Introduction
Notions of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor and, therefore, the acceptability of providing support to some societal groups more than others have a strong historical legacy in the UK. While the Poor Laws that codified those in need of social assistance in such stark terms were largely swept away in post-Second World War reforms, echoes of them resonate in contemporary policies (O’Brien, Reference O’Brien, Lavalette and Mooney2013). This paper draws on data from the evaluation of the Welsh Government’s Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot. The paper uses the framework of deservingness to explore attitudes to the pilot among recipients and the professionals who are employed to support them. Although the focus is the Welsh pilot, these attitudes reflect a more fundamental tension regarding the justification of social support: whether it should be based on entitlement (what society owes individuals due to past injustices or circumstances beyond their control) or merit (what individuals have earned through effort and compliant behaviour) (Goodin, Reference Goodin1988; Miller, Reference Miller1999).
Research on basic income schemes has increased in recent years. Many studies measure attitudes towards the policy as a concept (for example, Howard et al., Reference Howard, Gregory, Johnson, Goodman, Coates, Robson and Johnson2023; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Webster, Morrison, Thorold, Mathers, Nettle and Johnson2023), but this study involves those with direct experience of basic income as recipients or professionals supporting recipients. This paper considers the attitudes of individuals with direct experience of a basic income scheme towards the choice of care leavers as a recipient group. It answers the specific question: do these participants frame their views of the pilot in ways that classify care leavers as ‘deserving’ of a basic income?
Context
Young people ageing out of care
In the USA, the UK and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, there has been increased attention to the needs of young people ageing out of care, with federal programmes and legislation bringing new services and rights (OECD, 2022; Stahl et al., Reference Strahl, van Breda, Mann-Feder and Schröer2021). However, despite this increased entitlement to support, young people leaving care in many nations report facing barriers relating to poverty and lack of suitable housing, social support and access to employment and educational opportunities (Gypen et al., Reference Gypen, Vanderfaeillie, De Maeyer, Belenger and Van Holen2017; Stein & Monro, Reference Stein and Munro2008). Most have experienced abuse or neglect before being admitted to care, and, sadly, many children continue to experience instability when in care. Research shows that both experiences before entering care and factors within care, such as age at entry, care setting and placement instability, are associated with poorer outcomes (Dregan & Gulliford, Reference Dregan and Gulliford2012; Wade, Reference Wade2024). Nonetheless, the care-experienced young adult population is by no means homogenous, and the important focus on countering often poor outcomes should not ignore the remarkable resilience shown by many (Shpiegel et al., Reference Shpiegel, Simmel, Sapiro and Ramirez Quiroz2022). Additionally, ‘headline’ negative outcomes such as homelessness and unemployment may mask the complexities of individual lives, where a young adult may be maintaining a household, supporting others or avoiding the patterns of substance misuse or violence that their parents may have suffered, while not appearing to be ‘successful’ by general societal standards.
In Wales, the number of children in care has grown over the last decade, and rates are higher than in the rest of the UK, with more than 1 per cent of the child population in care (Welsh Government, 2025). The majority (67.7 per cent) are looked after in foster care or in kinship care, with a growing minority (12.3 per cent) in residential children’s homes, supported accommodation such as hostels, or secure care (Welsh Government, 2025).
The numbers ageing out of care aged 18 are not reported by the Welsh Government, which instead reports 16–18-year-olds leaving care, some of whom will have been in temporary voluntary care and have returned to their families, without becoming eligible for care leaver support after their eighteenth birthdays. However, between July 1st, 2023, and June 30th, 2024, 664 care leavers were registered as eligible for the basic income pilot in the month following their eighteenth birthday by their local authority, with 644 taking up the offer (Welsh Government, 2025), suggesting that approximately 650–700 18-year-olds leave care aged 18 in Wales each year.
In common with other UK nations, national and local governments in Wales have a legal duty and moral commitment to act as ‘corporate parents’ to the children they look after into early adulthood. This means providing support and care that any parent would (Munro et al., Reference Munro, Kelly, Mannay and McGhee2024). Between the ages of 18 and 25, most care leavers have rights to additional support, including help with housing, grants to attend university and the support of a personal advisor (Munro et al., Reference Munro, Kelly, Mannay and McGhee2024). They can also claim welfare benefits if eligible. Those living in foster care may stay with their carers after the age of 18 under the ‘When I’m Ready’ scheme, with 189 18-year-old care leavers part of this scheme in 2024 (Welsh Government, 2025). Of those still in the care of the local authority on reaching adulthood, for the majority not remaining with their foster carers, options include returning to their birth family or relatives, a supported living arrangement such as a hostel or other rented accommodation. This change of circumstance is in stark contrast to the wider population, where 90 per cent of 18-year-olds live in the parental household (ONS, 2025).
