Dealing with Welfare Conditionality: Implementation and Effects 9781447341833

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EDITED BY

Peter Dwyer

DEALING WITH W E L FA R E CONDITIONALITY Implementation and effects

DEALING WITH WELFARE CONDITIONALITY Implementation and effects Edited by Peter Dwyer

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol 1427 East 60th Street BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA UK t: +1 773 702 7700 t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 f: +1 773-702-9756 [email protected] [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk www.press.uchicago.edu © Policy Press 2019 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978-1-4473-4182-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-4184-0 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-4185-7 Mobi ISBN 978-1-4473-4183-3 ePdf The right of Peter Dwyer to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editor and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Andrew Corbett Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents List of abbreviations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements one two

three

four

five

six

seven

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iv v vii

Editor’s introduction Peter Dwyer Supporting people? Universal Credit, conditionality and the recalibration of vulnerability Helen Stinson Punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency: exploring the role of welfare conditionality with ‘at risk’ women attempting to live ‘a good life’ Larissa Povey Resisting welfare conditionality: constraint, choice and dissent among homeless migrants Regina Serpa No strings attached? An exploration of employment support services offered by third sector homelessness organisations Katy Jones Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK Liviu Dinu and Lisa Scullion Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions Emily Ball Editor’s afterword Peter Dwyer

Index

1 15

41

69

91

119

149

175

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List of abbreviations APA ASB CEE CJS DCLG DWP ESA ESRC EU GPoW JSA NGO SCSH TFP UC WelCond WP WRAG

Alternative Payment Arrangement Anti-Social Behaviour Central and Eastern Europe Criminal Justice System Department for Communities and Local Government Department for Work and Pensions Employment and Support Allowance Economic and Social Research Council European Union Genuine Prospect of Work Jobseeker’s Allowance Non-Governmental Organisation Scottish Council for Single Homelessness Troubled Families Programme Universal Credit Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change project Work Programme Work-Related Activity Group within ESA

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Notes on contributors Emily Ball is a Teaching Associate at the University of Birmingham.

Her chapter in this book draws on work undertaken for an ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Centre funded studentship investigating the use of conditionality mechanisms in family-based interventions. This was undertaken in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield, and her doctorate was awarded in March 2018. Her research interests include welfare conditionality, parenting, inequality, and governance and social control. Recent publications have explored the design and use of family-based interventions in policy since 1997, alongside a critical application of Loic Wacquant’s work. Ion Liviu Iulian Dinu is in the third year of a Social Policy PhD

based in the Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit, School of Health and Society at the University of Salford. His doctoral work on Roma’s experience of welfare conditionality in the UK is funded by a University of Salford Pathway to Excellence Research Studentship. He has previously published articles on ‘Life in the neo-liberal ghetto’ and ‘How to use children to get power’ (both in 2014). Peter Dwyer is Professor of Social Policy in the Department of

Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, UK. His research and teaching interests focus on topics related to social citizenship, welfare conditionality and international migration and its implications for migrants’ rights and welfare states. He has published widely on these issues. His work has been supported by a range of funders, including the ESRC, the European Commission and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Between 2013 and 2019, he led the Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change project (‘WelCond’): www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk Katy Jones is a Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Decent

Work and Productivity at Manchester Metropolitan University. She worked on the Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change project between 2014 and 2018. Her chapter in this book draws on work simultaneously undertaken for her doctoral thesis at the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University. She was awarded her doctorate in April 2018. Her research interests focus on labour market disadvantage and employment-related support. She has published widely on topics including youth unemployment,

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vocational training, social security and skills policy, wage inequality, and poverty. Larissa Povey is a final-year doctoral student in the Centre for

Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) and a Lecturer in Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University. Her PhD research on women’s experiences of penal and welfare policy interventions was funded by a Sheffield Hallam University Vice-Chancellor’s PhD Scholarship. Her work explores the gendered dimensions of advanced marginality. Recent publications focus on the experiences of marginalised women in Austerity Britain (Social Policy and Society, 2017) and the impact of Universal Credit in Rotherham (CRESR, 2018). Lisa Scullion is Professor in Social Policy and Associate Director at the

Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit, University of Salford. Her research focuses on the experiences of marginalised groups within the welfare system. Her past work has been supported by the European Commission, the Home Office, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and various local authorities and third sector organisations. She is currently leading a two-year study focusing on the experiences of military veterans in the social security system funded by the Forces in Mind Trust. Regina Serpa is Associate Tutor at the University College of Estate

Management, and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster. Her doctoral study, entitled Choice, Constraint and Negotiating Housing Systems: Analysing migrant homelessness in the US and UK context, was funded by a James Watt Studentship in the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. She is a Corporate Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and an Associate Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Recent publications consider social housing in Scotland and the right to settled accommodation in Scotland. Helen Stinson is a final-year doctoral student in the Department of

Social Policy and Social Work, University of York. Her PhD is funded by an ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Centre/Joseph Rowntree Foundation collaborative studentship. Her research focuses on issues related to behavioural conditionality, vulnerability and Universal Credit.

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Acknowledgements Details of the various organisations that provided the financial support for the doctoral studentships that generated the analyses on which discussions in this book are based are outlined in the ‘Notes on contributors’ section. It is no exaggeration to state that without their support, this book could not have been written. I would like to start by thanking both the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the collaborating universities and organisations that match-funded the doctoral studentships linked to the ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change’ project, (which was itself supported under ESRC grant ES/K002163​ /2). Thanks must also go to the contributing early career researchers, whose work this edited collection showcases. They all responded to my requests and queries as editor in a prompt and professional manner. Alongside the direct contributors to this book, the doctoral supervision teams and the anonymous manuscript referees who offered comment and supportive critique as part of the process of sharpening the book’s arguments also deserve thanks. The contributors and I are also especially grateful to all those who helped to facilitate the fieldwork that directly informs the book. Thanks to all those organisations that assisted in the recruitment of research participants and also to those who agreed to be interviewed and willingly gave their time, often when living in pressured and constrained circumstances, to share their insights and experiences of an increasingly conditional UK welfare state. Finally, thanks to Laura Vickers-Rendall and the team at Policy Press for their work in bringing this book to fruition. Peter Dwyer, University of York, August 2018

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ONE

Editor’s introduction Peter Dwyer

Introduction: defining and understanding welfare conditionality Before outlining in a little more detail each chapter’s specific focus, it is important to consider how welfare conditionality might be precisely defined, to outline the extent to which it has become an accepted part of welfare policy and practice within and beyond the UK, and to consider what its purported purpose may be. Looking first at issues of definition, Clasen and Clegg (2007) offer a useful starting point. Considering the concept of welfare conditionality in its broadest sense, and exploring how it might be defined and operationalised to enable a comparative consideration of welfare state regime change, Clasen and Clegg identify three ‘levels’, or types, of conditions operating within welfare states which may govern an individual’s access to social security. The purpose of their discussions was to offer insights into the qualitative shifts in the relationship between social rights and responsibilities that define the quality of social citizenship in different settings, at different times: The first, or primary, condition for the receipt of social security is always membership of a defined category of support … Analytically secondary to conditions of category are conditions of circumstance or in more common social security parlance, eligibility and entitlement criteria … The third and final level of conditionality … intervening only after eligibility for benefit has been otherwise established and having the function of regulating the ongoing benefit receipt. It pertains to what could be called conditions of ‘conduct’, with the policy levers being the tightening or loosening of behavioural requirements and constraints imposed upon different kinds of benefit recipients. (Clasen and Clegg, 2007:172-4).

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This approach reminds us that very few rights to social benefits and services in contemporary welfare states are in effect ‘unconditional’ and that when operating alone, or in conjunction with one another, conditions of category, circumstance and conduct – as identified by Clasen and Clegg – routinely function to define and limit an individual’s right to social security. It is also worth noting at this point that conditionality operating at a fourth level, that of front-line implementation, operationalised by what Lipsky (1980) famously called ‘street level bureaucrats’, may also be significant. While all four levels of this broadly defined notion of conditionality are often important mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in respect of access to welfare rights (see, for example, Shutes, 2016; Dwyer et al, 2018; and Chapters Four and Six of this book for discussions of how they come together to curtail the rights of migrants), the idea of ‘welfare conditionality’ is more routinely associated with what Clasen and Clegg labelled conditions of ‘conduct’ or behaviour. The link between an individual’s eligibility to access collectively provided social rights and their individual responsibilities to the wider community has long featured as a key aspect of debates about both the principle and the practice of social citizenship. In recent decades, however, the so-called ‘classic’ welfare settlements of the post-Second World War period, which emphasised citizens’ statusbased entitlements to at least a minimum level of publicly funded social security benefits and welfare services on the basis of need (regardless of prior contribution or responsible conduct) (see Marshall, 1950; Tittmus, 1958), has been questioned. Informed by New Right (Mead, 1986, 1997; Murray, 1984, 1999) and new communitarian thinking (Etzioni, 1997, 2000) – which combines an inherent hostility to extensive state-provided welfare, with the view that collectively provided social benefits and services should be regarded not as social rights but as particular and conditional privileges to be bestowed only on active, responsible citizens – there has been ‘a broad and far reaching shift towards greater conditionality in welfare’ (Deacon, 2004: 911). Welfare conditionality that can be more specifically defined as an approach that makes access to certain basic, publicly provided welfare benefits and services dependant on an individual first agreeing to meet particular compulsory duties or patterns of responsible behaviour (Deacon, 1994) is now an embedded feature of many advanced and emerging welfare states across the globe. This includes:

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• many European continental welfare states, where the language of ‘activation’ is often used as an alternative to welfare conditionality (Betzelt and Bothfeld, 2011; van Berkel et al, 2011); • nations of the Global South, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico and South Africa (Barrientos, 2011; Lund, 2011; Standing, 2011); • high-income countries such as Australia (Taylor et al, 2016), Ireland (Boland and Griffin, 2017), New Zealand (Lunt et al, 2008), the US (Deacon, 2000, 2003; Gilbert, 2009) and the UK (Dwyer, 1998, 2016). In short, today welfare conditionality is an idea with international reach and significance. Of course, that does not mean that it is operationalised in a single uniform manner within the numerous nations and settings in which it is implemented. Take for, example, ‘Tegenprestatie’ in the Netherlands. Roughly, translated into English, this refers to the ‘civic contribution’ that Dutch people are required to make when in receipt of social assistance benefits. Unlike the UK’s system, which continues to take a ‘work first’ focused approach, within many of the Dutch municipal local authorities to which responsibility for delivering welfare conditionality is devolved, people can fulfil their civic contribution requirements through voluntary work, informal caring responsibilities or other useful activities. These may include language and physical training or work on personal issues around physical, mental or financial impairments. Supporters and service providers linked to Tegenprestatie programmes emphasise the positive support available and a more ‘human investment’ approach to welfare conditionality, designed to enhance wider social inclusion beyond simple inclusion in paid employment that is central to the ‘work first’ conditionality that dominates in the UK and elsewhere. While there is certainly shared ground in respect of the reciprocity that exists in both systems, and rights to social assistance clearly come with contingent individual responsibilities in both cases, important differences in how welfare conditionality is implemented are evident (Dwyer, 2017). Regardless of how welfare conditionality is differentially implemented, a common aim behind its increased use across a range of policy sectors and welfare states is to trigger and sustain behaviour change among recipients of social welfare (DWP, 2008). Those who endorse welfare conditionality believe that extensive, unconditional, passive entitlement to public welfare benefits and services promotes inactivity and irresponsibility, and helps to entrench welfare dependency among a separate ‘underclass’, who are then able to rely on the public purse,

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rather than their own endeavours within the paid labour market, to fund their preferred lifestyle. Allied to this, advocates of welfare conditionality (for example Mead, 1986) assert that it provides an answer to such individual idleness and irresponsibility. They believe that this can be achieved by embedding a principle of welfare conditionality within welfare state provision, that is ensuring that rights to social welfare benefits and services are contingent on an individual accepting specified behavioural requirements, such as the duty to work. Having established this principle, you then implement it by instrumentally using various combinations of mandatory engagement with specified support services (‘carrots’) backed up by a system of sanctions (‘sticks’) for non-compliance. This is to encourage, or if necessary to compel, positive behaviour change – routinely moving people off welfare benefits and into paid work and/or requiring them to desist from problematic or anti-social behaviour. Advocates therefore see welfare interventions premised on behavioural conditionality as enabling, effective and ethical (see Deacon, 2004; Watts et al, 2014 for fuller discussions of ethical debates in relation to the application of welfare conditionality). Conversely, critics of welfare conditionality argue that its advocates are wrong to prioritise individual behaviour as both the main cause of, and the solution to, welfare dependency above the wider structural factors that are important in understanding unemployment and poverty. Adversaries also point to the rationality mistake in advocates’ thinking, namely that people are always willing and able to respond rationally to the ‘carrots’ or ‘sticks’ being applied to change their behaviour; however, this is not always necessarily the case, due to other ongoing issues in their lives. Opponents of welfare conditionality view its use as ethically unjustifiable, because it disproportionately punishes poor people, is socially divisive, and, by primarily focusing on the responsibility to undertake paid work, undermines other valid forms of social contribution, such as informal care. They also argue that it is largely ineffective in promoting paid employment or personal responsibility, and that it exacerbates social exclusion among disadvantaged populations (Dwyer, 1998; Wright, 2016; Fletcher and Wright, 2017; Batty, 2017; Patrick, 2017; Edmiston, 2018).

The background to this edited collection In early 2013, the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ) announced the outcomes of its regular Centres and Large

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Grants Competition and, with the significant financial support awarded under grant number ES/K002163/2, the ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change’ (WelCond) project was established. This was a major five-year collaborative project, involving teams of researchers from six UK universities in England and Scotland: the University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Salford, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University and the University of York. The University of York acted as the project’s central hub. The vision was to create an international and interdisciplinary focal point for social science research on the effectiveness, impacts and ethics of the increasing use of welfare conditionality across a range of welfare sectors, including social security benefits, housing, criminal justice and migration systems. More specifically, WelCond had two core aims: • First, to develop an empirically and theoretically informed understanding of the role of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change among a diversity of welfare recipients over time. • Second, to consider the particular circumstances in which the application of welfare conditionality may, or may not, be seen as ethically justified. The outputs that have flowed from the main WelCond project are many and varied – see, for example, Watts et al, 2014; Dwyer and Wright, 2014; Dwyer, 2016; Fletcher and Wright, 2017. More are forthcoming at the time of writing (for example Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2018; Dwyer et al, 2018, 2019), as analysis of the extensive empirical data generated in the three waves of fieldwork that underpinned the main WelCond project continues.1 However, in addition to the core project briefly outlined here, a key part of WelCond’s remit was to support the development of early career researchers involved in, or associated with, the project. A central aim of this edited collection is to do just that. As part of the wider programme of research undertaken under the remit of WelCond, a cohort of eight PhD students were recruited to undertake a series of separate doctoral projects independent of the main study. Three were supported by additional ESRC grants, and five through match funding from the noted collaborating universities, with additional support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in one instance. The idea for 1

See www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk for further details.

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an edited collection to showcase the work of our early career scholars emerged from discussions at a WelCond PhD conference held in Edinburgh in March 2015, which brought all the linked PhD students and the wider project research team together for the first time. This book represents the end result of those early discussions.

Chapter outlines Initially embraced by the UK Conservative administrations of the late 1980s and 1990s, welfare conditionality was enthusiastically endorsed, embedded and expanded as a cornerstone of the ‘Third Way’ reforms of the welfare state that were central to New Labour’s years in office. It has subsequently been further advanced by the recent Conservative–Liberal Coalition government (2010-15) and the Conservative administrations that have followed. Welfare conditionality is now a firm feature of UK social welfare, housing, homelessness and anti-social behaviour policy. Within social security, its reach has been extended to encompass previously exempt groups, such as disabled people, lone parents and, since 2013, under the ongoing rollout of Universal Credit, low-paid workers. In 2012, an enhanced benefit sanction regime was introduced. Job coaches are able to set variable, personalised requirements for claimants to engage in up to 35 hours per week of job search activity and/or to attend mandatory training activities (see Dwyer, 2016, for more detailed discussions). Simultaneously, the UK welfare state has undergone significant reform and retrenchment in the face of austerity measures initiated by recent UK governments in response to the financial crisis (Taylor-Gooby, 2012). It is against this backdrop that the authors of the ensuing chapters consider how welfare conditionality – and its key components of sanction and mandatory support – are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users. Helen Stinson starts discussions in Chapter Two with a consideration of Universal Credit (UC). Initiated in 2013, with full roll-out expected to be completed by March 2022, UC is a fundamental reform of the UK’s social security system that replaces six current means-tested benefits. Introduced with the intention of smoothing transitions between welfare and work – and ensuring that engagement with the paid labour market offers distinct advantages over reliance on social security – it has been dogged by a number of problems, but is now an established part of the social welfare system (Timmins, 2016). Significantly, its introduction extended welfare conditionality and the benefit sanctions

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regime to include for the first time many low-paid workers in receipt of in-work, low-wage and housing benefit supplements. This is an important development, which critics have argued represents a step change in UK social security policy (Bennett, 2012; Dwyer and Wright, 2014). Discussions in Stinson’s chapter focus specifically on vulnerable claimants’ experiences of the system of discretionary loans and modifications in payment built into the UC system which, as she notes, were designed to ‘protect the interests of those who are in vulnerable circumstances or who may face challenges in dealing with a new system’ (DWP, 2013: 6). She finds that although some vulnerable claimants are able to access additional support, the social exclusion of others is heightened by the present system, as their vulnerabilities fall foul of the welfare conditionality and discretion inherent within UC. In Chapter Three, Larissa Povey looks at how interactions between the criminal justice system and the UK’s highly conditional welfare state play out in the lives of women who have come into contact with the criminal justice system and/or who have histories of offending. Following an initial discussion of the punitive and gendered nature of the UK’s welfare and justice systems, she goes on to highlight how the two combine to routinely structure lives characterised by ongoing punishment and powerlessness among her respondents. Utilising Lister’s (2004) discussion of bounded agency, Povey argues that trapped within the ‘disciplinary archipelago’ of the ‘penal welfare nexus’, the women’s energies become focused on their day-to-day financial struggle to make ends meet. Conditionality within the benefit system serves to further compound the issues the women faced elsewhere in their lives, and negated many of the potentially positive effects of the support they were receiving through attendance at day centres. Individual attempts to move into employment, or otherwise positively change their behaviour, turn their lives around and lead ‘a good life’ in the future, were regularly undermined by the structured constraints and enduring disadvantages they faced. The next two chapters consider the operation of welfare conditionality in relation to homelessness. In Chapter Four, Regina Serpa draws on insights from interviews conducted in Scotland with Polish migrant rough sleepers and practitioners involved in the provision of homelessness support services. Analysis and discussions in this chapter echo earlier noted issues related to both bounded agency (see Chapter Three) and the potential for conditionality operating at a variety of different levels within immigration and welfare policy (that is, category, circumstance, conduct and implementation), to impact negatively on the rights and options available to migrants. Serpa

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argues, however, that: ‘highly conditional welfare systems – which limit the entitlements of particular migrants through the application of specific eligibility criteria, while simultaneously demanding certain behavioural requirements from those migrants in order for them to access benefits and services – are likely to be unsuccessful’. This is because the rough sleepers she interviewed actively chose the limited freedom and independence of continued life on the street, above and beyond the subjugation and meagre benefits available to them through the highly conditional social assistance system. In Chapter Five, Katy Jones notes that due to the levels of welfare conditionality now built into the UK social security system, many homeless people struggle to fulfil the mandatory work-related conditions required for continued receipt of unemployment benefit. One consequence of this, beyond the intensification of poverty it triggers among an already vulnerable population, is that many homeless people become alienated from the mainstream statutory employment support services provided by Jobcentre Plus or outsourced training providers. Unable to access statutory services, many homeless people turn to employment-related support services provided by third sector homelessness non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Presenting analysis of data generated in interviews with practitioners working in homelessness NGOs, Jones notes that her interviewees are keen to critique the negative impacts of welfare conditionality and the limited effectiveness of a compliance-based approach to supporting homeless people into work. Simultaneously, they emphasised the virtues and advantages of their ‘unconditional’ approach to supporting people. While the preceding chapters have largely focused on the effects of welfare conditionality on service users, discussions in this chapter alert us to how the conditionality now embedded within statutory provision impacts on the support offered by non-statutory providers. Significantly, the chapter illustrates how homelessness NGOs are increasingly having to allocate time and money to mitigate the negative impacts of welfare conditionality in the benefits system on their clients. In turn, this reduces the capacity of employment-focused support workers to help homeless people move closer to, or into, paid work. Furthermore, while many NGOs are critical of conditionality within the mainstream welfare system, some third sector organisations appear to be incorporating certain aspects of conditionality into their own services. In Chapter Six, Liviu Dinu and Lisa Scullion explore the impacts of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants who moved to the UK following the enlargements of the European Union in 2004 and 2007.

