasing lone parents’ employment rates. These include financial incentives via Working Tax Credits, practical help via the New Deal for Lone Parents and a National Childcare Strategy that aims to expand formal childcare provision and improve quality, suitability and affordability. These measures have been introduced with the understanding that structural factors are the main inhibitors of lone parents’ employment. Significant progress has been made, with 55% of lone parents in employment in 2005, an increase of nine percentage points since 1997 (HM Treasury, 2005b).
Overlaps in Dimensions of Poverty
- JONATHAN BRADSHAW, NAOMI FINCH
-
- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy / Volume 32 / Issue 4 / October 2003
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 29 October 2003, pp. 513-525
- Print publication:
- October 2003
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey of Britain made it possible first time to explore poverty using three different measures applied at the same time on the same sample. The measures were: lacking socially perceived necessities; being subjectively poor and having a relatively low income. These approaches are all commonly used to identify the poor and to measure poverty but rarely if ever in combination. In this article we have found that there is little overlap in the group of people defined as poor by these dimensions. There are reasons for this lack of overlap, connected to the reliability and validity of the different measures. However the people who are defined as living in poverty by different measures of poverty are different. This inevitably means that the policy response to poverty will be different depending on which measure is employed.
We have attempted to analyse overlap in two ways. First, by exploring the dimensions of poverty cumulatively, we have found that, the more dimensions people are poor on, the more they are unlike the non-poor and the poor on only one dimension, in their characteristics and in their social exclusion. Second, by treating particular dimensions as meriting more attention than others, we explored three permutations of this type and concluded that, while each permutation were more unlike the non-poor than those poor on a single dimension, they were not as unlike the non-poor as the cumulatively poor were. These results indicate that accumulation might be a better way of using overlapping measures of poverty than by giving priority to one dimension over another.
The implication of the paper is that it is not safe to rely on one measure of poverty – the results obtained are just not reliable enough. Surveys, such as the Family Resources Survey or the European Community Household Panel, which are used to monitor the prevalence of poverty, need to be adapted to enable results to be triangulated – to incorporate a wider range of poverty measures.