Basic income
Basic income is a form of cash transfer intervention, of which there are several formats and designs. Gonzalez & Bidadanure (Reference Gonzalez and Bidadanure2020) define a basic income as having the following characteristics: unconditional, paid to everyone in a community, regular payments rather than a lump sum, paid to individuals rather than households and paid in cash rather than vouchers. The concept of a basic income has garnered support from across the political spectrum (Clark, Reference Clark2025), and pilot schemes are becoming more common (Stanford Basic Income Lab, 2025).
The Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot was launched in 2022 by the Welsh Government (Welsh Government, 2022). The recipient group included any young person who met the legal criteria to be deemed a category 3 ‘care leaver’ under the Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act (2014) who had their eighteenth birthday between 1st July 2022 and 30th June 2023. This pilot was therefore targeted, not universal. The basic income, £1600 gross per month, was subject to income tax, meaning they received £1280 net for two years, calculated to be at the level of the living wage in 2022 (Mathur et al., Reference Mathur, Roberts, Bezeczky, Lloyd, Vallis, Sanders, Pickett, Johnson, Hick, Schroeder, Fahr, Petrou, Lee, Holland and Westlake2025). Payments were made from the month of their eighteenth birthday until the month of their 20th birthday. They were eligible to receive usual support services, including the support of a young person’s advisor, plus additional financial and general advice from Citizen’s Advice. Payments were unconditional, and take-up was high with 97 per cent (n = 644) taking up the basic income (Welsh Government, 2025).
Deservingness and basic income
Although targeted toward a specific group, this basic income pilot, which is unconditional for its recipient group, marks a major shift from the UK’s traditional benefits system, which makes support conditional on work-seeking or special needs. Citizens’ assessments of deservingness are also likely to be made in light of this wider background (Rossetti et al., Reference Rossetti, Roosma, Laenen and Abts2020).
A body of empirical work has developed over the last decade that measures citizens’ attitudes to public policies such as welfare benefits and other public spending based on their views of how ‘deserving’ recipient groups are. These studies suggest that groups most favoured for support by the general public are older people and the disabled, and those less favoured include recent immigrants and young, single mothers (Kootstra, Reference Kootstra2016; Watkins-Hayes & Kovalsky, Reference Watkins-Hayes, Kovalsky, Brady and Burton2016). However, professional groups and others with direct experience of supporting those likely to need financial assistance show less antipathy to benefits provision than the general public (Kallio & Kouvo, Reference Kallio and Kouvo2015; Vogt et al., Reference Vogt, Werner, Spieckermann and Grigori2022). Van Oorschot (Reference Van Oorschot2000) developed a set of five criteria upon which members of the public tend to rest their support for state welfare provision, based on public opinions in the Netherlands. The extent to which these criteria are perceived in a welfare policy, he proposed, could explain variations in social attitudes to ‘deservingness’ of welfare. Van Oorschot (Reference Van Oorschot2000, p. 36) identified five criteria of deservingness: (1) control: the amount of control a person or group has over their life circumstances; (2) need: the level of need; (3) identity: how close the person or group is to us; (4) attitude: how compliant or grateful recipients are; (5) reciprocity: how much the person has earned the support. These five criteria (which have been given the acronym ‘CARIN’) have been further tested empirically, usually using quantitative measures (for example, Meuleman et al., Reference Meuleman, Roosma and Abts2020) and provide an illuminating framework for detailed analysis of why some welfare policies may be supported more than others.
There is an increasing literature on public attitudes to basic income. In Europe, a detailed question about basic income was included in the 2016 European Social Survey, which has led to rich analyses of attitudes according to nation, age, income and political orientation (Roosma & Van Oorschot, Reference Roosma and Van Oorschot2020). These have been summarised by Busemeyer and Rinscheid (Reference Busemeyer and Rinscheid2025) as basic income being supported more by younger citizens, have lower incomes, are politically left-leaning and reside in nations with less robust social security systems. Young people who support basic income highlight the reduction in stigma and potential improvements to health, alongside the benefits of reduced poverty (Bollain et al., Reference Bollain, Guerendiain-Gabás, Arnoso-Martínez and Elías Ortega2024; Johnson et al. Reference Johnson, Webster, Morrison, Thorold, Mathers, Nettle and Johnson2023).