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They offer a brief initial outline of the Roma and the disadvantage and discrimination that they routinely face in both their countries of origin in Europe and in the UK. This is followed by a critical discussion of the twin narratives of welfare dependency and benefit tourism, which are often aired in debates about the motives underpinning the relatively recent migration of Roma to the UK. Highlighting arguments that resonate with the earlier discussion of homeless migrant Poles (in Chapter Three), the aim here is to provide a starting point for understanding how overlapping forms of conditionality in UK policy impact on – and shape the coping strategies of – migrant Roma in respect of paid work and a welfare benefits system that seeks increasingly to constrain the social rights of EU migrants. Analysis presented in this chapter shows that Roma continue to face significant obstacles, when trying to access both paid work and out-of-work social security benefits in the UK. Indeed, the evidence presented suggests that faced with the twin difficulties of finding employment in the formal economy and/or putting up with the hassle, surveillance and limited financial support available through the social security system, some would prefer to take their chances working in the shadows of the unregulated, informal labour market. The effectiveness of conditional intensive family intervention policies in changing the behaviour of so-called ‘troubled’ families is considered in Chapter Seven. The success of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) in ‘turning round’ the lives of 99% of the families identified as being undermined by multiple problems – including crime, anti-social behaviour, mental health problems, domestic abuse and unemployment – and thus placed on the TFP has been loudly broadcast by the government. Subsequently, it has been roundly questioned by others (see Bate, 2016, for fuller discussions of the evidence and debate). Drawing on interviews with keyworkers and other practitioners working to deliver the TFP in a northern English city, Emily Ball reports a more nuanced appraisal of the programme’s limited success in changing lives. In identifying and discussing three key types of behavioural outcomes from the programme (no behaviour change; relative behaviour change; and temporary behaviour change), Ball highlights a mismatch between the rhetoric and the reality of achieving sustained behaviour change with families and individuals whose lives are blighted by myriad personal issues and social disadvantages. Highlighting the crucial role of working with such families to support them to make small positive steps forward in their lives, she is clear that successful behaviour change cannot be compelled – and that the

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more punitive elements of welfare conditionality are of limited value in bringing about positive behaviour change in this context.

Important new insights While eligibility conditions have always been integral to social provision, a new form of ‘instrumental behaviourism’ has become more prominent in international social policy in recent decades (for example Commonwealth of Australia, 2007; Darnton, 2008; Halpern et al, 2004; Mulgan, 2010; Southerton et al, 2011). In the UK, welfare conditionality, based on ‘the principle that aspects of state support, usually financial or practical, are dependent on citizens meeting certain conditions which are invariably behavioural’ (DWP, 2008: 1), has become a core component of interventions in many policy areas, including social security, social housing, homelessness, anti-social behaviour, criminal justice and migration. Drawing on original analysis of new qualitative data generated in studies conducted in a variety of locations in England and Scotland, the six substantive chapters that follow this introduction explore the varying impacts and implications of welfare conditionality across these diverse policy domains. This book presents data and discussions variously grounded in the perceptions and experiences of both the socially excluded individuals and groups who are routinely subject to welfare conditionality and those charged with delivering such policies. It offers important new insights into how welfare conditionality is implemented, its varied impacts, and how those at the sharp end of its application react to, and cope with, the benefit sanctions and mandatory support that are at the heart of the increasingly conditional 21st-century welfare state. References Barrientos, A. (2011) Conditions in antipoverty programmes, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 19(1): 5-26. Bate, A. (2016) The Troubled Families programme (England), House of Commons Library Briefing Paper, Number CBP 07585, 16 May 2016, London: House of Commons. Batty, S. (2017) Social insecurity? Welfare rights and welfare reform, Social Policy MA Dissertation, University of York. Bennett, F. (2012) Universal Credit overview and gender implications, in M. Kilkey, G. Ramia and K. Farnsworth (eds) Social Policy Review 24, Bristol: The Policy Press/Social Policy Association, 15-34.

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Betzelt, S. and Bothfeld S. (2011) (eds) Activation and Labour Market Reforms in Europe. Challenges to Social Citizenship, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Boland, T. and Griffin, R. (2017) The purgatorial ethic and the spirit of welfare, Journal of Classic Sociology, 1 August 2017. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468795X17722079 Clasen, J. and Clegg, D. (2007) Levels and levers of conditionality: Measuring change within welfare states, in J. Clasen and N. A. Siegel (eds) Investigating Welfare State Change. The ‘Dependent Variable Problem’ in Comparative Analysis, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 166-97. Commonwealth of Australia (2007) Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective, Barton: Australian Government/Australian Public Services Commission. Darnton, A. (2008) Practical Guide: An overview of behaviour change models and their uses, London: HM Treasury. Deacon, A. (1994) Justifying workfare; The historical context of the workfare debates, in M. White (ed.) Unemployment and public policy in a changing labour market, London: Policy Studies Institute. Deacon, A. (2000) Learning from the USA? The influence of American ideas upon New Labour thinking on welfare reform, Policy and Politics, 28(1): 5-18. Deacon, A (2003) Ending consensus as we began to know it, welfare reform and the Republicans after 2002, Social Policy and Society, 2(2): 171-5. Deacon, A. (2004) Justifying conditionality: the case of anti-social tenants, Housing Studies, 19(6): 911-26. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2008) No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility, London: DWP. DWP (2013) Government response to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee’s third report of session 2012–13: Universal Credit implementation: meeting the needs of vulnerable claimants, Cm 8537, February. Dwyer, P. (1998) Conditional citizens? Welfare rights and responsibilities in the late 1990’s, Critical Social Policy, 18(4): 519-43. Dwyer, P. (2016) Citizenship, conduct and conditionality: sanction and support in the 21st century UK welfare state, Social Policy Review 28, Bristol: The Policy Press/Social Policy Association, 41-62. Dwyer, P. (2017) Tengenprestatie: welfare conditionality the Dutch way, Blog for WelCond. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/2017/02/ tegenprestatie-welfare-conditionality-the-dutch-way/

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Dwyer, P. and Wright, S. (2014) Universal credit, ubiquitous conditionality and its implications for social citizenship, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 22(1): 27-36. Dwyer, P., Jones, K., McNeill, J., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. R. (forthcoming) The impacts of welfare conditionality: Sanction support and behaviour change, Bristol: The Policy Press. Dwyer, P., Jones, K., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. R. (2018) The impact of conditionality on the welfare rights of EU migrants in the UK, forthcoming in Policy and Politics. Edmiston, D. (2018) Welfare, inequality and social citizenship: deprivation and affluence in austerity Britain, Bristol: The Policy Press. Etzioni, A. (1997) The new golden rule, London: Profile Books. Etzioni, A. (2000) The third way to a good society, London: Demos. Fletcher, D. R. and Wright, S. (2017) A hand up or a slap down? Criminalising benefit claimants in Britain via strategies of surveillance, sanctions and deterrence, Critical Social Policy, 38(2): 323-44. Gilbert, N. (2009) US welfare reform: rewriting the social contract, Journal of Social Policy, 38(3): 383-99. Halpern, D., Bates, C., Beales, G. and Heathfield, A. (2004) Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour: The State of Knowledge and its Implications for Public Policy, London: Cabinet Office. Lipsky, M. (1980) Street level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lund, F. (2011) A step in the wrong direction: linking the South Africa Child Support Grant to school attendance, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 19(1): 5-14. Lunt, N., O’Brien, M. and Stephens, B. (2008) (eds) New Zealand, New Welfare, Melbourne: Cengage Learning. Marshall, T. (1950) Citizenship and social class and other essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mead, L. M. (1986) Beyond entitlement, New York: Free Press. Mead, L. M. (1997) Citizenship and social policy: T.H. Marshall and poverty, Social Philosophy and Social Policy, 14(2): 197-230. Mulgan, G. (2010) Influencing Behaviour to Improve Health and Wellbeing, An independent report, Department of Health, London: The Stationery Office. Murray, C. (1984) Losing ground, New York: Basic Books. Murray, C. (1999) The underclass revisited, Washington: American Institute for Public Policy Research. Patrick, R. (2017).  For whose benefit? The everyday realities of welfare reform, Bristol: The Policy Press.

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Editor’s introduction

Shutes, I. (2016) Work related conditionality and access to social benefits of national citizens, EU citizens and non EU citizens, Journal of Social Policy, 45(5): 691-707. Southerton, D., McMeekin, A. and Evans, A. (2011) International Review of Behaviour Change Initiatives, Edinburgh: Scottish Government.   Standing, G. (2011) Behavioural conditionality: why the nudges must be stopped – an opinion piece, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 19(1): 27-38. Taylor, D., Gray, M. and Stanton, D. (2016) New conditionality in Australian social security policy, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 51(1): 3-26. Taylor-Gooby, P. (2012) Root and branch restructuring to achieve major cuts: the social policy programme of the 2010 UK Coalition government, Social Policy and Administration, 46(1): 61-82. Timmins, N. (2016) Universal Credit, from disaster to recovery?, London: Institute of Government. Titmuss, R. M. (1958) Essays on the welfare state, London: Allen and Unwin. van Berkel, R., de Graaf, W. and Sirovatka, T. (2011) (eds) The Governance of Active Welfare States in Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Watts, B. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2018) Welfare conditionality: key ideas, Oxford: Routledge. Watts, B., Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G. and Watkins, D. (2014) Welfare sanctions and conditionality in the UK, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Wright, S. (2016) Conceptualising the active welfare subject: welfare reform in discourse, policy and lived experience, Policy and Politics, 44(2): 235-52.

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TWO

Supporting people? Universal Credit, conditionality and the recalibration of vulnerability Helen Stinson

Introduction Universal Credit (UC), which was introduced in 2013 by the UK Conservative–Liberal coalition government, replaced a number of UK means-tested working-age benefits and the tax credits system with a single monthly benefit payment (DWP, 2010a). In principle, it initially received cross-party political support as a benefit reform designed to provide claimants with a smoother transition and enhanced financial incentives into paid work (DWP, 2010b; Kennedy, 2011). UC benefit was perceived to offer a simplified benefit system to challenge particular forms of welfare ‘dependency’. This chapter considers the ways in which UC has been shaped by the neoliberal turn in welfare states (Humpage, 2014) and the subsequent rise in political and public expectations that recipients should be held personally responsible for, and expected to overcome, their vulnerable circumstances. It further explores the ways in which UC policies aimed at protecting those in vulnerable positions act to ease, circumvent or exacerbate lived experiences of vulnerability. The first part provides a brief outline of how the key elements within UC reflect recent political enthusiasm for policy strategies that intend to foster individual responsibility and financial independence among benefit claimants. It describes how UC attempts to account for the needs, capabilities and circumstances of UC recipients through various ‘easements’ and in-built additional support measures. These discussions are then critiqued through an exploration of how successive British governments have co-opted long-standing public and political attitudes towards the protection of ‘the vulnerable’, to justify the extension of behavioural conditionality to increasing numbers of UC recipients. It demonstrates that traditional ideas of vulnerability have been abandoned

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

in UC, and explores how this enables ‘easements’ and additional forms of support provided to vulnerable UC recipients to increasingly assume a temporary and highly conditional nature. The second part draws on data generated in semi-structured interviews with 18 UC recipients, to explore how these forms of additional support in UC currently operate in practice. This section illustrates how UC policy impacts upon the lived experiences of vulnerability in complex and often counterintuitive ways. It builds on earlier discussions, to examine how shifts in behavioural conditionality in UC can act to mediate, circumvent and exacerbate lived experiences of vulnerability. The conclusion argues that the recalibration of vulnerability in UC has led increasing numbers of claimants to be perceived – publicly and politically – as being personally responsible for their disadvantaged circumstances. It is contended that, through this, UC can act to further exacerbate the social exclusion of some vulnerable UC recipients, who are unable, or unwilling, to accept the conditions attached to their benefit claim.

Behavioural conditionality and Universal Credit Introduced in 2013 with the intention of simplifying the benefit system, UC replaces six means-tested working-age social security benefits and tax credits – Income Support, income-related Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit – with a single monthly benefit payment (DWP, 2010a). This means that UC removes the distinction between benefits paid to out-of-work claimants and income top-ups paid to low-paid workers, in an attempt to avoid the complex interactions between the benefit and tax credit systems that were previously a feature of the UK social benefit system. Successive UK governments have asserted that UC offers a new benefit structure that would re-incentivise individual claimants’ personal responsibility to find and move into paid work (DWP, 2010a, 2010b; Kennedy, 2011; McVey, 2018). Underpinned by a belief that, previously, the UK social security system trapped many individuals in cycles of welfare dependency that stifled incentive, opportunity and responsibility, the design of UC is imbued with the expectation that it should produce ‘internal and external cultural change’ in those in receipt of its welfare support (Duncan-Smith, 2012). The belief among many of the architects of UC that worklessness is ‘ingrained into everyday life’ has meant that

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Supporting people?

successive governments have firmly associated the receipt of particular forms of welfare support as indicative of an individual’s irresponsible choices, behaviour and lifestyle (see Centre for Social Justice, 2006; Timmins, 2016). Political support for this belief has meant that, from the outset, there has been cross-party consensus that UC should be a benefit system that will only provide a short-term safety net for individuals during times of temporary need, in order to challenge welfare ‘dependency’ and the ‘culture of inactivity’ of claimants (Freud in Sainsbury, 2014: 38). UC claimants are, therefore, increasingly expected to be able and willing to undertake ‘a journey … helping them move from dependence to independence’, by finding and engaging in paid work (Duncan-Smith, 2012). To ensure that UC recipients will embark on this personal journey into paid employment, UC is underpinned by a principle of behavioural conditionality that requires individuals to agree to, and fulfil, particular work-related duties or patterns of behaviour in order to be eligible for its award (Dwyer, 2004; Mead, 1986). Consequently, the majority of UC recipients are now mandated to engage in job search and/or training activities or face a benefit sanction for non-compliance (DWP, 2010b, 2011). A sanction reduces or stops the payment of the standard personal allowance element of UC for a minimum of four weeks to a maximum of three years or, for some UC recipients, indefinitely until the individual demonstrates re-compliance with their work-related conditions (Kennedy and Keen, 2016). In keeping with this stricter regime, UC also extends behavioural conditionality to many low-paid, in-work claimants (Dwyer and Wright, 2014). Some individuals in receipt of UC who are already in work but earn below a particular financial threshold can therefore now be mandated to find more, or better paid, work or face benefit sanctions. This extension represents a substantial shift in the way behavioural conditionality is conceived with regard to UC. It goes beyond prior political assertions that behavioural conditionality will ‘make work pay’ to an expectation that it should actively compel individuals to be independent of state social assistance benefits. The way in which UC is paid similarly intends to support movements into paid work. UC is calculated and paid in monthly arrears, to mirror the widespread practice of monthly wage payments. This payment structure is designed to teach UC recipients how to budget a monthly basis payslip and to manage their finances during any periods between jobs (IDS: Q222 in Work and Pensions Committee, 2012; Keen and Kennedy, 2016). A UC system that reflects real-time fluctuations in earned income is also expected to foster greater confidence in

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

the accuracy of payments and to enhance the financial incentives of returning to work (Alakeson et al, 2015). Furthermore, payments to a household – rather than to the individuals within it – mean that all working-age people in the household now have to comply with their particular work-related conditions in order to prevent a benefit sanction being applied to the entire household. An individual’s right to their UC payment is, consequently, no longer based purely on fulfilling their particular individual obligations set by the state, but is now dependent upon their partners, or relatives who are living in the same household, also demonstrating compliance (Millar and Bennett, 2017). Recognising vulnerability in UC? Easements, advances and Alternative Payment Arrangements Central to the newly intensified system of behavioural conditionality within UC is an individual’s ‘Claimant Commitment’. These records are created and signed by the individual claimant and their work coach (the adviser assigned to them at the Jobcentre Plus) at the outset of any claim (Work and Pensions Committee, 2015). The intention is that each Claimant Commitment will clearly specify the various job-search and mandatory training conditions that the claimant must fulfil in return for their UC payment. Through an ongoing discussion between the work coach and the claimant, these work-related conditions are expected to take into account the particular circumstances and capabilities of the individual. It is through these personalised measures that successive governments have declared that UC fosters the capacity for individuals to assume greater responsibility to prepare for, find and progress in paid work (DWP, 2014; Work and Pensions Committee, 2015). Two mechanisms exist to support people identified as vulnerable within UC. The first provides ‘easements’ to the Claimant Commitment for particular claimant groups who are perceived as having difficulties engaging in and returning to paid work (DWP, 2016b). This enables work coaches to modify, or ease, the extent to which some individuals are expected to participate in work-related activities (Kennedy, 2016; Kennedy et al, 2017). For example, while individuals without caring responsibilities are largely expected to look, and apply, for jobs for 35 hours a week, carers of young children under the age of three years only have to participate in work preparation activities (House of Commons, 2015). Similarly, disabled individuals considered to have a limited capacity to work are not expected to return to full-time paid

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Supporting people?

employment, but are instead encouraged to start regular part-time work (DWP, 2015a). A second mechanism of discretionary loans and modified payments provides a system of in-built additional support that seeks to ‘protect the interests of those who are in vulnerable circumstances or who may face challenges in dealing with a new system’ (DWP, 2013b: 6). It is these measures that are the specific focus of subsequent discussions in this chapter. These measures have been introduced following considerable criticisms of UC and the ways in which it may actively undermine the financial independence and transition into paid employment (see, for example, Finch, 2015; Fawcett Society, 2015; NAWRA, 2016). They provide some UC recipients with a financial advance of their first UC payment, or offer extra money via either a budgeting advance or a hardship loan, and they can modify the way in which UC is paid. For example, UC advances, budgeting advances and hardship loans all provide earlier or additional monetary payments to UC recipients who cannot afford their basic and essential needs, or whose health and wellbeing are at significant risk during any periods when UC is not paid to a claimant (Kennedy, 2013).1 UC recipients who are expected to have, or who are showing signs that they are having, difficulties in coping with the way UC is usually paid can be offered Alternative Payment Arrangements (APAs).2 An APA can: • enable UC to be paid more frequently (for example fortnightly rather than monthly); • allow the housing element of UC to be paid directly to the landlord rather than the UC claimant; • permit the overall household payment to be split between two individuals in the same household (DWP, 2013b: Para. 49; DWP, 2015b). The recalibration of vulnerability The premise that additional protection should be provided to people considered to be the most vulnerable in British society, as seen through 1

2

This can occur when a benefit sanction has been applied or during the initial five-week wait before the first UC payment. Discussion of APAs here relates to England, where the fieldwork that informs this chapter was undertaken. Different ‘Alternative Payment Arrangements’ apply by default in Northern Ireland, or are available on request in Scotland.

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

these various measures in UC, has long been accepted as one of the primary roles of the welfare state. Popularity for the belief that some individuals in society, through no fault of their own, are exposed to further harm without special protections has compelled, and also legitimised, the creation of a welfare system that intends to mediate these social risks (Goodin, 1985; Beddoe, 2013; Brown, 2014a). This means that, traditionally, ideas of vulnerability have been imbued with the belief that the risk posed both to, and by, particular groups necessitates some form of state protection (Beddoe, 2013). In recent years, successive UK governments have nonetheless, through rhetoric around the scarcity of welfare resources, utilised long-standing perceptions of vulnerability as political justification for the financial prioritisation of welfare services to particular claimants (Brown, 2014b). In turn, this has cast doubt on the extent to which an individual’s vulnerability is the result of structural forces that disadvantage and socially exclude certain groups of people, or is the outcome of particular individual deficits and irresponsible behaviour, for which such individuals should be held responsible (Harrison and Sanders, 2014). Not only has this narrowed the number of claimants deemed to be legitimately entitled to social security and permitted the gradual reduction in the availability of welfare resources to these individuals, but it has also given rise to political and popular belief that many vulnerable individuals can, and should, be encouraged to overcome their vulnerabilities (Harrison and Hemingway, 2014). Vulnerability within UC The extent to which vulnerability has been redefined is clearly illustrated by the near absence of reference to vulnerability in UC policy (DWP, 2013b). Consecutive UK governments have been unwilling to define vulnerability for the purpose of delivering UC, on the basis that ‘any attempt to do so would risk some people with complex needs falling outside of the prescribed definitions and then not receiving help that they may genuinely need’ (DWP, 2013b: 14). This resolve to avoid the word ‘vulnerable’ is based on the idea that traditional categories may not necessarily mean that an individual previously defined as vulnerable (such as disabled people) will be unable to cope with the mainstream benefit system (Freud: Ev. W51: Para. 1.3 in Communities and Local Government Committee, 2013). Consequently, there is an erosion of traditional ideas that particular claimant groups will automatically require additional forms of support. Instead, the notion of vulnerability is replaced by more vague reference

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Supporting people?

to individuals who have complex needs and/or who require additional support to access DWP benefits and services (Social Security Advisory Committee, 2013: 20; DWP, 2015c: Para. 2). This retreat from prespecified vulnerable groups in UC is, therefore, expected to ensure that any additional support provided to the individual claimant is tailored to the particular difficulties they encounter with the UC system. Redefining vulnerability in this way enables any support provided in UC to go beyond simply delivering further protection. There is an expectation that it will also help UC recipients to develop the tools and skills necessary to tackle what is considered to be at the root ‘of poverty and disadvantage to deliver real and sustained change’ (Social Security Advisory Committee, 2013: 41). Additional support is therefore intended to temporarily mediate the impact of the mainstream system, but is conditional upon UC recipients being willing and able to overcome their vulnerable circumstances (DWP, 2013a: 9; DWP, 2015c: Para. 7). For example, the financial support provided to some vulnerable UC recipients via UC advances, budgeting advances and hardship loans is limited to an amount that an individual can be expected to reasonably repay within a six-month time period. It is also limited to those UC recipients who do not already have substantial existing debts and who have not previously received similar forms of financial support (DWP, 2015c). This means that a vulnerable UC recipient who is considered unable to repay any advance or loan can be denied any additional financial support, even if they are otherwise unable to meet their basic needs or if a risk is posed to their health and wellbeing without it. Similarly, APAs are only offered on a temporary basis, because vulnerable UC recipients are expected to engage with external services that can develop their budgeting skills (such as money advice organisations). The temporary and conditional nature of additional support in UC is therefore underpinned by the expectation that vulnerable UC recipients should continue to comply with their Claimant Commitment (DWP, 2013a: 9; DWP, 2015c: Para. 7).

Experiences of additional support in UC This chapter now moves on to explore how access to, and denial of, additional support impacts upon the lives of vulnerable UC claimants. It draws on data generated with 18 people during semi-structured qualitative interviews undertaken in 2017. Respondents were recruited through a variety of services, located across the Greater Manchester region in England, that routinely come into contact with UC claimants.

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

This locality was chosen as it contains three of the initial UC Pathfinder areas introduced in 2013 (Wigan, Warrington and Oldham). Respondents were purposefully selected to ensure that a diverse range of vulnerabilities (such as ill health, domestic violence, drug and alcohol dependency and homelessness) were captured, but there was an awareness that respondents would also have a diversity of characteristics (such as poverty, gender, age and ethnicity) that would influence their lived experiences of vulnerability. Respondents had a range of different lived experiences of vulnerability (see Table 1). They did share some common ground, however, in that the majority had previously applied to access the additional support available within UC, although the circumstances and processes that surrounded these applications often differed. Table 1: Demographics of UC respondents in first wave of qualitative interviews Demographics

Respondents (n=18)

Gender

12 men 6 women

Age

5 aged 20-29 4 aged 30-39 4 aged 40-49 5 aged 50-59

Employment status

13 unemployed 1 in an apprenticeship 1 due to start full-time employment 3 in part-time employment

Housing status

4 lived in privately rented housing 8 lived in social housing 2 lived in domestic violence refuge 2 lived in temporary homeless accommodation 2 currently homeless

Indicators of vulnerability

7 with a physical health condition 9 with a mental health condition 7 with experience of homelessness 3 with experiences of domestic violence 16 with ongoing debt/rent arrears 2 with learning disabilities 7 with drug/alcohol/gambling addictions 4 with criminal records

Barriers to additional support The additional support available in UC is underpinned by a notion that it should promote claimants’ individual abilities to assume ownership of, and overcome, their vulnerable circumstances. However, access to, and exclusion from, such support shaped the lives of the respondents in

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Supporting people?

diverse and often counterintuitive ways (see Dwyer, 2018; Fitzpatrick et al, 2018). At the time of the interviews, vulnerable UC recipients in the Greater Manchester region were required to contact the UC service centre phone line to request additional support measures; such as to book an appointment with their work coach, apply for any additional monetary support or request changes to how the UC is paid. In early October 2017, the cost incurred by UC recipients to make this phone call (up to 55p per minute from a mobile telephone or 9p from a landline) began to receive considerable political and public attention and was identified as a substantial barrier to UC recipients receiving help with their benefit claim. This led the government to extend a freephone number to all UC recipients from November 2017 onwards. The respondents involved in this study echoed the criticisms of the UC phone charge and frequently spoke about how having to call an expensive phone line prevented or deterred them from calling to apply for additional support. For example, one respondent described how he had forgotten and missed one of his regular appointments with his work coach due to the death of a new-born baby in his family. This event had led to a 64-day benefit sanction. During this time, the research participant explained how he could not afford to switch on his phone, let alone call the UC service centre to arrange an earlier appointment to see his work coach or to ask for any extra financial support; this meant that he had to live from ‘hand to mouth’ as he cared for his two children: ‘You have to phone the service centre. You can’t just go into the job centre. But if you haven’t got access to a phone or nothing, you’re knackered. You are knackered. You’ve got to go miles out your way and come to the library.’ (R4, Tom, experience of homelessness, mental health condition, drug dependency, criminal record) For many respondents, not having independent financial resources to phone the UC service centre meant that they were reliant on accessing the ‘free’ phone lines provided through other support services that they were involved with. This was, however, occurring at a time when respondents reported that many support services were closing down due to lack of funding, leaving people having to walk miles or first find the money to pay for transport to services outside their local area:

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

‘I actually came here [support organisation] as they’ve got telephones. It’s very long telephone calls on UC, it can be up to an hour and on a mobile phone it’s 25p a minute. … you use a free phone if you can get one … They used to have [support services] but many of them have shut down because of a lot of a lack of funding.’ (R11, Tim, domestic violence, alcohol issues and mental health condition) ‘It’s down in the valley so that’s an extra 2-mile walk and it’s in an area where there are no buses. … if you have got to catch a bus from town to there then you’ve got to get the day ticket for any bus because it’s not [company name] buses that are going up that way, it’s [company name] buses. So, it’s either that or are you going to walk?’ (R18, Ben, homeless, physical health issue) Difficulties in paying for phone calls to UC were often exacerbated by its automated system and security questions, which UC recipients must answer before they are able to speak to a UC advisor. For example, one respondent, with an anxiety condition, described the considerable pressure he felt under to ensure that he had enough money to progress through the security process in order to request a return phone call from UC. Another respondent illustrated the difficulties that many UC recipients experience, when trying to pass through the security process itself. He explained how, at one time, an administrative delay in updating his change of address meant that he frequently failed the security questions. This resulted in him making repeated telephone attempts, but being unable to pass the security questions in order to speak to a UC advisor and being unable to check on why his address had not been updated: ‘It’s not a free phone call … you’ve gotta phone them and I’m not lying if you’ve ever phoned them, you’re talking twenty minutes before you even speak to a human being. And if you’ve got credit on your phone or anything, you can find out, you’re running out of money before you get to speak to someone. And then when you speak to ’em, you’re trying to say, “look if it goes off will you phone me back”, which they won’t do. And they take you through security questions and it’s like “oh God!”’ (R6, Mark, homeless, mental health condition, drug dependency, criminal record, debt)

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Supporting people?

‘I changed my address and it takes months for them to change your address. Coz I keep phoning them up and you have to say your postcode so I give them my postcode – “no, you’ve failed your security”. “Why have I failed my security?” “You give me the wrong postcode” “Well that’s the address that I’m now living at.”’ (R4, Tom, experience of homelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder, criminal record) The expense of the UC phone line, however, is not the only barrier UC recipients face when attempting to book appointments or apply for additional support. For example, some respondents spoke about how difficult it was, at often an already stressful period in their lives, to talk over the phone to a UC advisor they had never met before about often personal and sensitive topics. One respondent, Clare,3 had recently started working 25 hours a week. This number of part-time hours had been agreed with her work coach due to her ongoing mental health condition. Since starting work, however, Clare had discovered that her standard UC payment had been stopped. The financial instability caused by these changes to her UC payment had led to an eviction notice, a situation that clearly had detrimentally impacted upon her mental health. While in the midst of dealing with this situation, she described how difficult it was to seek help from disembodied UC advisors on the phone: ‘It’s just a nightmare [crying during the interview]. And I don’t think they help you in any way, they speak to you like crap on the phone. ... just like robots. You’re trying to explain summat and they just speak over your voice. And it’s why you get mad and frustrated. And I don’t understand it all.’ (R13, Clare, mental health condition, debt) For some respondents, difficulties in speaking to UC advisors over the phone were further compounded by wider systemic barriers. Sarah had a learning disability and had intermittently been in receipt of benefits for most of her working life. She explained how in the past she had received support from a specialist advisor at the Jobcentre Plus, but since moving into part-time work no longer had any regular appointments with her work coach. This had led to a situation where she was receiving letters from UC in a format that was inaccessible 3

These are pseudonyms, given to respondents in this study.

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

to her, so she often threw out important letters or had to wait until appointments with her debt support officer for these letters to be explained. With her levels of debt spiralling, Sarah spoke about her sense of confusion at how, since moving into work, she was no longer able to access support from the Jobcentre Plus that had previously been invaluable to her: ‘Because I’m dyslexic. If I look at white paper it doesn’t seem to go into me head and I’m struggling to see what it says. … I told UC and my proof ’s there [points to white letter] because it’s in white. … it’s a bit confusing because I don’t know where I’m going from here. ... They want us to work and we’re doing our best but it’s like we’re being pushed away. I’ve got problems and they just don’t want to know.’ (R5, Sarah, learning disability, rent arrears, mental health condition) At times, barriers to help arose because many of the respondents had experienced a negative attitude from the UC advisor they spoke to in the UC service centre. Respondents spoke of the discrimination and stigma they faced because they were in receipt of UC, and how this impacted on their ability to ask for help. Some, like Clare quoted earlier, described how their frustration meant they ended phone calls before they were able to get the help they needed. Others talked about how they had learnt to keep quiet when confronted with discriminatory remarks, to ensure that they were able to access help. A number explained that they no longer attempted to try to access support, because of the ‘hassle’ involved. Eric, a highly qualified professional, who had only recently started claiming UC, summarised how the disconnection between the UC advisor and the UC recipient created an environment that enabled such negative attitudes to flourish. Eric had recently returned to the UK with his young family after several years of working abroad. On his return, he had been unable to find a job and the family had become homeless. During the interview, Eric described how differently people treated him now to when he was in work and that, despite paying into the tax system for many years, he felt perceived as at best a failure, and at worst a benefit ‘scrounger’ (see also Lister, 2004; Baumberg-Geiger and Meueleman, 2016; Patrick, 2017): ‘Maybe he’s a druggie, he’s a drunk or maybe he’s not serious in life. But if you see me, you know that no, I’m not like that. Sometimes you judge people by the way you look at

26

Supporting people?

them, when you see them. You don’t have to carry a table like that [points to table] to know it’s heavy, by looking at it you can know, you can tell that this is very heavy. By looking at somebody you can, you are able to assess a person. But if you don’t see the person, you just hear the voice, especially if the person speaks with an accent, automatically you might start to think well maybe he’s just a refugee from Africa coming to take our money around. Failing to realise that I have contributed, I have studied here, I was trained here, I’m a professional.’ (R12, Eric, experience of homelessness) These internal and external barriers to help were often compounded by a lack of awareness and knowledge about the types of support available in UC. This meant that, despite their vulnerable circumstances, some respondents had not applied for additional support, simply because they did not know it was available. This was most often the case for those respondents who had sporadic contact with their work coach, usually because they had been signed off temporarily from looking and applying for work due to ill health. For example, Matt had ongoing physical and mental health conditions, which meant he was not currently looking for work and consequently only required to meet with his work coach every month. Having recently moved into a local authority flat after many years of living in insecure housing and rough sleeping, Matt was looking forward to the stability that having a home would provide. At the start of his claim, Matt had a conversation with a UC advisor and asked if he could have the rent for his new flat paid directly to his landlord. He was concerned that if he had to pay his rent himself, he may go into rent arrears, because he had long-standing gambling problems: ‘I said, “Can I have it sent straight to my landlord?” and they said, “we can only do that if you have a gambling problem or money issues”, and I said, “I do have a gambling problem …”, so they said “right, okay, you obviously qualify” … I don’t intend on getting it paid to me … It just increases the chance it won’t get paid if they put it into my pocket. There’s no saying what I’ll do if I get my hands on any money.’ (R10, Matt, physical and mental health problems, gambling problem) Matt had not discussed – nor been provided with – any other measures available in UC that could help to mediate the impact of his gambling

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Dealing with welfare conditionality

issues. For example, he was unaware that his gambling issues could potentially also qualify him to have his UC paid more frequently than once a month. In fact, he was unaware that there was this option available at all in UC, despite being able to eloquently describe how more frequent UC payments would help to minimise the negative impact of his gambling issues and provide stability, to try to reduce gambling in the future: ‘I thought that [monthly payments] was set in stone. … I’ve not spoke to them about more frequent payments … I wish you got paid more frequently …. I just wish it was every two weeks because I’ve had a bit of a gambling problem in the past … So, I’ve been known to wait a month for my money and spend it all in one day, in one hour. And that is soul-destroying, absolutely soul-destroying.’ (R10, Matt, physical and mental health problems, gambling problem) Barriers, such as those mentioned above, make it increasingly difficult for UC recipients to access additional support. In some situations, they meant that respondents in vulnerable circumstances were unable to seek out and apply for the additional support available in UC; Therefore they were left increasingly dependent on foodbanks, on loans from family and friends, or on support workers who could phone and negotiate the complex UC system on their behalf. Despite the introduction of a free UC phone line, there continue to be considerable barriers to accessing additional support in UC for many vulnerable individuals. The roll-out of the full live digital UC service to Greater Manchester over the next few years – which will require UC recipients to conduct the majority of their communication with UC advisors remotely via an online journal – is likely to further prevent people in vulnerable situations from being able to access additional help: ‘[The online UC advisor] has never communicated with me personally. All my communications are through journals which is open; I think it’s open to everyone … I don’t know what she [online UC advisor] did but I think she just felt sorry for me because I kept on writing journals. I kept on appealing to them. I kept on sending journals telling them that I’m in this debt, I’m in need of this money … I have a family, I don’t want them [local council] to throw me out again. I think eventually she [online UC advisor] stepped

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Supporting people?