While there is popular support of around 50 per cent and sometimes higher for basic income as a general concept across a range of European nations (Roosma & Van Oorschot, Reference Roosma and Van Oorschot2020) this can be eroded when more specificity is added to survey questions, for example, paying the income to those who may need it less, including those on higher incomes (Howard et al., Reference Howard, Gregory, Johnson, Goodman, Coates, Robson and Johnson2023). Pertinent to the Welsh basic income pilot, there is less support for giving a basic income to certain groups. This includes young people (Van Oorschot, Reference Van Oorschot2000), immigrants and those not actively seeking work (Roosma & Van Oorschot, Reference Roosma and Van Oorschot2020). These can be linked directly to deservingness criteria such as need, identity and reciprocity (Roosma & Van Oorschot, Reference Roosma and Van Oorschot2020).
Public narratives about the Welsh basic income pilot
Before proceeding to discuss the methods and findings of this study, it is worth setting recipients’ and professionals’ views within the context of political narratives about the Welsh pilot. The Welsh Government set the programme within a framework of state obligations to care leavers alongside an acknowledgement of their social and economic challenges, and these were the overriding government narratives when launching the scheme in 2022. The then First Minister, Professor Mark Drakeford, stated: ‘The state is the guardian of people leaving care and so has a real obligation to support them as they start their adult life’. In the same press release, the Minister for Social Justice, Jane Hutt, said: ‘Too many people leaving care face huge barriers to achieving their hopes and ambitions… This scheme will help people live a life free of such barriers and limitations’ (Welsh Government, 2022).
Early criticisms of the scheme were muted in the Welsh Parliament, with politicians of all parties expressing a desire to support care leavers (Senedd Cymru/ Welsh Parliament, 2022). However, stringent criticism of the scheme by the Conservative opposition developed when it emerged that the Welsh Government had written to the UK Government asking that recipients of the scheme remain eligible for legal aid, despite the income being above eligibility limits. This could affect any young adults requiring legal aid but particularly affected the 11 per cent of recipients who were former unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people, because of their need for legal services as part of asylum claims (Welsh Government, 2025; Mathur, Reference Mathur, Roberts, Bezeczky, Lloyd, Vallis, Sanders, Pickett, Johnson, Hick, Schroeder, Fahr, Petrou, Lee, Holland and Westlake2025). This late realisation that a minority of care leavers are former unaccompanied child asylum-seekers led to a barrage of criticism by Conservative politicians in the Welsh and UK Parliaments and on social media. Critics included the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak (BBC, 2023; WalesOnline, 2023). They argued that the pilot would encourage more people to enter the UK illegally.
The antipathy of a minority of politicians towards the scheme, and particularly the eligibility of former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, can be linked to centuries-old attitudes classifying those deemed as ‘outsiders’, especially recent immigrants, as undeserving of state support (Watkins-Hayes & Kovalsky, Reference Watkins-Hayes, Kovalsky, Brady and Burton2016). These attitudes prevail in contemporary surveys of public opinion (Roosma & Van Oorschot, Reference Roosma and Van Oorschot2020).
Methodology
This paper is one of several outputs from a large, mixed-method evaluation of the Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot, commissioned by the Welsh Government. A detailed methodology is published in a protocol paper (Westlake et al., Reference Westlake, Holland, Sanders, Schroeder, Pickett, Johnson, Petrou, Hick, Roberts, Rodriguez-Guzman and Vallis2024). The study team is advised by a group of care-experienced young adults who were not eligible for the pilot because of their age. Young people in the advisory group are recruited and supported by a Wales-wide care leaver advocacy organisation and receive standardised UK public involvement payments for their time.
One evaluation strand is a largely qualitative implementation and process evaluation, involving qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, observations of government meetings with local authority professionals and young people and analysis of relevant documentation. Ethical approval was granted by Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee.
This paper includes data from the implementation and process evaluation. The data included here were generated in the first 10 months of the pilot delivery (2022/23) and therefore report early views and experiences. Analysis reported in this paper is drawn from semi-structured interviews with forty-four young people (YP) receiving the basic income and focus groups with forty-one children’s social care professionals with direct experience of supporting and advising recipients as Personal Advisors (PAs) n = 22, PA Team Managers (TM) n = 7 and Heads of Service (HoS) n = 12 who were directly involved in the pilot. Interview schedules included questions seeking views on the design of the pilot and early experiences of the scheme.
The analysis for this paper includes both inductive and deductive methods. The original data were analysed inductively by developing a coding frame and subsequent analytic themes using NVivo software, following close reading and re-reading of the data. One strong theme that emerged was an ambivalence among professionals about the choice of care leavers as the recipient group for the pilot (self-citation 2). This sparked our conceptual interest in ‘deservingness’ and thus the data were re-coded and analysed deductively using Van Oorschot’s CARIN categorisation. The resulting findings are reported here.
Findings
For analytic clarity, Oorschot’s (Reference Van Oorschot2000) categories of need, control, identity, reciprocity and attitude are discussed separately in this section. However, there was a great deal of overlap between some of the categories. The categories in the CARIN acronym are re-ordered in the following, to discuss need and control first, followed by identity, reciprocity and attitudes.
Need
Professionals and recipients agreed that care leavers need additional financial assistance, though opinions differed on how much. Several young people emphasised that care leavers have less money than peers their age, with one noting that ‘it helps a lot for …kids who have left care, who … practically have nothing, and they’re able to get stuff that they need’ (YP19). Many others noted that, unlike ‘children living with their mum and dad, [who] usually live there until they’re around about 30’ most care leavers ‘don’t really have their family to fall back on’ (YP30). Professionals, too, echoed the high level of need in this community in contrast to other groups: ‘Care leavers is a brilliant group to try [the pilot] with. You know, they are at a disadvantage, and they haven’t got a lot of support there that a lot of other people have’ (P14, PA); ‘I think the concept of it is great. You know, it does provide opportunities for looked-after young people who we know are disadvantaged in multiple areas’ (P30, TM).
Some professionals, particularly senior managers, also stated that the amount of money is fair, ‘a nice healthy amount’ (P19 HoS), considering the costs of living, particularly rent, and may prove aspirational if the recipients get a taste for a better lifestyle: ‘It’s almost giving them that taste of what they could have, and hopefully, allowing them to, you know, raise the ambitions, and raise their sights to that level of finance to continue post-pay [when the pilot ends]’ (P20, HoS).
However, there was also a persistent narrative from professionals who care leavers did not need this much income. This was mainly related to the £1280 after tax per month being considered ‘unrealistic’ compared to ‘what life is gonna be like’ after the pilot ends (P1, PA), when some professionals noted that many will need to claim Universal Credit or will be in low-paid employment: ‘the fall out will be when it all comes to an end, because then they’ll be so used to having that amount of money. It’s hard then to go back to sixty-eight pound a week’ (P5, PA).
There was also a frequent concern about any excess money exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities, such as substance misuse or exploitation by others. We have reported on these concerns elsewhere (Roberts et al., Reference Roberts, Holland, Westlake, Mathur, Lloyd, Bezeczky, Ablitt, Hick, Johnson and Sanders2026) and discuss further as follows.
Control
There was common agreement across the participant groups that care leavers face disadvantages through both the childhood experiences that led them to be taken into care and through systemic issues such as problems with the quality and availability of suitable housing and employment options – neither of which could be considered within their control as individuals.
Alongside this was a strong theme in the professionals’ focus groups that high rates of childhood trauma mean that, through no fault of their own, some were more vulnerable to exploitation by others and at higher risk of substance misuse. They felt this lack of control over aspects of their lives made giving the basic income a risk to the recipients. The following quotation summarises this point, which was raised in almost every focus group:
You know, [care leavers] are at a disadvantage, and they haven’t got a lot of support there that a lot of other people have. I know we had a lot of concerns around some of the choices our young people make in regard to sort of alcohol and drugs, and where that money was gonna go, and, you know, the danger to themselves… Are they gonna be taken advantage of, you know? (P14, PA).