in.’ (R12, Eric, experience of homelessness – currently on the full live digital system) Access to additional support in UC The respondents in the study who did apply for additional support highlighted the diverse and often contradictory ways in which entitlement to, or exclusion from, assistance could impact on their vulnerable circumstances. For example, in some cases, access to additional support did offer a period of respite during difficult situations. An illustration of this is Lauren, who was forced to flee to a domestic violence refuge because of the financial and emotional abuse by her partner during a period when she had no recourse to UC support and no money of her own. Once at the domestic violence refuge, she described how a UC advisor temporarily reduced the level of her repayments on the different debts that she had accumulated, and how this had reduced the level of financial pressure she was under: ‘She said, “What we can do is we can halve the payments for you – that’s going to give you some extra money back on to your monthly payments”. I didn’t know I could do that, I was amazed … Nobody said that to me before with the other situation.’ (R8, Lauren, experiences of domestic violence). Similarly, respondents living in supported housing (such as domestic violence refuges or homeless hostels) described how being able to automatically access a direct payment APA, which allowed the rent element of their UC benefit to be paid straight to their landlord or housing association, was helpful during a time of otherwise high levels of uncertainty: ‘I filled in a housing benefit form … I sent it off, it was delayed quite a bit from them to get, the hostel, for the people where I am now to receive your housing benefit money every month … It helps a lot.’ (R9, Dan, homeless, mental and physical health conditions) However, access to additional support did not always provide the help it intended. In some instances, UC policy measures actually acted to undermine and constrain the capacity and capabilities of respondents being able to overcome their problematic circumstances. For example,

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Lauren also described how living in a domestic violence refuge prevented her from being able to return to paid employment. She explained how she wanted to return to paid work, but that to do so would mean having to pay a substantially higher service charge to live in the refuge. On the waiting list for social housing, Lauren expressed the view that this rise in service charges negated any of the financial benefits offered by employment. When she spoke about this current barrier to getting into paid work with UC advisors, however, Lauren felt that they disregarded her ability to live independently: ‘She [UC advisor] said because of the situation, I am probably better off in the hostel for now. She said, “you’re obviously paying that much money for security, you obviously came out of a domestic violent relationship, may be that is the best place for you” and I agree to an extent but everybody is different, people get over situations in different ways, some people can just sit around all day and some people are scared. Some people are too scared to leave the hostel. Me, I’m a thinker, I’m a doer and I’m not as scared. I’m not petrified.’ (R8, Lauren, domestic violence) Additional support also, on occasions, acted to unbalance and undermine the ways in which some respondents had found to manage their financial uncertainties. This was the case for Sarah, whose landlord initiated a direct payment APA because of her extensive history of rent arrears and debt. Sarah described how she was unaware that an APA had been approved, until she realised that she had not received her usual UC payment. Although a direct APA is intended to prevent eviction and provide stability to the UC recipient, this action actually destabilised Sarah’s capacity to manage financially across the entire month, and she felt that it had ultimately exacerbated her vulnerable circumstances in the longer term: ‘I said, “He’s gone behind me back” but I’ve not signed any papers to say go ahead … And that’s when I asked “can I have a budgeting loan to get me food? … I didn’t ask for me money to be stopped, I’ve not got it sanctioned. I had nothing.’ (R5, Sarah, learning disability, debt, mental health condition) Similarly, the extent to which additional support in UC helped respondents in vulnerable circumstances was limited substantially by

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Supporting people?

its conditional nature. There is an expectation in UC that additional support should not only provide protection but also help people to develop the skills required to assume responsibility for, and potentially to overcome, their vulnerable circumstances. This means that respondents routinely had to demonstrate that they had the capacity to repay any UC advance, budgeting or hardship loan and/or were willing to engage with external services designed to build their budgeting skills (such as money advice organisations). Nonetheless, the conditions attached to these forms of additional support in UC often acted to constrain the level of financial assistance that some respondents received, so that many spoke about how financial advances and loans did little more than provide minimal and short-term respite: ‘It had to last me weeks but it didn’t [laughs]. It lasted me a week or two. I just got what I needed, food and stuff and things like that.… [it was] very difficult, really difficult. I was really down, not well. Just struggling. I couldn’t afford anything. Nothing. It’s just been so stressful.’ (R13, Clare, mental health condition, debt) The process of deciding whether or not additional support should be provided was often devoid of any in-depth conversations with the individual, to assess whether help would ultimately be beneficial in the longer term. Respondents often described a sense of confusion and frustration in relation to the support provided. For example, John had been in receipt of disability benefits for ten years, until he had recently been found ‘fit for work’ and started to claim UC. He explained how he was told during a conversation with a UC advisor at the start of his claim that he was eligible for a UC advance, but reported that he did not become aware until much later that he would be required to repay it. Rather than feeling that he had received support, John expressed how he felt that the pressure to repay the UC advance had actually become an additional financial burden that compounded his long-standing anxiety issues and had precipitated his recent spiral back into alcoholism. Ultimately, this had resulted in John having to request a fitness to work note from his doctor, as he became too unwell to search and apply for jobs: ‘I had £150 advance on that to pay it back at £50 a month. If they told me I was only getting that amount I wouldn’t have had the advance … They didn’t tell me that money would have been took off the amount they were going to

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give me in the first place … That made it worse because instead of having £261, it’d be £311, wouldn’t it? So it made it worse, but it’s too late now … But I shouldn’t have took on in the first place, I knew I shouldn’t … I’m panicking thinking “shit, has that money gone in” and then I think I need a beer.’ (R3, John, recovering alcoholic) Denial of additional support in UC The conditional nature attached to additional support in UC meant that for some respondents, any pre-existing debts and previous receipt of support acted to deny them further financial help. This is because it is perceived that a person who continues to rely on financial advances or loans is not managing their finances responsibly. Simply providing additional loans or advances therefore could potentially lead some people to accumulate unmanageable levels of debt, further exacerbating their negative financial situation in the long term. For some respondents, this meant that they were denied access to UC advances or budgeting advances, if it was believed that they would be either unable to manage subsequent repayment or had requested similar support on previous occasions (even if they had repaid these loans in full). This was the case for Steph, who had been forced to leave her job of ten years and all her household belongings to flee to a domestic violence refuge. She explained how she had been refused a UC budgeting advance to help pay for essential items for the upcoming birth of her baby, because it was considered that she would be unable to afford its repayment: ‘It’s more they think that I won’t be able to afford the loan back but they just get the money straight off you. I don’t understand why they won’t help me.’ (R7, Steph, domestic violence and mental health issues) Sarah, similarly, spoke of how she was unable to access a budgeting advance to help her afford travel to and from work, after her social housing landlord initiated a direct payment APA. The APA meant her rent was no longer paid to Sarah, but paid directly from UC to her landlord; a measure that protects against any potential evictions due to rent arrears. This action nonetheless led to significant financial instability for Sarah, as she had recently created a method of paying her rent and bills across the month through her UC benefit and part-

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Supporting people?

time work. Despite being considered eligible for an APA due to her ‘vulnerable’ circumstances, she was denied a budgeting advance, on the basis that she had already received (and repaid) similar forms of support on three separate occasions before: ‘I asked for a budgeting loan and they told me “no”. … They just said “no”, because I’ve already paid off a loan that I borrowed off ’em. So, I said “I’m paid up”. And I said, “Can I have a budgeting loan to get to work?” and they said “no”. … Like I said to the guy “at least I’m not sat at home doing nothing, I am working” and he went “it’s not his problem.”’ (R5, Sarah, learning disability, debt) Denial of additional support because of concerns about a person’s motivation and behaviour also extended to judgements about why UC recipients needed extra help. For instance, Lauren explained how, after moving into a new privately rented flat with her then partner and two young children, her partner became unexpectedly unemployed. To prevent eviction, Lauren was forced to cover the entire rent from her UC benefit (despite the housing element of her UC only covering half the rent, because her partner was expected to pay the other half). This left Lauren with no money for the rest of the month. Lauren was, however, advised by UC that this form of financial support was not available to her, and she was directed to apply instead for a ‘change of circumstances’ – an application that, after several weeks, was ultimately denied. In the meantime, with no money of her own, Lauren faced an escalation in emotional and financial abuse from her ex-partner and was forced to rely on foodbank vouchers to feed her children. Ultimately, out of desperation, Lauren and her children had to flee to a domestic violence refuge: ‘I said to them “if you want I can give you my bank statement to provide that I paid the landlord directly from my bank – the whole £575, that’s why I haven’t got any money now. It’s not because I’ve been irresponsible because I’ve been claiming it for so long and I’ve never, ever, ever had to ask for foodbank vouchers before” … when I was saying to them “we’ve got no money” – nobody was listening, nobody cared.’ (R8, Lauren, experience of domestic violence)

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The extent to which people in receipt of UC are now expected to be held to account for, and work to overcome, their vulnerable situations resulted in some respondents being denied further support, if it was felt that this would undermine the deterrent effect of a financial sanction or delayed UC payment. For example, two respondents described how, despite being left with escalating debts and no financial means to afford basic needs such as food or heating, they were denied a UC advance and a budgeting advance, because they were perceived to be made voluntarily redundant from their jobs. Adam, a recovering alcoholic, had lost his job due to drink-driving at work, while Ben was sacked for failing a mandatory drug test: ‘I’ve never been in debt before in my life, apart from me mortgage … And then I find out there’s all kinds of benefits, so they say! I’ve asked for them and never got nothing. I couldn’t even get heating off the gas.’ (R2, Adam, recovering alcoholic) ‘I couldn’t get no benefit. I couldn’t even get a budgeting loan. They wouldn’t let me have anything because I got sacked.’ (R18, Ben, homeless, physical and mental health conditions)

Conclusion These discussions emphasise how difficulties in accessing UC – and rejections of additional support in UC – can impact on the lived experiences of vulnerability in complex ways. The extent to which additional support acted to protect the interest of respondents involved in this study – who could all be understood to be in vulnerable circumstances – can be recognised as being intrinsically shaped by the way in which vulnerability has been recalibrated in UC. Political and public expectation that, increasingly, UC recipients should be held personally responsible for – and expected to overcome – their vulnerable circumstances has justified and enabled behavioural conditionality to be extended to groups traditionally not considered to be personally responsible for their reliance on welfare support (Dwyer and Wright, 2014; Brown, 2015; Millar and Bennett, 2017). Observing how current UC policy impacts on the lives of respondents in this study reveals the diverse and often contradictory ways in which interactions with this form of highly conditional support shaped the vulnerabilities of those interviewed. In some cases, access to additional

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Supporting people?

support undeniably acted to mitigate the impact on those in vulnerable situations, and provided people with a period of respite from the challenges they faced by the mainstream UC system. However, when inappropriately applied, the provision of additional support undermined the strategies that respondents used to manage UC, and consequently exacerbated their vulnerability (Wright et al, 2016). For those respondents, who were denied additional support because they were considered unable to assume responsibility for – or believed to be at fault for – their vulnerable circumstances, the impact of conditionality attached to forms of additional support in UC similarly had profoundly detrimental effects (Beatty et al, 2015; McCarthy et al, 2015; Wright et al, 2016; Reeves, 2017). In these cases, additional forms of support in UC did little to protect the interests of those in vulnerable situations, but acted to exacerbate the social exclusion of those unable, or unwilling, to accept the conditions attached to its receipt (Dwyer, 2004; Harrison and Hemingway, 2014). References Alakeson, V., Brewer, M. and Finch, D. (2015) Credit where it’s due? Assessing the benefits and risks of Universal Credit. Interim report of the Resolution Foundation: Expert Panel Review, London: Resolution Foundation. Baumberg-Geiger, B. and Meueleman, B. (2016) Beyond ‘mythbusting’: how to respond to myths and perceived undeservingness in the British benefits system, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24(3): 291-306. Beatty, C., Foden, M., McCarthy, L. and Reeve, K. (2015) Benefit sanctions and homelessness: A scoping report, Centre for Economics and Social Research: Crisis. https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/20568/ benefit_sanctions_scoping_report_march2015.pdf Beddoe, L. (2013) Chapter Five: Risk and Vulnerability Discourse in Health, in L. Beddoe, and J. Maidment (eds) Social Work Practice for Promoting Health and Wellbeing: Critical Issues, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Brown, K. (2014a) Questioning the Vulnerability Zeitgeist: Care and Control Practices with ‘Vulnerable’ Young People, Social Policy and Society, 13(3): 371-87. Brown, K. (2014b) Chapter Three: Beyond Protection: ‘the vulnerable’ in the age of austerity, in M. Harrison and T. Sanders (eds) Social Policies and Social Control: New perspectives on the ‘not-so-Big Society’, Bristol: Policy Press. Brown, K. (2015) Vulnerability and Young People: Care and Social Control in Policy and Practice, Bristol: Policy Press.

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Centre for Social Justice (2006) Breakdown Britain Interim report on the state of the nation, London: Social Justice Policy Group. Communities and Local Government Committee (2013) Implementation of welfare reform by local authorities: Ninth Report of Session 2012–13. Vol I: Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence. House of Commons. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2010a) 21st century welfare. The Stationery Office Limited. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2010b) Universal Credit: Welfare that Works. The Stationery Office Limited. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2011) Conditionality, sanctions and hardship: Equality impact assessment. https://www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/220160/ eia-conditionality-wr2011.pdf Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2013a) Universal Credit local support services framework. Universal Credit. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2013b) Government response to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee’s third report of session 2012–13: Universal Credit implementation: meeting the needs of vulnerable claimants, Cm 8537, February 2013. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2014) Universal Credit at work. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2015a) Welfare Reform and Work Bill: Impact Assessment to remove the ESA Work-Related Activity Component and the UC Limited Capability for Work Element for new claims. Her Majesty’s Treasury Impact Assessment. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2015b) Personal Budgeting Support and Alternative Payment Arrangements Guidance. Universal Credit. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2015c) Vulnerability Guidance – Additional Support for Individuals. Freedom of Information 1136, 31 March 2015. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2016) Improving Lives: The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper. DWP and Department of Health. Duncan-Smith, I. (2012) Reforming welfare, transforming lives. Speech. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/reformingwelfare-transforming-lives Dwyer, P. (2004) Creeping conditionality in the UK: from welfare rights to conditional entitlements, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2): 265-87.

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Dwyer, P. (2018) Final findings overview, Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change Project. www. welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/40414_ Overview-HR4.pdf Dwyer, P. and Wright, S. (2014) Universal Credit, ubiquitous conditionality and its implications for social citizenship, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 1 27-35. Fawcett Society (2015) Women and Welfare Evidence for the Scottish Parliament’s Welfare and Reform Committee. https://www.fawcettsociety. org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=c6210585-74f9-46aa8241-556ee36316f9 Finch, D. (2015) Making the most of UC: Final report of the Resolution Foundation review of Universal Credit. Resolution Foundation. Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G., Sosenko, F. and Blenkinsopp, J. with Wood, J., Johnsen, S., Littlewood, M. and Watts, B. (2018) Destitution in the UK 2018, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Goodin, R. (1985) Protecting the Vulnerable: A Re-analysis of our Social Responsibilities, London: University of Chicago Press. Harrison, M. and Hemingway, L. (2014) Social Policy and the new behaviourism: towards a more excluding society, in M. Harrison and T. Sanders (eds) Social Policies and Social Control: new perspectives on the ‘not-so-big society’, Bristol: Policy Press. Harrison, M. and Sanders, T. (2014) Social Policies and Social Control: New Perspectives on the ‘not-so-big Society’, Bristol: Policy Press. House of Commons (2015) Welfare Reform and Work Bill Explanatory Notes. Bill 51. The Stationery Office Ltd. Humpage, L. (2014) Policy change, public attitudes and social citizenship. Does neoliberalism matter?, Bristol: The Policy Press. Keen, R. and Kennedy, S. (2016) Universal Credit changes from April 2016. Briefing Paper Number CBP7446. House of Commons Library. Kennedy, S. (2011) Welfare reform and the Universal Credit. Standard Note: SN/SP/5782 Social Policy Section. House of Commons Library. Kennedy, S. (2013) Short Term Benefit Advances and Budgeting Advances. Standard Note: SN06683. Social Policy Section, House of Commons Library. Kennedy, S. (2016) Work Capability Assessments. House of Commons Library. Kennedy, S. and Keen, R. (2016) Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill 2016-17. Briefing Paper Number 7813. House of Commons Library.

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Kennedy, S., Murphy, C., Keen, R. and Bate, A. (2017) Abolition of the ESA Work-Related Activity Component. Briefing Paper. CBP 7649. House of Commons Library. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Polity. McCarthy, L., Batty, E., Beatty, C., Casey, R., Foden, M. and Reeve, K. (2015) Homeless people’s experiences of welfare conditionality and benefit sanctions. Project Report, London: Crisis. McVey, E. (2018) Universal Credit and recent welfare changes, Oral Statement to Parliament by Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 21 June 2018 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/universalcredit-and-recent-welfare-changes Mead, L. M. (1986) Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Free Press Millar, J. and Bennett, F. (2017) Universal Credit: assumptions, contradictions and virtual reality, Social Policy and Society, 16(2): 169-82. NAWRA (National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers) (2016) Social Security Advisory Committee consultation review into decision making and mandatory reconsideration: NAWRA Response. www.nawra.org.uk/ wordpress/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/MR-SSACREVIEW-March-2016-NAWRA-response.pdf Patrick, R. (2017)  For whose benefit?: The everyday realities of welfare reform, Bristol: Policy Press. Reeves, K. (2017) Welfare conditionality, benefit sanctions and homelessness in the UK: ending the ‘something for nothing culture’ or punishing the poor?, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 25(1): 65-78. Sainsbury, R. (2014) Talking Universal Credit: In conversation with Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 22, 37-44. Social Security Advisory Committee (2013) The implementation of Universal Credit and the support needs of claimants: a study by the Social Security Advisory Committee. Occasional Paper No. 10. Timmins, N. (2016) Universal Credit: From disaster to recovery?, London: Institute for Government. Work and Pensions Committee (2012) Minutes of Evidence: Universal Credit with Ian Duncan Smith (IDS) and Lord Freud. Evidence heard in Public Questions 201-377, 17 September 2012. Work and Pensions Committee (2015) Benefit sanctions policy beyond the Oakley Review Fifth Report of Session 2014–15 Report, together with formal minutes relating to the report, 18 March 2015. House of Commons.

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Wright, S., Dwyer, P., McNeill, J. and Stewart, A. B. R. (2016) First Wave Findings: Universal Credit. Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behavioural Change. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WelCond-findings-Universal-CreditMay16.pdf

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THREE

Punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency: exploring the role of welfare conditionality with ‘at risk’ women attempting to live ‘a good life’ Larissa Povey

Introduction This chapter explores the lived experiences of women at the penalwelfare nexus, a space where social and penal policy overlap. ‘Penalwelfarism’ was initially used as a term to reflect the shift towards welfarist and rehabilitative policies associated with the post Second World War welfare settlement (Esping-Anderson, 1996; Garland, 2001). Since the 1980s, public policy has taken a more punitive trajectory, which has resulted in a more expansive and punitive criminal justice system as well as the penalisation of welfare (Foucault, 1977; Pratt et al, 2005; Bumiller, 2013). This chapter focuses specifically on women who have been subject to criminal justice supervision and interventions in the community and who are in receipt of social assistance benefits. It highlights their attempts to move away from the social margins, reintegrate into society and move closer to the labour market. It draws on new empirical data from in-depth qualitative interviews with 24 women who have offended or who are considered to be ‘at risk’1 of offending, conducted in two UK cities between January 2016 and February 2017. The chapter examines how UK social institutions, and in particular a welfare system characterised by increasing conditionality, impact on women engaged in community-based services that aim to divert them away 1

‘At risk’ refers to their risk of reoffending. In the women’s centres, this was operationalised as having two or more of the following risk factors: homelessness, drug or alcohol disorder, poverty, sexual victimisation, domestic abuse.