This potential lack of control and vulnerability to exploitation was compounded for some professionals by the legal change at age 18. While all 18-year-olds in the UK achieve legal adulthood on this birthday, most care leavers are subject to a Care Order under the Children Act 1989, which ends when they turn 18. They remain entitled to support, but the legal requirements on the local authority, and their powers to intervene if they are concerned about welfare, are reduced. Participants noted that this can be anxiety-provoking for both young people and professionals: ‘So, from an emotional point of view. Eighteen for our care leavers is possibly a bigger milestone than for other young people in society’ (P19, HoS); ‘Would it be more beneficial to start pre-18, and the local authority has a bit more ability to manage?’ (P30, TM).
There appeared to be an important distinction in how the concept of control was thought of by many professionals. There was a consensus that care leavers, as a group, have high needs for support due to being disadvantaged by the historical circumstances that were beyond their control and led them to be taken into care, yet there were different perspectives on how far individuals within the group were currently in control of their lives, with legal independence but vulnerabilities remaining. As is explored further under ‘Attitude’ later in this article, the concerns about the decisions some make about spending also show a tension between how much individuals are seen to be responsible for their own circumstances and lifestyles, and the extent to which they should be responsible. This raises questions about the boundaries of challenging circumstances and personal responsibility (Knight, Reference Knight2009).
Recipients, too, frequently referred to the changes brought about by their eighteenth birthday. One young person described this stage of life as being thrust into the ‘big, bad world’ (YP33), and another explained that the decision to start the basic income at 18 was important because:
I think 18 is good because it’s like that stage where you’re out of the social services now…it’s quite a cut-off…So, it’s like once you hit 18 you don’t have your social worker anymore…whereas before, when you’re in foster care, and you move and move and move, they have to keep providing you with homes. When you’re 18, they don’t have to keep doing that. (YP14)
Others saw it as an opportunity to take control of their circumstances. For example, one recipient (YP3) explained that on turning 18 he was free to decide where he would live, and he moved from an expensive hostel to his mother’s home: ‘When I turned 18, I put in… two weeks’ notice, for me to go back home with Mam, because living on your own is hard, because I didn’t have the money to afford living on my own at that time’ (YP3).
Thus, for recipients and professionals, the notion of ‘control’ was complex. The change in legal status to adulthood afforded a new sense of control, bolstered by the basic income, and some professionals and young people saw new opportunities in this. But a sense of vulnerability remained for many. For the young people, this reinforced why the money was needed, but for many professionals, the money amplified their lack of legal power to intervene when they perceived unwise decisions being made.
Identity
Care-experienced young people in Wales are geographically dispersed and in different types of accommodation. They also have different pathways through early adulthood, including higher education, further education, employment and unemployment. Some are parents. Despite this, many recipients identified with the umbrella term ‘care leaver’ and therefore endorse, as we have seen, the need for support for this group. This example supports the characterisation of ‘care leavers’ as a social group:
Well, I think it’s rather smart, because I know a lot of us care leavers have a lot of worries about financial security… And that’s not the only thing worrying our minds. You know, we are leaving care. We don’t know where we’re going. What we’re doing, how’s it going to work. (YP23, emphasis added)
Despite, or perhaps because of, this group identity, some recipients worried about the behaviours of other care leavers, as the next two sections illustrate.
For professionals, care leavers are not an unknown ‘other’ as may be the case in a survey of public opinion about which groups should receive benefits. They know this group well because they work with them and have legal responsibilities to act in a quasi-parental role. As has been seen in the findings so far, this leads to a heightened awareness of the challenges this group faces and an agreement that they require additional support. However, a frustration about the day-to-day behaviours of some of the recipients is manifest. Three types of rationales related to ‘identity’ can be discerned, with the first emphasising the group’s differences from others, and the second and third emphasising similarities.
Firstly, some professionals emphasise how different this group is from the rest of the population, due to their past experiences noted above, which is why the basic income is not a good use of government money. ‘I was just struggling with this particular group, because I was just thinking, you know, they are extremely vulnerable’ (P27, HoS); ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my nine years [in this job], is, if you give the care leavers money, it goes out as quick as it comes in. There’s no concept of money, or what they should do with it. It’s there to be spent’ (P4, PA).
In the following excerpt, the professional notes how differently they themselves and others attending the professionals’ focus group would respond to a basic income:
Some of these young people have had so much trauma in their pasts, they just live for today, and I think, when you give them this money, they [will] just blow it, but not thinking, like, if we had the money now, as in this room, we put it towards a mortgage, or we put it towards a car, I’m not saying for everyone, obviously, but that’s what I would do. (P35, PA, emphasis added)
Secondly, and in contrast, some rationalised this frustrating behaviour by saying how similar care leavers are to any other 18-year-olds, including how the professionals themselves would have behaved at the same age. ‘The recipient group, you know, they are a deserving group, but 18-year-olds aren’t equipped to manage that sort of money at that age, it’s just not realistic (P1, PA); ‘I don’t think 18 is a good age to, kinda, test the pilot on. I know when I was 18, if I had that amount of money a month, I wouldn’t have been thinking about my future, and using it to better myself, and my future’ (P12, PA).
Thirdly, a minority view was that – their disadvantage notwithstanding – this group is as diverse as any other group of young people the same age, and therefore one should expect to see a wide variety of behaviours. For example, one PA noted ‘…if someone turned around and gave the six of us (in this focus group) basic income, we’d all spend it differently, I suppose’ (P13, PA).
For this participant, similarities between care leavers and the rest of the population were more important than the differences, and their emphasis was on general differences between individuals. This is a different narrative to the two other strands of argument reported in this section on identity, where the problems of giving the cohort an income are rationalised either by their vulnerabilities as a group, or the fact that it should not be given to any 18-year-olds.
Attitude
In our study, both recipient groups noted that some young people valued the money more than others.
Earlier sections have already shown that some young people and professionals were concerned about recipients who would simply waste the money, for example, by spending much of it on drugs and alcohol. In the following, one recipient reports they knew of others who misused the money, while a second had more generalised concerns:
I’m not trying to say like, I’m so much better than them…but … when it’s given to people that are spending it on the wrong things…I’ve seen like those people kind of get more greedy and it feeds into their problems that they already have, with all this money. (YP14)
Participant: I know some care leavers aren’t as responsible as some of us and will spend it on like drugs and stuff like that. So, I’m mixed on it, it is great for the age that we’re at, but some of them blow it on illegal substances and stuff.
Interviewer: Do you know anybody who’s done that?
Participant: Not personally, no. (YP19)
As well as worrying about money being misused by some recipients, some professionals felt much more positive about the money being given to those whose attitudes and behaviours were perceived by them as positive.
I wish I could have chosen some of my young people, because I’ve got four young people that are literally thriving, working so hard, like, a couple of jobs, still in college. They have so many ambitions and I just think, you deserve to have that money to put towards your own business, or put towards your car, to get you to where you wanna be in the future… You know, it would be so much more beneficial to you than it would to another young person. (P26, PA)
Others were concerned that the basic income encouraged bad attitudes towards money, with some young people reported to not be valuing the additional money, while others signalled valuing it by, for example, building up savings.‘And she said, “How do you expect me to live off that?” … Like, I think it’s plenty to live off (P34, PA); ‘I can think of [one who] is predominantly saving his money … [but another] one that’s not doing anything with it. Just spending it on stuff, nothing major. I think it’s stopped them having value for money, for some of mine’ [P36, PA].
Closely related to attitudes about how and what the money is spent on is the notion of reciprocity, which is discussed next.
Reciprocity
Some young people were keen to emphasise that they were not ‘work-shy’, and several provided details about how many jobs they had applied for, as if to demonstrate some effort in return for the reward of the basic income, despite this not being a requirement of the unconditional income. Several were working in more than one job as well as studying at school, college or university, while others noted that they were unable to work or study due to disability or caring responsibilities. The following young person expressed confidence that they would be working soon and hoped that others would have the same attitude:
It’s good for me because I’m not gonna sit on it for, like, two years and then get a job, because two years of non-work experience is a little difficult to explain to an employer, so I think there is still a slight risk that some people might just sit on it, not get a job… [I] hope and pray that enough of us are sensible enough to realise that we’ve got a blessing in disguise here, to be able to have this, because most people don’t. (YP23)
The issue of reciprocity was even more apparent in professionals’ discussions around the unconditionality of the basic income. Many felt financial support should be provided with a work, education or engagement requirement, whether that meant being ‘in education, training, or volunteering, not just sat in the house’ (P8, PA) or undertaking ‘some form of apprenticeship training… [that] would have shown them exactly what it would have been like, in reality, to earn money but have to do something in return’ (P29, PA). Others suggested conditions need not be onerous, ‘just engagement’ (P12, PA), but the lack of any conditions was seen as ‘the biggest challenge’ (P32, PA).