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from prison and to reduce recidivism. In doing so, it foregrounds the context of gendered precariousness, which criminalised women inhabit at the penal-welfare nexus. The focus on the use of sanction and support to promote behaviour change is a growing area of research, with evidence suggesting that rather than a ‘hand up’, the welfare system in its current guise can bestow more of a ‘slap down’ (Fletcher and Wright, 2017). This chapter aims to highlight another dynamic of the current welfare regime, by exploring its impact on a specific group of women subject to multiple, overlapping policy aims of the state. The problem for this group is not so much the behaviour change agenda and sanctions that underpin the UK’s increasingly conditional social security system; many attempt to live a ‘good life’, and the experience of sanctioning is low. Rather, for women experiencing advanced marginality, it is the dearth of support available to help them reach their goals. This chapter examines the impact of the changing penal-welfare nexus through the lens of women’s experiences. Three interlinked themes are prominent threads running through the lives of these women: punishment, powerlessness and (utilising Lister’s (2004) approach) bounded agency: • Punishment is dispersed throughout societal institutions; this chapter focuses on punitive elements within the welfare system. However, it is important to note that participants in this study are engaged with a web of state agencies and service providers and are subject to a range of different behavioural expectations and interventions. Like the penal system, the welfare system uses conditionality and sanctions to induce the ‘right’ behaviours in claimants. This can sometimes be counterproductive. • With minimal protections in place, highly marginalised women are incapacitated in the face of various social forces that bear down upon them and influence their daily lives. This dynamic induces a sense of powerlessness for those who have lost control of important aspects of their lives and who have few alternatives. • Bounded agency is displayed in the tacit acceptance of a highly conditional and punitive social contract. Rather than demanding a better deal, their aspirations and goals shrink to fit the limited opportunities available to them. Participants’ accounts suggested there is little space for agency within the confines of the disciplinary

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archipelago2, and many had internalised the terms by which they must live to receive social assistance. Yet within this bleak picture, and in spite of pressures bearing down on this marginalised group, some women had begun to forge new identities and move towards a more stable daily life. Nevertheless, this stability was fragile; vulnerable to the challenges and crises of everyday life at the social margins, reduced funding for community services and at the mercy of changing expectations placed on them under ongoing welfare reform. The following three sections outline the policy context, namely the development of penal policies and welfare policies and how they have had a gendered impact – the former in response to addressing women’s growing prominence in the criminal justice system (CJS), and the latter in erasing gender difference from the welfare policy lexicon and practice. Following this, the methodology and approach to ethics that underpinned the research is presented, along with the background to the study and its findings.

Women, welfare and criminal justice policy Although women have historically committed crime alongside men, the image of the female offender retains the power to shock, by defying deeply embedded gendered societal norms. From childhood and into adulthood, girls and women are policed differently to boys and men (Donzelot, 1979; Cain, 1989). Moreover, shifts in what is considered ‘criminal’ or ‘deviant’ continue to have a gendered dimension. Women, particularly those in receipt of social assistance benefits, find themselves subject to high levels of surveillance, moral scrutiny and punishment (Bumiller, 2013). Prevailing discourses demonise ‘welfare queens’ and ‘benefit broods’, with previously protected groups finding themselves subject to increasing conditionality and the use of sanctions (Jensen and Tyler, 2015). Some 44,000 lone parents were sanctioned in Great Britain in 2013 (Webster, 2015). The shift to ‘ubiquitous’ conditionality highlights the blurring of welfare and penal policy in the UK (Dwyer and Wright, 2014; Fletcher, 2013) and the benefits system has been described as a ‘secret penal system’, harsher and without the safeguards of the judicial system (Webster, 2014). 2

The term ‘disciplinary archipelago’ is adapted from Foucault’s (1977) concept of a carceral archipelago, and refers to participants’ location outside of the prison.

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These changes have occurred against a broader backdrop of attempts to reduce budget deficits through ‘austerity measures’ implemented by governments throughout Europe and North America. UK research suggests that attempts to reduce public spending at national and local levels has seen the axe fall unevenly, hitting older industrial areas such as the former coalfields, less prosperous coastal towns and a number of London boroughs particularly hard (Beatty and Fothergill, 2016). Since 2010, Coalition and Conservative UK governments have reduced national welfare spending and have also simultaneously reduced local authority grants intended to support local social service provision and infrastructure. The impact of welfare reforms has fallen disproportionately onto women, who rely more on social assistance payments than men and who use public services more intensively (Hills, 2014). Taking stock of the cumulative effect of successive austerity budgets, it is estimated that 86% of net savings in the period 2010-20 will have been made at the expense of women (Cracknell and Keen, 2016).

Punitive welfare Successive governments have undermined the philosophy of universal social rights, which underpinned the post-war welfare settlement. Under New Labour’s activation policies, those in receipt of state assistance had an obligation to work, paving the way for the emergence of a highly conditional welfare state, enforced by benefit sanctions for non-compliance (Dwyer, 2004). The Coalition government and the subsequent Conservative government have intensified the conditionality and sanctions regime, and expanded it to include formerly protected groups, including lone parents and those with disabilities. Government discourse has consistently framed welfare dependency as a lifestyle choice of the ‘never deserving poor’, and this has been echoed in the mass media, particularly evidenced by the proliferation of ‘poverty porn’ programmes – fostering a politics of resentment and paving the way for intensified punitive conditionality (Jensen, 2014; Dwyer and Wright, 2014; Fletcher and Wright, 2017; Edmiston, 2018). Commentators have observed a ‘sanction first, investigate later’ ethos, applied regardless of whether those sanctioned had good reason to explain the behaviour they were sanctioned for, or are able to meet their basic needs following a benefits sanction (Butler, 2015). The concept of a ‘centaur state’ describes the state’s fierce regard towards those at the bottom of society, in stark contrast with the permissive and liberal face reserved for those at the top (Wacquant,

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2009; Fletcher and Wright, 2017). It is important to recognise that the ‘centaur state’ not only punishes more, but does so in new and different ways. The use of benefit sanctions for non-compliance with behavioural demands is supported by the dependency discourse of freeing those ‘trapped on benefits’ (Dwyer, 2004: 271). The lack of universal support for social assistance benefits divides those who pay taxes and those in receipt of benefits, with the former ‘increasingly likely to regard welfare as a burden unfairly borne by them … while provoking anger and resentment at those who it seemed to unduly favour’ (Pratt, 2011: 262). As women are more likely than men to rely on means-tested, outof-work benefits and on in-work housing and wage supplements , there is a gendered dimension to welfare conditionality and sanctions. Formerly protected groups such as lone parents, the majority of whom are women, are increasingly subject to surveillance, moral scrutiny and the threat of punishment through the social security system. Lone parents have been heavily impacted by the shift towards ubiquitous conditionality (Dwyer and Wright, 2014). Successive ‘activation’ reforms have introduced work-focused interviews (between 2001 and 2004), and mandatory action plans (in 2005) for lone parents with a youngest child aged one to four. Lone Parent Obligations incrementally introduced from 2008 removed eligibility for Income Support and reduced the threshold for the age that the youngest child would be to trigger intensified conditions (Johnsen, 2014). Furthermore, lone parents will be financially worse off under Universal Credit (Brewer and De Agostini, 2015). Dependency, an ideologically charged term, is no longer tenable. Emerging research highlights that the double-edged sword of retrenching social assistance and increased conditionality is felt most keenly by the poorest people. Austerity Britain is characterised by rising inequality, and people are experiencing poverty more intensely, relying on foodbanks, informal networks and survival crime to get by. Research suggests that benefit sanctions can be a causal factor in people becoming homeless (McCarthy et al, 2015; Garthwaite, 2017; Edmiston et al, 2017; Fitzpatrick et al, 2018; McKeever et al, 2018). As the welfare system takes on characteristics of the penal system and becomes more punitive, it is unsurprising that many female offenders have experienced ‘long-term poverty, debts and loans with high interest’ and that their crimes are often linked to economic survival (NOMS, 2012: 36). Women in conflict with the law, and those deemed ‘at risk’ of offending, therefore constitute a vilified, hyper-vulnerable and voiceless group.

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Gendered justice Since 2010, there has been a distinct toughening of policy language towards female offenders (MoJ, 2014a). This is indicative of a punitive shift, which also questions whether women have a gendered experience of criminality. It also undermines the implementation of diversionary policy.3 For example, local probation services – whose role it was to recommend alternatives to custody in pre-sentence reports to magistrates – were removed in the 2010-15 Transforming Rehabilitation reforms (Hedderman and Gunby, 2013). Following the 2011 riots4, the Troubled Families Programme was set up to ‘turn around’ the estimated 120,000 families who, without intervention, were seen as likely to produce the rioters and youth gang members of the future. This highlights the successful conflation in public discourse of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and parental deficit, with politicians making much of ‘dadlessness’, rather than structural inequalities (Ashe, 2014; see also relevant discussions in Chapter Seven on family intervention policies). Gillies (2011) highlighted the gendered impact on mothers, who bear the brunt of family intervention policies despite the use of gender-neutral terms like ‘lone parent’. There is a long history of policing families, specifically mothers (Donzelot, 1979). Although these interventions may provide short-term improvements (based on limited criteria), the gendered criminalisation of marginalised families, particularly lone mothers, is often the broader outcome (Wenham, 2016). Women constitute lower proportions of those: arrested (18%); receiving out-of-court disposals (23%); convicted (25%); and under supervision in the community (15%). However, they are routinely treated more harshly by the CJS (MoJ, 2014b). Contrary to public opinion and the ‘chivalry thesis’,5 women are twice as likely to be sentenced to prison by a magistrate for a first offence and, on leaving prison, women are three times less likely to find work (Prison Reform Trust, 2017). Against the backdrop of a tougher 3

4

5

A gender-specific reoffending and rehabilitation strategy brought in under New Labour, which sought to reduce the number of women sent to prison in favour of addressing needs and vulnerabilities in the community. The protest, violence and looting that erupted in London after the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, and spread to other English cities in the summer of 2011. The ‘chivalry thesis’ posits that women receive preferential treatment in the criminal justice system; they are viewed in a paternalistic fashion as childlike and in need of help (see Curran, 1983; Crew, 1991).

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welfare regime and an intensification of the policing of ‘irresponsible’ parents – and in particular mothers – the number of publicly cared for children continues to rise (Cafcass, 2017; Department for Education, 2017).

Methods and background to the study This chapter is based on data generated during doctoral fieldwork in two UK cities between January 2016 and February 2017. This research employed a qualitative research design, including creative methods that involved an initial interview followed by a photography task and two further in-depth repeat interviews. Participants were asked to take photographs that conveyed aspects of their day-to-day lives: some women chose to photograph subjects which represented their pasts, presents and futures; others decided to take a few photos each day, organically. The subsequent photo-elicitation interviews and follow-up interviews provided opportunities for participants to ‘audience’ the photos, to control their interpretation, and for the researcher to gather in-depth data on their experiences through visual and verbal communication channels. This facilitated participants’ reflexivity, and gave them more control over which aspects of their lives they chose to share in interviews (Johnsen et al, 2008; Rose, 2012). From recruitment to completion of the final interview took around six to nine months for each participant. In total, 24 women who had experience of the criminal justice and welfare arms of the state were recruited to take part. All participants were accessing day centre support services, when recruited to take part in the research. These comprised statutory, voluntary and private organisations, although these distinctions were harder to discern due to the ‘hybridisation’ of public service providers in the ‘mixed economy’ of the carceral archipelago6 (Corcoran and Fox, 2012). Ethical approval for the study was obtained from Sheffield Hallam University. Given the complexities of participants’ everyday lives, histories of abuse and the ongoing issues they were experiencing, ethical considerations were a chief concern. Consent and capacity to give consent were continuously sought and assessed. Participants’ wellbeing was paramount, and the following protocol was in place if a participant became distressed: the interview was drawn gently to a close, 6

Foucault’s (1977) term ‘carceral archipelago’ describes the dispersal of disciplinary mechanisms of social control that permeate societal institutions.

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and the opportunity to speak with their preferred professional at the centre from which they were recruited was offered to the participant. Within the sample (24) there were a range of relationships with the CJS. In total, 17 women had been in conflict with the law, the others had been on the margins of the CJS, accessing services as a victim or deemed to be ‘at risk’ and referred to the service. Some women had long histories of persistent reoffending; eight participants had experienced multiple prison sentences, another nine participants had experienced non-custodial community-based sentences or fines. Offences ranged from serious crimes, such as arson and being an accessory to murder, to more minor offences commonly associated with female offending, including possession of a controlled drug, theft or breaching of conditions. Some had recently been in prison; others had not offended for years. Seven participants disclosed previous experiences of being victims of neglect/abuse in childhood. Synonymous with the wider population of female offenders, many outlined poor mental health, histories of drug or alcohol misuse, experiences of domestic violence or sexual victimisation (Prison Reform Trust, 2017). In terms of ethnicity, one participant identified as Black/Black British, another as Other White, and the rest all identified as White British. All participants (apart from one woman, Lola, who had been convicted of benefit fraud and another, Annie, who had been sanctioned twice and who relied on family for support) were in receipt of social assistance benefits during the research period. Most had left education with few formal qualifications, although one woman had been to university. Of the 22 (90%) participants who were in receipt of benefits, 16 were on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), roughly half in the support group and half in the work-related activity group (WRAG). Two claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and three claimed Income Support. Within the UK, welfare state levels of conditionality vary. Those in receipt of JSA are deemed fit for work, subject to full conditionality and required to undertake extensive job searches and to attend mandatory work-focused interviews and training, as specified by Jobcentre staff. Individuals assigned to the support group of ESA are not subject to conditionality and attendant sanctions. Allocation to the WRAG brings with it a mandatory requirement to engage in work-related activity, such as job search, attending interviews with personal advisors or participation in work experience schemes as instructed. Those on JSA or in the WRAG group face benefit sanctions ranging from a 100% loss of benefit for four weeks for a low-level transgression (for example being late for a work-focused interview), up to loss of full

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benefit for a three-year period for a third, repeat high-level offence, such as refusal to take up a job offer. Income-related JSA and ESA are currently being phased out and replaced by Universal Credit (UC). Under UC rules, benefit sanctions will remain in place until compliance in many instances (Dwyer, 2016). UC had not been rolled out to the location where the fieldwork that informs this chapter was conducted. Seventeen participants had used a foodbank or accessed food parcels or meals through the third sector day centres, and three participants had received Hardship Payments (DWP, 2017b).7

Punishment through the welfare system The experience of punishment begins early for girls; female offending peaks at 14 (compared to 17 for boys) (Youth Justice Board, 2009). The majority of participants involved had experienced a form of neglect or abuse during childhood. Instead of finding support through the care system or other welfare institutions, many began getting into trouble as young women. Furthermore, the stigma of a criminal record became a punishment in itself and meant that their identities were reduced to their substance misuse, offending history or failure as a mother. For those whose pathways to offending resulted in the (recurrent) loss of child(ren) to custody, punishment is lifelong and intergenerational (Kotova, 2014; Broadhurst et al, 2015). In the sample of participants who had children removed, four disclosed that they had previously been in the care system themselves. These experiences were compounded by a residualised, and in some cases, punitive benefit system and retrenching state provision of community services, particularly those that support marginalised citizens. In relation to the welfare state, four participants had experienced a benefit sanction; others reported being threatened with a benefit sanction. As the data presented later illustrate, regardless of the different circumstances of their application, sanctions were applied with little concern for how the women sanctioned would subsequently manage financially:

7

When a benefit sanction is imposed, claimants can apply for a hardship payment to cover day-to-day living costs. This takes around two weeks to be set up. Some vulnerable groups (for example, those pregnant, lone parents, with a health condition) have immediate access to a hardship payment.