A strong inclination towards the need for reciprocity that was widespread amongst practitioners – and had support from some of the recipients – presents a challenge to the model of basic income, of which a key tenet is unconditionality.
Discussion
This analysis examines perceptions of deservingness among those involved in arguably the most generous basic income pilot delivered in the world to date. The topic of deservingness is pertinent because it has, for centuries, shaped debates about how the state helps disadvantaged citizens (O’Brien, Reference O’Brien, Lavalette and Mooney2013). This analysis builds on previous work on financial help, which has highlighted concerns about deservingness among professionals and other community members (Westlake et al., Reference Westlake, Corliss, Thompson, Meindl, Diaz, Talwar and Folkes2022; Heywood & Allen, Reference Heywood and Allen1963). However, in contrast to those studies, which primarily focused on parents of children in child protection settings, our findings demonstrate that there is no dominant narrative of undeservingness regarding care leavers amongst care leavers themselves or professionals who work closely with them. Further, this is among the first studies exploring perceptions of deservingness amongst those who are actually in receipt of an unconditional basic income. There have been some discussions in the UBI literature that the experience of unconditionality has the scope of expanding or disrupting notions of deservingness (Castro & West, Reference Castro and West2022; Van Parijs & Vanderboroght, Reference Van Parijs and Vanderborght2017). However, our findings, and emerging evidence from pilots across the world (Mathur, Reference Mathur2025), highlight that evaluations of deservingness occur within the same hegemonic paradigms as other social policy interventions, especially when embedded within an otherwise conditional system (Widerquist, Reference Widerquist2018). This was particularly evident in the strength of reciprocity concerns among professionals, whose day-to-day work is shaped by a welfare benefits system where support is typically tied to compliance with conditions, such as that benefits recipients should engage with professionals and seek employment. These behaviours can be seen as showing some reciprocity for money received. The context of conditional welfare provision may therefore anchor deservingness judgements even when the specific intervention removes those conditions.
The analysis presented in this paper includes the views of two groups with contrasting experiences of the scheme. One group has received the income, while the other has a responsibility to support the recipients through this two-year period. Unsurprisingly, there are some differences of emphasis in the two groups’ views of deservingness. The professionals worried about the vulnerability of some and the longer-term learning opportunities potentially lost by the lack of conditionality. Yet, and perhaps more surprisingly, there is some synergy between the views of both groups. There is an almost universal view that care leavers need additional support, and there are concerns across both groups about the potential for substance misuse. This may be explained by the familiarity within both groups of the challenges facing many care leavers.
Regarding need and control, some professionals argued that the vulnerabilities arising from traumatic histories meant that a basic income could expose young people to further risk of exploitation by others, making them unsuitable rather than undeserving of the basic income. This distinction points to an important tension: while there was consensus that care leavers lacked control over experiences that led them to be taken into care, and which in many cases would have caused significant trauma, professionals held varied views about participants’ current capacity for what they considered to be wise decision-making. These perspectives, shared by some of the young people, reflected the diversity of circumstances among young people transitioning to adulthood, and practitioners’ existing experience of the range of trajectories that they will have seen in their practice (Sacker et al., Reference Sacker, Murray, Lacey and Maughan2021). This undoubtedly led to some strong concerns about potential exploitation or gaps in CVs.
Importantly, the likelihood that these vulnerabilities represented the long shadow cast by historic traumas was understood to make recipients deserving of support. However, for many professionals, the risks of trying to help in this particular format – a relatively large and unconditional cash transfer – outweighed for them the potential benefits. This echoes broader debates about how far state benefits should be targeted. Advocates of UBI have a clear answer – there should be no targeting – but others argue this is wrong on a range of practical and moral grounds (e.g. Bell, Reference Bell2024; Gill, Reference Gill2023).
Moving away from the young people that professionals were acutely worried about, there was also less agreement about whether the basic income is the right method of support or whether young people need (or perhaps deserve) this much. There were concerns from some, but not all, that it could create unrealistic expectations among the cohort as a whole. Indeed, it was notable that professionals’ expectation for many care leavers is that they will be reliant on Universal Credit in adulthood. This is likely drawn from their experience of working with this group, and it further underlines the financial precarity care leavers typically face. However, that assumption could be argued to reflect the system setting its aspirations for care leavers too low, as much as an indication that a basic income that was designed around the living wage was too generous.
The identity principle of deservingness relates to a tendency to be more sympathetic to supporting those with whom we can identify, who are closer to us. This was relatively straightforward for recipients, who adopted a group identity when explaining why the basic income was correctly targeted at care leavers, framing their shared experiences as justifying collective support. Professionals, on the other hand, wrestled with more complex issues of identity. Three positions emerged. The first emphasised how different this group is to others in society, characterising them as uniquely vulnerable due to their personal histories. A second group normalised their situation, stating that any 18-year-old would face challenges with managing an income, including their own younger selves at 18. A third position highlighted the diversity of care leavers, just like any other societal group, including professionals. The professionals also relate to the young people in that they know them through their close working relationships. These are not unknown ‘others’, but young people they know well through ongoing professional relationships.
Regarding attitude, both recipients and professionals worried about poor spending habits among some. A few of the basic income recipients we interviewed, like those in Sheldrick and MacDonald’s study (Reference Sheldrick and MacDonald2013), were concerned about the lack of reciprocity in the basic income pilot, seeming to relate it to a group identity and hoping that peers would not ‘let the side down’.
For professionals, it was a more prevalent concern and linked to fairness – some seemed to pose the question, ‘why should young people be paid for doing nothing when we have to work hard for not much more income?’ This narrative is the closest some professionals come to stating that recipients are undeserving. But a more prevailing view was that this lack of reciprocity in terms of imposing work, study or engagement conditions on the income was bad for the recipients themselves. In other words, they would not learn the meaning of work, fail to gain qualifications and skills, and leave gaps in their CVs, which would hold them back in the future. They feared that the lack of reciprocity would leave recipients worse off than if they had not received the money at all – a concern that the intervention might undermine rather than enhance their future prospects.
Compared to the political debate about the eligibility of care leavers who were former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, criticism of the lack of conditionality has been relatively muted by politicians. These professionals, who know individual recipients, do not make a distinction between asylum seekers and non-asylum seekers, but do distinguish between recipients according to their vulnerability to exploitation or whether to not they use the income in a manner the professionals perceive as unwise. Many recipients, too, worry about other care leavers who may misuse the money. It is clear that any basic income scheme will have to respond to concerns about conditionality and, when offered to more vulnerable groups, concerns about financial exploitation.
Conclusion
The findings reported here are drawn from the first year of the pilot, and views of deservingness may change as professionals and recipients gain more experience with basic income. A further limitation is that recipients and professionals were not randomly selected to take part in the research interviews and may not be fully representative of their respective groups. Nonetheless, we would argue that there are several implications of our findings for future basic income pilots and in any policies designed to support care leavers.
When the evaluation is completed, there will be some evidence as to whether concerns about vulnerability and a lack of conditions are substantiated or not, at least in terms of short-term outcomes, but these concerns are important independently of outcomes. The findings suggest that normative ideas about reciprocity and the social contract are deeply embedded. They are likely to have a bearing on the broader acceptability of unconditional cash transfers and show there is a risk that those with a key role to play in implementation – frontline professionals – could be uneasy, unhappy or even obstructive. They need to have clear information about why any cash transfer is being implemented. Their insights into how to mitigate any risks are likely to be helpful and should be heard.
Regarding policies for supporting care leavers, our analysis shows that there is consensus that care leavers are widely considered to be deserving of enhanced support. We cannot make a judgement about the merits of basic income for providing this support until we have outcomes analysis, but either way, we need to either enhance existing support or find (and test) new ways to support care leavers.
Acknowledgements
The evaluation of the Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot is funded by the Welsh Government. We wish to thank the young people and professionals who gave generously of their time to take part in this research. We acknowledge the sustained contribution made by our advisory group of care-experienced young adults and the helpful advice of our external expert advisory group. Professor Kate Pickett, University of York, Professor Matthew Johnson, Northumbria University, Professor Rod Hick, Cardiff University, Professor Michael Sanders and Dr Dimitris Vallis, Kings College London, and Dr Elizabeth-Ann Schroeder, Dr Patrick Fahr and Professor Stavros Petrou, University of Oxford, are all members of the wider research team.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
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