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‘I had his [nods at her baby] extra scan for his kidneys [when pregnant], and because [welfare professional] gave Jay [her partner] an appointment on that same day [as the scan] he said “I can’t go to it”. So because we went to the baby scan they sanctioned him.’ (Amy, 18, joint claim for JSA) ‘I was … just trying to survive, keep my benefit, not commit suicide … Everything gets cancelled when you get sanctioned. Then you have to do a claim, a hardship claim and then re-benefit. But each time I was getting sanctioned, they would go “oh yes it is a 2 week sanction, because you haven’t done your job search right”, I was like “I am struggling because I am dyslexic”. So I would go to the Job Centre. And I would go again [after] 2 weeks, “you haven’t done it, you haven’t done your 40 jobs” and I would be “how can I apply for 40 odd jobs I am dyslexic I have no qualifications? … Sanction again and they just kept doing that for 8 months. So in the end I stopped applying for hardship because it was pointless because by the time I had got hardship, I was being re-sanctioned which cancelled out the hardship … Luckily these guys [day centre staff] gave me food parcels, because they understood that I was being sanctioned every week and it weren’t my fault.’ (Christina, 30, JSA) Amy was not sanctioned directly; rather, her partner received a sanction for non-attendance at a mandatory Jobcentre interview due to a clash with their baby’s scan. This highlights a number of problems of the joint payment model, which come to the fore when a sanction is imposed. Benefit claims administered at the joint couple or unitary household level are underpinned by problematic assumptions about money sharing within relationships and serve to undermine the financial autonomy of partnered women (Bennett and Sung, 2013). Any sanctions applied to a particular claimant through the joint claim mechanism punish the whole household, in this case a pregnant woman. Concerns about the gendered inequality inherent within joint claims are likely to intensify under UC, which requires one person in a couple to complete a claim for both parties (DWP, 2017a). Ultimately, Amy and her partner were granted a Hardship Payment and eventually had the benefit sanction overturned, because they were able to prove that the scan had been on the same date as the missed Jobcentre appointment. This highlights the routine practice of sanctioning first and investigating later, with

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the onus on the claimant to appeal against benefit sanctions after they are imposed. Christina’s experience of repeat sanctioning was highly disruptive to her life and contributed to the decline in her mental health. Her priority during this time was ‘trying to survive’. In this case she turned to acquisitive crime, which began with stealing tins of food for her cat, but ‘then I found out I was pretty good at it, that I actually in three days walked out with £3,000 worth of DVDs and Blu Rays’. Christina, whose criminal record consisted mainly of theft-related offences, was eventually caught shoplifting. Her engagement with the day centre helped her to get support, initially a sleeping bag and food parcels. The ongoing availability of support ultimately led to keyworkers assisting her to apply for housing and to get her benefits claim submitted; however, she was placed on JSA despite her physical and mental health issues. She continued to access support when experiencing food insecurity or having a crisis. Turning to ‘survival crime’ (Dwyer and Bright, 2016; Patrick, 2017) was an experience present in other participants’ accounts. In some cases, individuals experienced food insecurity, even when they were in receipt of benefits, but were able to access support through family, informal networks or local charitable organisations as an alternative to survival crime (Daly and Kelly, 2015): ‘I’ve not shoplifted since … this time last year. And I were on streets so it were for survival basically … I’d nowhere to live and then I sort of shoplifted to survive do you know what I mean?’ (Ros, 45, ESA WRAG) ‘Talking to my health adviser, and I kept saying to her, I’ve got no food in, I’m eating at me mum’s, there’s nothing in … And she eventually sent me round to … Salvation Army … I am trying to eat at home [rather than relying on my mum], which is more stressful because … I am trying to have enough money to like provide my own food so I am … trying to get to next week, I am going to go and get foodbank so I have got enough tinned stuff in so then all I have to do is concentrate on my freezer stuff.’ (Caitlin, 31, JSA/ESA WRAG) Fletcher (2016) has similarly found that ‘survival crime’ was strongly linked to benefit sanctioning, particularly with ex-offenders. Nonetheless, as Caitlin’s data show, while participants in receipt

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of benefits may still be living in precarity, not all turn to ‘survival crime’, especially when they can rely on family and informal support networks. Some participants, like Ros, disclosed that they had turned to crime to survive when they were not in receipt of benefits, whether due to a sanction or because their lives were too chaotic to receive payments. These experiences highlight different forces influencing how individuals coped with financial hardship; those with access to alternative familial or informal networks were less likely to turn to crime to survive. What became clear from some accounts was that punishment within the welfare system was not narrowly defined by the application of benefit sanctions. For some, just being on benefits felt like a punishment, and high levels of conditionality made them feel undeserving, due to their perceptions of how the system treated them (McKeever et al, 2018): ‘I’ve had to fight for that [allocation to the Support Group in ESA]. I went for medicals and things … and they said that I was fit for work. I had to appeal against it and it took 14 months for me to appeal against it and go to court … I had to go for court for that and I had to go to court for disability [Personal Independence Payment ] as well ... [I was] upset all the time. Cos it was as if like nobody believed me, what was wrong with me. Because they said well you don’t look as if you’ve got an illness. Because at the time then I was on crutches ... And it’s like “well, you can walk with crutches”. And then I had problems with my hands. Because I’ve got an illness called fibromyalgia as well … And they said “well you can still use your hands”. They can just say “no”. You can’t have it [ESA], that’s worse [than a sanction] … My ex-husband did this to me I think he should pay, not the government.’ (Vivien, 46, ESA Support Group) ‘They treat you like you are a low life … the benefits office … think that if you are going there then you are there because you are stealing from the government, that is how you are made to feel and I said you know, I have always worked, I have three kids and I have worked three jobs, to pay for them myself, always worked up until I got attacked.’ (Carol, 54, ESA Support Group)

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Vivien’s account indicates that even though she was initially treated as undeserving, much to her distress, she had begun to internalise this to an extent. This is evident in her reporting that she felt that her ex-husband (who subjected her to domestic violence) should pay her compensation for her not being able to work. She did not speak in terms of being entitled to out-of-work incapacity benefits, despite her health conditions and disability; she felt instead that the welfare system did not recognise her as deserving of support. Similarly, Carol makes it clear that she has worked in the past and only claimed benefits following a violent attack from her ex-partner; she distanced herself socially from other claimants, who are deemed to be less deserving. These findings highlight an intensification of shame and stigma associated with claiming welfare benefits (Patrick, 2017).

Powerlessness, agency and the importance of support for behaviour change Women involved in the CJS, whether in prison or in the community, are a highly stigmatised and marginalised group, with minimal access to either the media that represents them negatively, or policy makers whose decisions produce interventions that constrain their lives. The powerlessness experienced by women subject to multiple interventions from state agencies over the life course is evident in the narratives of research participants. Although all participants exhibited a motivation to change and to live ‘a good life’ – defined by one participant as staying out of trouble and being a ‘good girl’, living in her own flat and being able to raise her children – the disjuncture between this goal and their lived experiences highlighted the dearth of opportunities available to them. The solution to this problem is not as straightforward as advocates of behavioural economics would have us believe (Leggett, 2014). The women appeared to be making the ‘right’ choices and doing the things asked of them by various ‘street-level bureaucrats’, however this was not always enough (Fletcher, 2011): Interviewer: Caitlin:



Are you currently working? No … I wish … I’ve done a lot of cleaning, and I’m after housekeeping at the moment … I really want to be in catering, I do, but that’s in the future ... I need some training … Cake decorator … that is my dream … I really want to do that but there’s

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Whitney:

no funding for that either ... I did find [a cake training course], and I got there and they said I’d have to pay for it. There was no way I could afford it. (Caitlin, 30, JSA/ESA WRAG) They know what I’m trying to do. They know I am interested in getting back to work, they know I don’t want to be on the dole for the rest of my life. (Whitney, 26, ESA WRAG)

These accounts counter dominant portrayals of benefit claimants as ‘workshy skivers’ in need of a punitive benefit sanctioning regime to get them to change their behaviour and make the ‘right’ choice to enter paid work. The data highlight a number of structural barriers to women accessing meaningful employment in the formal labour market and illustrate that a desire to work, alone, may not be enough. Though participants were asked to undertake compulsory job-searching or work-related activities, these interventions are not designed to support individuals in achieving their preferred work goals. The Work Programme8 should theoretically give jobseekers ‘tailored support specific to their individual needs’ (DWP, 2010). However, in practice, claimants are mandated to apply for any job. For example, Caitlin’s work coach organised check-out and shelf-stacking interviews at discount high street retailers, despite Caitlin repeatedly saying that her interests were in catering and her being placed on ESA due to a physical impairment. Access to training that is suited to job goals appeared to be limited. The UK social welfare system does not respond to claimants’ aspirations by providing tailored support; instead, it prioritises any job over worklessness and, at best, provides only basic employability skills training. More specialised training preferences (for example to become support workers for vulnerable people) were beyond the financial means of the participants. Additionally, some participants felt that their past held them back from reaching a particular goal, in particular their criminal record, which was an obstacle to accessing voluntary work placements that could help them to move towards paid work.

8

The Work Programme was introduced in 2011 as part of the Coalition government’s welfare reforms. It was the flagship welfare-to-work scheme until 2017, when it was replaced by the Work and Health Programme in 2017 (DWP, 2012; MirzaDavies and McGuinness, 2016).

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‘It sez it in that letter, 10 years until I can start working with kids and vulnerable adults. I need to work or I’m just sat at home doing nowt. I’m not gonna survive.’ (Caitlin, 30, JSA/ESA WRAG) ‘I know other women, they work in charity shops but I couldn’t cos I’ve got fraud on my record.’ (Gillian, 44, ESA Support) ‘My employer has never asked me if I have a criminal record ... It affected how I felt about myself at work for a long time I felt really conscious of it and felt anxious and that I was hiding a secret from the people I worked with ... I had an advantage – I had a degree and past employment and skills – so I have had an advantage over other women.’ (Annie, 27, not claiming) Caitlin lost her voluntary position helping at a food club at the centre, because she was told she was not allowed to work in an environment with vulnerable adults due to the nature of her conviction. Gillian volunteered at the centre but was unable to find a voluntary role elsewhere due to the fraud offence on her criminal record. For both participants, their involvement with the CJS had a negative legacy. This suggests that despite legislation to prevent discrimination for those who have served their punishment, in practice they still inhabit a position in society that is below the lowest non-offending member of society, unless they hide their past and have the means to pass for a non-offender. For example, Annie kept her criminal record a secret from her employer in order to secure a job. Significantly, Annie was the only participant who has a higher education qualification and a related level of educational capital.9 Unlike the majority of women leaving prison who struggle to find employment – only 9% of whom secure jobs – Annie avoided the revolving door of unemployment and reconviction (Hewson and Roberts, 2017). Independently, Annie found a job and had begun to carve out a successful career for herself, which she attributed in part to her level of education. As previously discussed, society stigmatises offenders and, in this instance, Annie responded by hiding her criminal record. This was her response to the powerlessness bestowed on her as an ex-offender. 9

Capital is used in the Bourdieusian sense; educational capital is one form of symbolic, as opposed to economic, capital (see Bourdieu, 1984).

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On occasion, there is support in place for women who come into conflict with the law. That support is accessible over years, which may be how long it takes for desistance from crime to become permanent/ stable (Dennis et al, 2007). Ironically, it is through engagement with the CJS that they are able to gain access to services that were previously unavailable to them: ‘When I was homeless I was asking for help and support with … my drinking and accommodation but nobody wanted to know … I got that [prison] sentence … and I got diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, now they want to help me … I said well I have been asking for this help for ages, for a long time they said well now we know we have got a reason to help you now … it really pisses me off sometimes.’ (Sylvia, 54, ESA Support) ‘The support is a big thing, [the drug service centre], here [women’s centre], everybody who I’m working with, that’s what helped me through it and [to] change, but [my son] made me change … I just weren’t ready to change [before], but now I’ve got to an older age ... I know I need to change ... something clicked inside that said right I don’t want to live that life anymore. When people know I’m doing well and they say, “listen I’m proud of you”, it makes me want to do it all the more … I want to be a mum now, I just want to settle down and live my life with [my son] … It’s me past, and I know I’ve got a horrendous past, but people can change, but it’s just giving me that chance to show that I’ve changed. But I’m just not being given that chance … I’ll never stop being labelled because of my past. I wish I’d lived a good life and didn’t do the things that I did, but I can’t change that.’ (Carly, 33, ESA WRAG) It is clear from most accounts that without such support, participants would have struggled to change their behaviour. However, within the dominant policy discourse, behaviour change is something that is attributed to individual responsibility and choice. To compound this, there is evidence that some participants were required to experience a crisis point, before help became available. Through engaging with support services, they were better able to respond to interventions and begin to address their complex needs. Some participants attributed the trigger to themselves – that they needed the change to occur

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from within. Changing their own self-perception and forging a new identity appeared key to desistance from crime for those with multiple and complex needs: Whitney:

Interviewer: Whitney:

Interviewer: Sally:

My lifestyle, it were inside me, it’s got to be inside you really, to change. It’s not what everyone else says or what they do; it’s got to be what you want to do. It’s one word – choices. If you’ve got a different start in life, it’s not always that easy … It doesn’t work like that though; it doesn’t work like that at all. I don’t know; some people start off shit. Me and [friend], we started off shit and look at us now. It just shows you, you’ve got to want to do it for yourself, not for anyone else. (Whitney, 26, ESA WRAG) What’s [the] most important thing for you to get you to where you are now, stable and with a parttime job? The [day centre], myself, my partner. Because I’d still be drinking, I’d still come in after having a drink and work - when you could tell. But now I don’t … only now and again I’ll have a drink around town. It is my situation, because before I was hanging around with all the wrong people, with all the wrong crowds and now I just do my job here, when I’m at the [sports] club I go straight there and then straight home, that’s me, so … It’s still one day to the next … but it’s me making that distance, in not wanting to go and have a drink with them, hang around with them so … I’ve come a long way because I never saw myself as working, not in a paid job anyway, volunteering, well I didn’t even see myself volunteering before. (Sally, 36, ESA WRAG)

These accounts highlight the conflicting tensions underpinning participants’ narratives of positive behaviour change. For example, Whitney attributes her transformation to her own volition, yet she has been attending the centre and accessing support for over seven years; it is evidently an integral part of the non-offending life that she has

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built. However, in her account she emphasises that an individual must want to change their situation and ‘do it for yourself ’. Rather than acknowledging structural problems, individual responsibility often underpins the self-help, empowerment and therapeutic support work that takes place at marginal welfare service providers (Povey, 2017). Consequently, the neoliberal trope of individual responsibility is internalised by participants, who then make sense of their lived experiences through narratives of flawed personal choice and the need to rectify their mistakes through individual changes to their own behaviour and lifestyle.

Getting by: bounded agency within the disciplinary archipelago Participants’ histories highlighted the punitive management of resistance to inequalities and injustices within the social system. For those who had numerous convictions or the threat of sanctions held over them, they had learnt the hard way that getting angry was not a strategy that would get them anywhere. Many participants approached problems pragmatically, aiming to work slowly towards their goals within the constraints of the (seemingly insurmountable) structural barriers that they faced; it was not always easy to maintain this demeanour, particularly during moments of crisis or life-shocks. This ‘bounded agency’ has been described by Lister: ‘people experiencing poverty are actors in their own lives, but within the bounds of frequently formidable and oppressive structural and cultural constraints, which are themselves the products of others’ agency’ (Lister, 2004: 157). Participants’ agency was bounded by state intervention from both penal and social arms of the state. Importantly, a preoccupation with day-to-day survival and – for those who hoped to get their children back – ensuring that they did not go backwards in the eyes of professionals involved, became the priority. This can be seen in the narratives of women whose future aspirations around living ‘a good life’ – which frequently entailed getting their child back so that they could ‘be a mum’ – were sidelined to more immediate and basic concerns regarding bills, maintaining their benefit and accommodation payments, and having enough money for food. Research has shown that ‘day-to-day poverty management’ is a gendered experience shouldered by women (Lister, 2015: 148). In addition to material concerns, participants were often expected to keep a number of plates spinning at once, such as engaging with services to address various complex needs (including mental or physical

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health problems), or working on behavioural issues. Some had courtordered activity requirements; others had care plans and social worker assessments. As Lister (2015: 148) contends: ‘at a very minimum, coping or getting by is an active process of juggling’. On a number of occasions, participants admitted that they did not have enough money to cover food bills or travel costs that week. Despite this they managed to keep their appointments with professionals the majority of the time, although this was challenging at times of crisis. In light of these constraints, participants often focused on the everyday, rather than on longer-term strategic goals (Lister, 2015). All participants, apart from the two discussed previously, Annie and Lola, depended on out-of-work benefits. ‘Getting by’ remained a struggle, even for those in receipt of social assistance. Engagement with the conditionality regime required them to jump through hoops (even those in the support group were asked to periodically prove their right to a lower level of conditionality). Those not in the support group were expected to find work. However, physical or mental health issues or histories of prison meant that they were unable to progress into low-paid – and in some cases even voluntary – work due to their previous convictions (see also Lister, 2004). Faced with a harsher conditionality and sanctions regime – and alongside personal histories of punishment within the CJS – managing to maintain their benefits in the face of cumulative setbacks could be viewed as an achievement in itself. A benefit sanction would potentially lead to a worsening of their socioeconomic position, so it is understandable that they often recalibrated their goals to prioritise this. Additionally, it is in the interests of participants who have supervised contact with, or who hope to regain custody of, their children to accept any required conditions, to alleviate the threat of reduced or terminated contact with their child(ren). As the extracts from repeat longitudinal interviews presented next indicate, those women whose children had been removed from their care expressed hope that they could re-establish contact and regain responsibility for their children. This aim was difficult to move towards in the face of significant material difficulties: ‘[Reuben]’s adopted now, yeah … they let our [Millie] who’s only fostered … go and see him which I think’s lovely cos he’s adopted. Cos when he’s adopted, normally it’s a total cut off from blood family … I’m writing to Millie … and getting back in touch … I’ve got to prove to them as well, do you know what I mean? ... after being on the

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streets your roof is the most important thing, you pay your rent regardless.’ (Ros, 45, ESA WRAG, first interview) ‘Not only that, it’s money as well. Do you know what I mean? It’s finances … we’d never go anywhere … we’d never go out … I said to Ben god will she wanna come home, I can’t give her 4 holidays a year in Spain …’ (Ros, 45, ESA WRAG, second interview) ‘Some bills have actually gone out and come back in again because we couldn’t afford it so, we have got worry over that … We are just trying to get money together for Christmas for the girls … I would love to be able to work but I can’t. I can’t hold down any job because of my mental health … They have left us hanging about a year [making a decision on the girls] … [I] would love unsupervised contact time just to speak freely with [Eliza] and [Anna], see what they really think. Because I don’t like sitting there when I can see she is upset, I want to hug her.’ (Alice, 41, ESA Support third interview). Participants’ goals narrowed over the course of the research period. In earlier interviews, participants who had lost custody of their children maintained hope of getting their children back. This hope was often encouraged by day centre keyworkers and other service providers they engaged with (such as a probation officer or a drug and alcohol worker) in order to keep them on track in terms of addressing their complex needs such as alcohol or substance misuse, or in participating in therapeutic and socio-welfare courses.10 There was a disjuncture between the diversionary environment and the one in which social workers decided on whether the family would remain apart permanently. While they were able to manage their own day-to-day lives, they were denied the right to care for their children. The gap between participants’ goals in respect of their children and where they actually were in their personal lives seemed, at times, insurmountable – especially when there were multiple and complex support requirements that were unlikely to be met. While they were not explicitly linked, participants were aware that it was important to comply with the different conditions set by various agencies; for 10

A number of participants had recently completed a ‘Make Change Happen’ course at the day centres, which focused on empowering women to make ‘better’ decisions.

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example, maintaining their benefits or looking for work, as well as completing court-ordered or social worker recommended activities. These were all important ancillary targets to be achieved, in order to give themselves the best chance of maintaining some form of contact with their child or getting them back. The support services they received from day centres was appreciated by participants, such as short courses on making positive choices in relationships or eating more healthily. But ultimately, this support did not improve the opportunities available to them or improve their socioeconomic positions. Not receiving enough income through the benefits system to meet day-to-day living costs created further stress and, in some cases, developed into crisis points. For many participants, living in poverty, indicated by regular food insecurity, became normalised. There was no anger at receiving social security benefits at a level which meant that they were frequently reduced to food charity. Women at the penal-welfare nexus are trapped in a ‘getting by’ dynamic; organising as a group facing similar issues would be a way to access strategic agency (Lister, 2015). However, this type of activity is thwarted by the individualistic way in which problems are conceived of and addressed within the neoliberal system. Its products – stigma, shame, othering and social distancing – may get in the way: Interviewer: Sally:

Do you think in the future you might want to move into full-time work? I’m happy as it is, just now, because I know I can mess up at any time. And I’ve seen people like with jobs, fast cars, money, and then now I see them in here, homeless, on the street. That’s why I want to get myself, my own head right, before jumping straight in. (Sally, 36, ESA WRAG)

Sally was in paid part-time work, which was not the case for most of the other participants. Sally also continued to volunteer at the day centre in her free time, hardly the behaviour of a ‘shirker’, another term prevalent in public discourse on benefit recipients (Garthwaite, 2011). After many years in the revolving door of prison, Sally had reached a stable place in terms of keeping her benefit, holding down part-time work and volunteering, as well as managing her drinking. However, this apparent stability was acutely fragile. A full-time job would intensify pressure and stress – she would have much more freedom to ‘mess up’. She has seen others move too quickly into full-time work and this can end badly. She feels that staying where she is, is better than running

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the risk of returning to the streets or to prison. Should Sally be pushed towards full-time employment, or placed on a different benefit with a higher level of conditionality, the progress she has made would be at risk, due to her complex needs and vulnerabilities. Important here is the conditionality of benefits. Assessment for the conditions placed on an individual is frequent in WRAGs, and is subject to change under ongoing welfare reform. Sally shows a complex form of agency in action (Patrick, 2017). She must navigate a more conditional welfare system, which aims to push her into a full-time job, yet she has recognised that this would not be good for her and is able to delay this for now. As Lister (2015: 145) argues, ‘agency has to be contextualised within the structural constraints and opportunities that frame people’s lives’.

Conclusion This research sheds light on the lived effects of the combined impact of multiple – and sometimes conflicting – approaches and interventions on a highly vulnerable group. A perverse mix of gender-responsive policies from within the criminal justice system contrasts with often highly conditional and constraining welfare policies, couched in genderneutral terms. The ongoing retrenchment and increased conditionality within the UK social security system has created deteriorating socioeconomic conditions for women on the social margins. This chapter has offered insights into the complex raft of interventions and ‘targeted governance’ through which women at the penal-welfare interface are managed throughout the life course (Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009). Prominent in participant accounts were experiences of punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency, as they navigated a more punitive welfare system and attempted to exit the criminal justice system for good. Punishment through the welfare system was often evident; four participants had experienced benefit sanctions directly, others had been threatened with a benefit sanction. Moreover, precarity had become a way of life, as shown by regular food insecurity and problems with paying utility bills. Participants were often unable to move into the labour market due to their past conviction, which induced a sense of powerlessness. In the face of residualised social assistance and community services, some had been stuck for many years, revolving between the criminal justice and welfare arms of the state. For many participants inhabiting this space, tacit acceptance was the most pragmatic way to approach various street-level agents that governed them and the conditions to which they

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were subject. Between a shrunken welfare system and support services accessed on the edges of the CJS, these women are effectively trapped on the margins of society, unable to move forward due to institutional, legal, policy and societal constraints that self-improvement approaches alone cannot address. References Ashe, F. (2014) ‘All about Eve’: Mothers, masculinities and the 2011 UK riots, Political Studies, 62: 652-68. Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. (2016) The uneven impact of welfare reform: The financial losses to places and people, Sheffield Hallam University. https://www4.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/ welfare-reform-2016_1.pdf Bennett, F. and Sung, S. (2013) Dimensions of financial autonomy in low-/moderate-income couples from a gender perspective and implications for welfare reform, Journal of Social Policy, 42(4): 701-19. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction, R. Nice (trans.), Cambridge: Polity Press. Brewer, M. and De Agostini, P. (2015) Credit crunched: Single parents, universal credit and the struggle to make work pay, No. EM3/15, EUROMOD Working Paper. Broadhurst, K., Shaw, M., Kershaw, S., Harwin, J., Alrouh, B., Mason, C. and Pilling, M. (2015) Vulnerable birth mothers and repeat losses of infants to public care: Is targeted reproductive health care ethically defensible?, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 37(1): 84-98. Bumiller, K. (2013) Incarceration, welfare state and labour market nexus, in B. Carlton and M. Segrave (eds) Women exiting prison: Critical essays on gender, post-release support and survival, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 13-33. Butler, P. (2015) Benefit sanctions: they’re absurd and don’t work very well, experts tell MPs, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2015/jan/08/benefit-sanctionsabsurd-and-dont-work-mps-told-welfare Cafcass (2017) Care applications in September 2017. https://www. cafcass.gov.uk/leaflets-resources/organisational-material/care-andprivate-law-demand-statistics/care-demand-statistics.aspx Cain, M. (1989) Growing up good: Policing the behaviour of girls in Europe, London: Sage. Corcoran, M. and Fox, C. (2012) A seamless partnership? Developing mixed economy interventions in a non-custodial project for women, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 13(3): 336-53.

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Dwyer, P. and Wright, S. (2014) Universal Credit, ubiquitous conditionality and its implications for social citizenship, The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 22(1), 27-35. Edmiston, D. (2018) Welfare, inequality and social citizenship. Deprivation and affluence in austerity Britain, Bristol: Policy Press. Edmiston, D., Patrick, R. and Garthwaite, K. (2017) Introduction: Austerity, welfare and social citizenship, Social Policy and Society, 16(2): 253-59. Esping-Andersen, G. (1996) Welfare states in transition: National adaptations in global economies. London: Sage. Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G., Sosenko, F. and Blenkinsopp, J. with Wood, J., Johnsen, S., Littlewood, M. and Watts, B. (2018) Destitution in the UK 2018, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Fletcher, D. R. (2011) Welfare reform, Jobcentre Plus and the streetlevel bureaucracy: towards inconsistent and discriminatory welfare for severely disadvantaged groups?, Social Policy and Society, 10(4), 445-58. Fletcher, D. R. (2013) Offenders in the post-industrial labour market: Lubricating the revolving door, People, Place and Policy, 1: 80-9. Fletcher, D. R. (2016) First wave findings: Offenders. www. welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ WelCond-findings-offenders-May16.pdf Fletcher, D. R. and Wright, S. (2017) A hand up or a slap down? Criminalising benefit claimants in Britain via strategies of surveillance, sanctions and deterrence, Critical Social Policy, 31 August, 1-22. doi: 0261018317726622. Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin. Garland, D. (2001) The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garthwaite, K. (2011) The language of shirkers and scroungers? Talking about illness, disability and Coalition welfare reform, Disability and Society, 26(3): 369-72. Garthwaite, K. (2017) “I feel I’m Giving Something Back to Society”: Constructing the ‘Active Citizen’ and Responsibilising Foodbank Use, Social Policy and Society, 16(2): 283-92. Gillies, V. (2011) From function to competence: Engaging with the new politics of family, Sociological Research Online, 16(4), 1-11. Hedderman, C. and Gunby, C. (2013) Diverting women from custody: The importance of understanding sentencers’ perspectives, Probation Journal, 60(4): 425-38.

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Hewson, A. and Roberts, I. (2017) Bromley briefings prison factfile: Autumn 2017, Prison Reform Trust. http://www.prisonreformtrust. org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Bromley%20Briefings/Autumn%20 2017%20factfile.pdf Hills, J. (2014) Good times, bad times: The welfare myth of them and us, Bristol: Policy Press. Jensen, T. (2014) Welfare commonsense, poverty porn and doxosophy, Sociological Research Online, 19(3): 3. Jensen, T. and Tyler, I. (2015) ‘Benefits broods’: The cultural and political crafting of anti-welfare commonsense, Critical Social Policy, 35(4), 470-91. Johnsen, S. (2014) Conditionality Briefing: Lone Parents, Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change. www. welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Briefing_ LoneParents_14.09.10_FINAL.pdf Johnsen, S., May, J. and Cloke, P. (2008) Imag(in)ing ‘homeless places’: Using auto-photography to (re)examine the geographies of homelessness, Area, 40(2), 194-207. Kotova, A. (2014) Justice and prisoners’families, Howard League Working Papers. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/23508/ HLWP_5_2014_2.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Leggett, W. (2014) The politics of behaviour change: nudge, neoliberalism and the state, Policy and Politics, 42(1), 3-19. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty: Key concepts, Cambridge: Polity. Lister, R. (2015) “To count for nothing”: Poverty beyond the statistics, Journal of the British Academy, 3: 139-65. McCarthy, L., Batty, E., Beatty, C., Casey, R., Foden, M. and Reeve, K. (2015) Homeless people’s experiences of welfare conditionality and benefit sanctions, Sheffield Hallam University. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/14613/ McKeever, G., Simpson, M. and Fitzpatrick, C. (2018) Destitution and paths to justice: Final report, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) (2014a) Update on delivery of the Government’s strategic objectives for female offenders. https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/ media/bl/global/social-welfare/pdfs/non-secure/u/p/d/updateon-delivery-of-the-governments-strategic-objectives-for-femaleoffenders.pdf Ministry of Justice (MoJ) (2014b) Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2013. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380090/women-cjs-2013.pdf Mirza-Davies, J. and McGuinness, F. (2016) Work and Health Programme, Briefing Paper Number 7845. http://researchbriefings.files.parliament. uk/documents/CBP-7845/CBP-7845.pdf

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National Offender Management Service (NOMS) (2012) A Distinct Approach: A Guide to Working with Women Offenders. Patrick, R. (2017) For whose benefit? The everyday realities of welfare reform, Bristol: Policy Press. Povey, L. (2017) Where Welfare and Criminal Justice Meet: Applying Wacquant to the Experiences of Marginalised Women in Austerity Britain, Social Policy and Society, 16(2): 271-81. Pratt, J., Brown, D. and Brown, M. (2005) The new punitiveness: Trends, theories, perspectives. Cullompton: Willan. Pratt, J. (2011) Penal Excess and Penal Exceptionalism, in A. Crawford (ed.) International and comparative criminal justice and urban governance: Convergence and divergence in global, national and local settings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 252-75. Prison Reform Trust (2017) Why focus on reducing women’s imprisonment?, Prison Reform Trust. www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/ Documents/Women/why%20women_final.pdf Rose, G. (2012) Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials, London: Sage Publications. Turnbull, S. and Hannah-Moffat, K. (2009) Under these conditions: Gender, parole and the governance of reintegration, The British Journal of Criminology, 49(4): 532-51. Wacquant, L. (2009) Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Webster, D. (2014) JSA Sanctions and Disallowances, Evidence submitted to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into the Role of Jobcentre Plus in the reformed welfare system, Second Report of Session 2013-14, Vol. II, Ev w90-w101. Webster, D. (2015) Benefit sanctions: Britain’s secret penal system, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/ resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system Wenham, A. (2016) ‘I know I’m a good mum – no one can tell me different’: Young mothers negotiating a stigmatised identity through time, Families, Relationships and Societies, 5(1): 127-44. Youth Justice Board (2009) Girls and offending – patterns, perceptions and interventions. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/354833/yjb-girls-offending.pdf

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FOUR

Resisting welfare conditionality: constraint, choice and dissent among homeless migrants Regina Serpa

Introduction ‘Welfare conditionality’ broadly refers to the terms to which a person must adhere in order to participate in a welfare programme. More specifically, it is concerned with individuals both satisfying particular eligibility criteria, and simultaneously complying with any behavioural expections that may determine eligibility. One function of welfare conditionality is to enforce a social contract founded on the principle of reciprocity, to restrict access to state assistance and to influence behavioural change, consistent with collectively ascribed cultural values that conform to a social norm (Barrass and Shields, 2013; Johnsen et al, 2018). This chapter examines the ways in which welfare conditionality impacts upon homeless migrants in the UK. Legal status, eligibility requirements and behavioural controls determine access to benefits, housing and state assistance, which compounds the precarity of homeless migrants, who are situated at the interstices of multiple (and competing) systems. The chapter not only looks at the ways in which specific conditions constrain the choices of homeless migrants, but also considers how efforts at behavioural change are resisted. Using data from a small-scale, exploratory study that examines the accounts of Polish rough sleepers in Scotland, this chapter asks: • To what extent is non-participation in a welfare programme a consequence of passivity or a feature of active choice? • Specifically, in what ways do those facing extreme precarity and constrained choice resist welfare conditionality?

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This study argues that for some rough sleepers, homelessness can be a form of resistance to eligibility and behavioural conditions attached to welfare, and sleeping rough can be an act of dissent to forms of state control (see Watts et al (2018) for a useful discussion of the legitimacy of homeless interventions). Using new data generated from interviews with Polish rough sleepers and key informants in Scotland, this chapter argues that although benefit ineligibility contributes to homelessness among Eastern Europeans in Britain, disengagement from welfare systems is not wholly explained by a lack of entitlement to assistance or inadequate information regarding welfare rights. For some rough sleepers, ‘disengagement’ is active non-participation and reflective of a ‘beat the system’ attitude (Czerniejewska and Goździak, 2014). Exemplified in these cases is a desire to be free and independent, not wanting to be viewed as poor, and the belief that what is seen to be a meagre level of assistance is not worth the cost of relinquished autonomy or damaged pride. Individually, non-participation is a rejection of state support and its accompanying behavioural conditions. Collectively, these localised forms of resistance resemble social protest, albeit unorganised, idiosyncratic and fragmented.

Post-war immigration policy in Britain Since the Second World War, immigration policy in the UK has swung periodically between ‘restricting’ and ‘managing’ immigration, with successive and often contradictory political agendas concerning border control (Robinson, 2010). More recently, the effort to restrict immigration has extended into other policy arenas not previously seen as the purview of the Home Office, such as housing, health and education. Limiting the right to housing across tenures has been of great consequence for EU nationals currently in the UK, as well as for those wishing to come to the UK from elsewhere in Europe. The intersection between immigration policy and the combined systems of social security, housing and labour markets, in particular, has contributed to the precarity felt by many migrants living in the UK, and in the most extreme cases has contributed to homelessness among EU nationals (Pleace, 2011; Busch-Geertsema et al, 2010; Fitzpatrick et al, 2012). As national security measures percolate through various spheres of domestic policy, the powers of border control have hardened considerably – a process that has been exacerbated by the impact of austerity and the 2016 Brexit vote (Harris, 2018). In 2010, a Coalition

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government was elected on a pledge to reverse immigration trends back to pre-1990 levels. Without power to limit migration from the EU, the Conservatives looked to aspects of immigration law that could be tightened and enforced. Significant examples of this policy diffusion/ intrusion are the Welfare Reform Act 2012, which restricts benefit entitlements for EU migrants, and the ‘Right to Rent’ provision of the Immigration Act 2016, which makes it a criminal offence for landlords and their agents to provide accommodation to those without a legal right to reside in the UK (Crawford et al, 2016). In tandem with intensifying the control of migrants, public attitudes towards immigration (and migrants themselves) hardened (IPSOS MORI, 2006). This deepening of anti-immigrant sentiment ultimately contributed to the 2016 vote for Britain to leave the EU and end the freedom of movement to the UK (Vasilopoulou and Wagner, 2017). The UK is on course to leave the EU in 2019 and at the time of writing, one year from the date of anticipated exit, there is significant uncertainty about the rights of EU nationals to live and work in the UK, both for those migrating in the future and current residents. Nevertheless, given the ultimate objective of ending freedom of movement, it is reasonable to expect that restrictions are likely to deepen for any persons lacking citizenship or legal permanent residency in the UK. The current position is that EU nationals have the right to live and work in the UK by demonstrating a right to reside through exercising EU Treaty Rights (by being a worker contributing to the system, a jobseeker with a ‘genuine prospect of work’ or economically selfsufficient and therefore not a burden on the benefits system). The Genuine Prospect of Work test, for example, is an additional hurdle for EU migrants to satisfy, and it represents an extra criterion for EU claimants to demonstrate that as a jobseeker they have a realistic chance of securing work. Claimants who have poor English language skills are typically found to fail the Genuine Prospect of Work test, if exercising their Treaty Rights as a jobseeker (DWP, 2011). (For further discussions on welfare conditionality and its impact on EU migrants resident in the UK, see Chapter Six.) Furthermore, those without a right to reside may be subject to administrative removal. Operation Nexus, for example, has involved the Metropolitan Police working jointly with the Home Office, in identifying EU nationals who are not exercising their Treaty Rights (targeting those who have committed a criminal offence in the UK) and repatriating them to their home countries (Home Office, 2017). Critically, having a right to reside also has important implications for

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accessing benefits and housing. Those applying for Housing Benefit, for example, must demonstrate a right to reside and, additionally, must satisfy the Habitual Residency test, by proving that they have been in the country for a ‘reasonable amount of time’ and have a ‘settled intention’ to be in the UK (DWP, 2013). As of 2014, EU nationals cannot claim benefits prior to having resided in the UK for three months, are entitled to Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for a maximum of six months and cannot claim JSA and Housing Benefit concurrently. Furthermore, EU nationals are not able to claim under the new benefit regime of Universal Credit (DWP, 2014). However, commentators such as Babayev (2016) have shown that this tendency to restrict migrants’ access to social security benefits is not limited to the UK. The combined effect of tightening migrant access to welfare has had profound consequences for EU nationals in housing need in the UK. In England, for example, there is alignment between welfare and housing policies, insofar as one cannot be entitled to statutory homelessness assistance if one is deemed ineligible for Housing Benefit due to legal status. In Scotland, however, where housing policy is a devolved matter, EU nationals remain eligible for homelessness assistance, and being disqualified for benefits does not necessarily make one ineligible. This tension between reserved and devolved policy matters has created a dilemma for homeless EU migrants in Scotland where, for example, a homeless applicant can be entitled to homelessness assistance under Scottish legislation, but unable to pay for temporary accommodation due to being ineligible for Housing Benefit, as rules dictating eligibility remain reserved at the UK level. The following section outlines how greater welfare conditionality with regard to legal status has contributed to homelessness among EU nationals from certain countries, in particular in the UK.

Homelessness among Polish nationals in the UK Enlargement of the European Union to include so-called A8 countries1 in 2004 triggered unprecedented large-scale migration throughout Europe. In the years following accession, several studies began to uncover increasing levels of homelessness among A8 migrants to the UK, with a particular focus on Polish nationals sleeping rough (Ramesh, 2010a; Garapich, 2011; Czerniejewska and Goździak, 2014; CHAIN, 2014; Garapich, 2014). 1

A8 countries include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

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In Scotland, the Scottish Council for Single Homeless (SCSH) conducted specific research into homelessness experienced among A8 migrants. In 2006, SCSH surveyed all local authorities in Scotland to establish the extent of homelessness and service needs for this group. The study found that the growing number of homeless applications from A8 nationals were from migrant workers seeking assistance due to issues surrounding private rented and tied accommodation, but a sizable proportion also sought help with overcrowding and poor living conditions (SCSH, 2006). The SCSH study also noted that the majority of local authorities were aware of A8 nationals seeking independent advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), churches and jobcentres. In 2008, the CAB in Scotland conducted a survey throughout Scotland, to determine the advice needs of A8 nationals. The study highlighted that the advice needs of A8 nationals differed from the average CAB customer, in that they were less likely to have housing debt, slightly more likely to seek advice about actual homelessness, and less likely to seek advice about housing conditions (CAB, 2008). The last finding is particularly striking, as it seemed to contradict the findings from the SCSH: that the majority of A8 nationals who approach local authorities for advice with housing are often concerned with substandard and overcrowded housing conditions. Poor housing conditions were found to be a significant problem in some rural areas, where housing shortages are acute, leading to additional housing problems for potentially vulnerable A8 clients (CAB, 2008). The existing research on migrant homelessness in Scotland is limited, although evidence on the housing need of A8 nationals points to the precarious position of migrants in the housing market. A study of ‘multiple exclusion homelessness’ among migrants in seven UK cities (although 82% of migrant participants were located in Westminster) highlighted a predominance of structural reasons for rough sleeping for this group,2 when compared to the more individual explanations that seemed to account for homelessness among the indigenous population. The study found that although migrants were more likely to have slept rough, they were significantly less likely to have experienced ‘deep social exclusion’ (as defined in the study), such as attempting suicide, engaging in self-harm or being charged with violent 2

‘Multiple exclusion homelessness’ is defined as homeless persons who have experienced one or more forms of deep social exclusion, such as institutional care, substance misuse, or participation in street culture activities (Fitzpatrick et al, 2012: 33).

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crime. Importantly, the study found that where multiple exclusion homelessness did exist among migrants, such as engaging in street culture activities, this was found to have occurred after arriving in the UK. The authors suggest that, rather than deep social exclusion causing homelessness among migrants, these factors are the result of the particular nature of destitution experienced by migrants, such as not having access to welfare protection or the support networks in their home countries (Fitzpatrick et al, 2012). In addition to structural explanations for the rise in rough sleeping of A8 migrants, such as inability to access services and the lack of planning involved in service provision, cultural factors were explored in Garapich’s study of homeless Poles in London (Garapich, 2014). At the time of this qualitative study, it appeared as though the number of homeless A8 nationals was growing quickly. In 2009, it was estimated that one in seven rough sleepers were from Central and Eastern Europe (Bowcott, 2009), growing to more than a quarter in 2010 (Thames Reach, 2010). Other studies variously stated that approximately 40% of rough sleepers in London were from A8 countries (Ramesh, 2010b) and that 28% of rough sleepers in London were from Poland (CHAIN, 2012). Garapich (2011) conducted a study of single homeless Polish men in London between 2009 and 2011 and, through participant observation and life story interviews, identified a ‘Homo Sovieticus’ syndrome as a possible reason to explain why this group in particular tended to avoid approaching formal homelessness services. According to this theory, ‘beat the system attitudes’ and ‘hostility towards capitalistic organisation of labour’ could be seen as strategies for bending the formal legal process (Garapich, 2011: 17). Instead of being seen as a ‘cultural lag’ that inhibits progress or modernisation, this syndrome should be understood as a real strategy that people employ for survival in the face of an uncertain future and contested power relations. Hence, this ‘syndrome’ is a coping mechanism to deal with the realities of the neoliberal global city, comprising ‘inequities, chaos, unpredictability, uneven access to welfare, and subordinate position vis-à-vis various forms of authority, repressive practices of the state and revanchivist attitudes of urban planners towards homelessness’ (Garapich, 2011: 19). A similar finding that cultural attitudes can explain why some homeless Poles avoided formal services was found in a study of returning Polish migrants who had experienced homelessness in the UK. Thus, Czerniejewska and Gozdziak (2013) found that many Poles never sought public assistance, despite their housing need, because of the desire for economic independence and not wanting to be seen as poor. Furthermore, Polish migrants often did not claim benefits, because

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they felt that social assistance benefits provided such little support that it was not worth applying (Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013). Like Garapich (2011), Czerniejewska and Gozdziak argue that what service providers perceive as homelessness, such as doubling up with friends or squatting, is in fact a strategy used by migrants to ‘beat the system’, to avoid paying extortionate rents, finding informal resources in the absence of formal assistance (Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013). The empirical evidence on the prevalence and condition of homeless Central and Eastern European migrants in the UK (albeit limited) points to a combination of structural and individual factors contributing to their precarity. In summary, research suggests that immigration status is the primary determinant of migrant homelessness. This is unsurprising, given that legal status determines a person’s access to employment, housing and welfare rights. However, as writers such as McNaughton Nicholls (2009) have shown, individual factors (or agency) are also of considerable importance. In the context of constrained choice, individual factors (such as those identified in the multiple exclusion homelessness study [Fitzpatrick et al, 2012]) serve to make one more or less vulnerable to homelessness. In order to examine these claims, the following section analyses the ways in which agency can be asserted, as Polish rough sleepers (re)claim their autonomy in their rejection of formal assistance and in their resistance to behavioural conditionality, when engaging welfare systems.

Homelessness among migrants: role of constraint, choice and dissent The following sections present evidence obtained as part of a larger comparative study conducted by the author into migrant homelessness in Scotland and the US. In total, 30 homeless migrants and 40 front-line workers, service managers and policy makers participated in the threeyear study, spanning two case study areas of Edinburgh in Scotland and Boston metropolitan area in Massachusetts. Although Britain and America are perhaps more notable for their dissimilarities in terms of their respective systems for housing provision, Massachusetts is comparable to Scotland, insofar as both places are renowned for their progressive approach to addressing homelessness. Policy approaches in both case study areas most closely resemble a right to housing: Massachusetts is the only ‘right to shelter’ state for homeless families in the US (Mort, 1983); and in Scotland, a statutory duty amounts to some of the most progressive legislation in Europe,

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establishing the right to ‘settled’ accommodation for all (eligible) homeless households (Fitzpatrick and Pawson, 2016). Central and Eastern Europeans in the Scottish case study were compared to nationals from Central America and the Caribbean in the Massachusetts sample, on the basis that both migrant groups occupy similar social positions in the labour and housing markets and, as economic migrants, experience comparable disadvantage (and discrimination) in their ability to secure work and access housing. A mix of household types (families with children as well as single individuals) participated in both case study areas, and participants experienced a range of housing need, for example literal homelessness as well as being ‘precariously housed’ in overcrowded or doubled-up accommodation. The participants in the Scottish sample who were from Poland were generally younger than other participants in the study, and were all single, male and sleeping rough. The research used in this chapter considers data obtained from interviews conducted in 2015 by the author with five single men from Poland sleeping rough in Edinburgh and 11 key informants (including representatives from the Scottish government, team leaders in local authorities and voluntary agency service providers). These interviews explored the way that constraint, choice and dissent operate in the context of migrant homelessness. Conditionality and constraint in accessing homelessness services The extension of conditionality in welfare, including reductions in benefit payments, restrictions on eligibility and a marked hostility towards migrant groups, provided strong disincentives for homeless migrants to apply for assistance. For some of the key informants, the environment was described as unwelcoming, hostile and in some cases explicitly discriminatory. For example, some service providers explained that services (whether intentionally or not) racially discriminated against migrants in general, reflecting xenophobic attitudes in wider society: ‘Let’s just call it what it is, it’s racism that’s what it is and I think there’s a culture of racism in local authorities and I don’t think it would be spoken about but as soon as it’s a Johnny Foreigner and it’s wait a minute it’s where’s your passport and your migration certificate, where have you worked? Are you on benefits? And they ask questions that they wouldn’t ask if I walked in.’ (Service Provider 1, Glasgow)

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This allegation of the racialised nature of service provision was echoed by another service provider: ‘I always want to say the term racist, just the kind of thing where they’re viewed as, kind of, scrounging. Like, using the benefits system wrongly, and we pay the taxes and that shit. I can be honest or it’ll all start coming back to, first it was the Polish and now … And now it’s kind of, the hatred has moved from one, kind of, em … EU migrant to the other.’ (Service Provider 3, Edinburgh) In contrast, other key informants explained that poor services offered to Polish and other migrant groups were not due to a malicious act of racism in itself, but more a reaction against demanding workloads and resource pressures. They explained that (in addition to conditions on eligibility), language and cultural barriers placed intolerable demands on services, and that to make caseloads more manageable, clients with high support needs (often including migrants) tended to be neglected: ‘[I]t wasn’t that you don’t want to help them. I think it was very difficult to help them. And the man hours you could put in to helping that person when at the end of the day they would get no recourse to public funds and therefore would be refused accommodation when you’ve ten other guys that you know that you can help, you start to deviate and, and it’s just a human thing, you know, to move away from, people get parked.’ (Service Provider 2, Glasgow) Such participants were keen to stress their desire to provide assistance, but highlighted the excessive constraints under which they were working. For example: ‘I’d say that the lines have kind of blurred a bit as to what our actual responsibilities are because we find ourselves going above and beyond, like every day, to do things that we really either don’t really have training in or acting as support workers. Currently my caseload is between 30 and 40 clients that are open, which, to be honest is stressing me the fuck out … I have about 3 or 4 that are open, but most of them are, they’re kind of paused because I’m waiting for them to give me further information in order to bring me in something that I need. And often they don’t remember

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or often they don’t understand fully what I need them to get or what I need them to do, and even with a translator, it’s just so confusing … it’s just the most time-consuming work.’ (Service Provider 1, Edinburgh) These pressures were exacerbated by the complexity of migrant support needs and the time needed to deal effectively with individual casework: ‘Migrants are less likely to make repeat presentations as the pressure on service increases… my interpretation of it is that migrants need more time when getting support… as the pressure on the service increases, migrants don’t get that space, they avoid busier times so it seems to me like they are not being served because they are not coming back.’ (Policy Officer 1, for non-profit service centre, Edinburgh) Service providers participating in the study suggested that migrant groups, in particular, tended to avoid formal systems of support, more so than other groups of homeless persons might, as a result of inadequate service provision acting as disincentives and as barriers to engagement. Differential treatment towards migrant groups from service providers – as a result of either discriminatory practices or poor cultural competency of practitioners – served to reinforce suspicion of formal systems of support and the belief that help was not available through official channels. Furthermore, passive-aggressive behaviour of service providers – who sometimes ignore, neglect or ‘park’ clients with high support needs in response to pressurised workloads – adds to the disincentive of migrants to access services and reinforces a preference for informal support. Homelessness as a choice? The question of ‘choice’ was a common theme in the interviews with service providers and outreach workers. Some explained that nonengagement was the legitimate response to services not being designed for particular needs of specific populations, or as some described it, a response to discriminatory practice and procedures. Others explained that a refusal to engage was a rational response to passive-aggressive actions of individual caseworkers, who provided a substandard service to clients with higher support needs, thus deterring them from accessing services. A further line of argument challenged the idea that the decision not to engage was actually a choice at all, but rather the result

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of being misinformed about eligibility or reflective of harmful attitudes towards the services themselves, borne out of fear or ignorance. Attitudes among service providers about homeless migrants choosing not to engage in formal support ranged from the permissive (‘people can do what they like’) to a much more assertive view that looked to challenge the notion of personal choice. For example, one street outreach worker was very explicit about not accepting a homeless person’s ‘choice’ to sleep rough, explaining that when he did come across people refusing his outreach, he would do all within his power to encourage them to come in off the street: ‘There seemed to be a kind of acceptance about rough sleeping’s fine, it’s all right. Once somebody rough sleeps once it’s almost like turning a tap on … the guys coming from Poland and Bulgaria might not realise they are entitled to accommodation and they are more willing to just go with the flow sort of thing, and accept it. So, I’d always as well question whether that person’s making a choice that you could consider to be informed … I would give them every opportunity and every chance that I could possibly do as a professional to get them to not do that so for me it was about breaking down the barriers as to why you don’t have to do that. So, I would try to get them to get down to a point to tell me why they’re choosing to rough sleep. And I usually think that whenever I’ve done that with folk it’s never what they say initially and it takes you 8/9/12 weeks to break down their whole barriers. I think that there are folk who say they choose to rough sleep, but I don’t think that they are, and I would do everything to stop them from doing it.’ (Street Outreach Worker 1, Glasgow) The Polish rough sleeper participants were unique among the wider sample of homeless participants in the study, insofar as each had explained how they ‘chose’ to sleep rough to make the most of their low wages and limited funds. In their own words, this is how the five participants described ‘choice’. For some, homelessness was an active, even ‘ideal’ situation, as the least bad option from a range of bad choices available. As one respondent commented: “It is an ideal choice to be in [an illegal] flat. Why? Because life is more convenient in squats … With job, the money I save goes to home [in Poland]” (Dawid). This quote helps to explain why individuals chose to sleep rough, rather than remaining in emergency or private accommodation.

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Unpacking their stories further revealed much more nuance to the reasons behind ‘choosing’ to sleep rough, that in most cases (with the possible exception of Dawid) sleeping rough is far from ideal, but still within the realms of possibility when faced with extreme constraints. For example, some described sleeping rough as a preference over other options, such as ‘couch surfing’, staying in emergency accommodation or renting, because of the freedom and cost savings offered. For this group, resistance (in the form of rejecting participation in either the welfare system or the housing market) was a practical response to welfare conditionality. When faced with limited opportunities, it simply was not ‘worth’ engaging with support systems or even participating in the housing market, echoing similar findings in Czerniejewska and Gozdziak (2013). These attitudes were confirmed by other participants. For example, one service provider explained how his Polish clients, in particular, did not see homelessness itself as being stigmatised, but rather the use of homelessness services was viewed pejoratively as such. However, another service provider remarked that some of the Polish clients they were seeing were isolated from family in Poland, because of the stigma that homelessness has in their home country. Unpacking this latter notion further, it was suggested that a greater degree of anonymity in a foreign country, where one is unlikely to encounter family or close friends, is a possible explanation for why one would feel there is less stigma in Scotland for sleeping rough. To Piotr, who was proud of his homelessness status in Scotland, homelessness in Eastern Europe was a condition affecting the truly degenerate and deviant – according to him only pathological alcoholics became homeless in Poland. He described these differences and his reluctance to explain his circumstances to those back home: ‘It would be worse [to be homeless in Poland]. I have family! Friends! Live on street … in Poland? Different level than here. Somebody [would] say, “Hey! You live on street?! No! Come on! This is Poland!” Maybe there is small people know about my situation but many, many small. I can live here on street. No problem. But not in Poland!’ (Piotr) Jakub, also in his early 20s, similarly adopted homelessness as a strategy to stretch limited resources, or to ‘find resources where this is none’ (Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013). Although personal independence was less of a concern for Jakub than for Piotr, it still featured in his interview as a personal value secured through sleeping rough. It was

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also clear in Jakub’s description of his experience that homelessness has different connotations in different cultural and social contexts. Like Piotr, Jakub described his surprise at being able to manage without a reliable place to sleep at night, and that such a prospect would be unthinkable for him in Poland, albeit mainly for practical reasons. He described how he circumvented barriers to getting a job while homeless, by utilising public showers and keeping an address at a homeless drop-in centre, so that he could collect his post. For Jakub, the availability of these services enabled him to ‘beat the system’, by not paying rent and existing outside the housing market (Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013: 91). Jakub emphasised the support mechanisms that enabled him to secure and hold down a job while homeless: ‘I didn’t look for work when I was [first] homeless, I didn’t think it was possible. But now I know it’s possible … Now I sleep in the park, sometimes I sleep in the church. I have all the clothes for work in my pack, and change at work. I am the first homeless guy to get a job! No one hires a homeless guy. I give them an address for the postman, at the showers. I didn’t think they would hire me if they think I was homeless, so I did it [use drop-in centre address]. And I working.’ (Jakub) Alexandru provided a further example, in describing sleeping rough as an active choice, and like Jakub, a strategy to make the most of modest means. Like Piotr and Jakub, he remarked how in Scotland he was able to maintain a normal life (for example by working and socialising) while homeless. Alexandru had travelled for work through several European countries (Spain, Belgium, France) and would sleep rough if accommodation was not provided as a condition of his employment. Like others in the study, homelessness was a means for him to maximise his wages, and opportunities for cost savings were exploited, even if that entailed foregoing housing. Alexandru remarked how this strategy was surprisingly ‘easy’ in Scotland compared to elsewhere, due to the number of services provided: ‘I was thinking to settle here because I have no other hope. But I knew it will be difficult. Like it was when I went in Spain for the first time. There I also slept outside on the streets. I was thinking that it would be the same here. I didn’t imagine it would be easier.’ (Alexandru)

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However, even for those participants who explicitly claimed that sleeping rough was an active choice, it is questionable how much agency was in fact exercised in making their decision. Sleeping rough might be the least bad option out of a range of very limited choices. For example, Antoni, who was initially ‘couch surfing’ with friends after being unable to afford rent, explained how eventually he had left his friends after they would no longer support him and that he ‘preferred to sleep on a street’. For Antoni, sleeping rough may not be a deliberate preference, but rather a response to highly constrained circumstances. Similarly, for Piotr, who was the most vocal (indeed proud) about his choice to be homeless, sleeping rough was preferable as an option, because it afforded him the greatest independence, a value he clearly cherished. It could be argued that a private flat on his own would also offer a similar level of independence, but because of the cost, this was not a possibility. If his only choices were to stay on a friend’s couch or in council-run temporary accommodation, then it becomes easier to understand why he might choose to sleep rough, when a high premium is placed on autonomy and freedom. In contrast to the preceding cases, another respondent in the study, Dawid, explained that homelessness was not only his choice, but his preference when compared to hypothetical housing options. In this case, it was more persuasive to claim that sleeping rough was a matter of exercising agency. For Dawid, homelessness was a longterm economic strategy. Unlike other Polish migrants in the study, he migrated to the UK prior to Polish accession to the EU in 2004 and benefited from a booming construction sector at the time. He explained how he stretched his pay packet, by staying in very crowded situations with other workers on a particular jobsite, or when a job was in a more rural setting he stayed in a tent. According to Dawid, the best arrangements were when he was staying in squats. Squatting thus offered him something that resembled the security and privacy of a rented home, but without having to pay rent, which on balance was more ‘convenient’: ‘I worked illegally on construction sites, then I got a job in a bakery that was legal and was working while in the squat. It was comfortable because I had everything there. Now I going to take a private let, a room. There are no squats. The law has changed and there are none anymore … Squat is ideal choice. Life is more convenient in squats.’ (Dawid)

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The interviews demonstrated how there are varying degrees of choice exercised by homeless participants when sleeping rough. As an extreme example, Dawid explained that even in hypothetical situations, sleeping in places not fit for habitation was ‘ideal’. Similarly, Piotr enjoyed the freedom of sleeping rough and Jakub the financial benefits. As previously discussed, unlike Dawid, it was unclear how far this was an actual preference or merely a choice among worse options. The participants were distinctive in the sense that they had the least secure housing (no shelter, in most cases) and (by their own account) the most degree of choice. However, this is not to say that participants in the study aspire to being homeless (or anyone else for that matter); rather, rough sleeping is a function of a lack of choice, but for some it may not always be the last choice. As seen in this study, sleeping rough for the participants was a preference over other (poor) options. Homelessness as dissent Despite differences in the responses, some participants chose to categorise their decisions as active dissent. For example, Piotr in particular was explicit about his reasons for resistance and gave a pointed example of how he would defy instruments of system control at any cost. In his situation, his fight for freedom ironically put his freedom in jeopardy. Piotr explained how he was facing deportation action, because of his refusal to participate in the benefits system. Homeless EU migrants in particular are at risk of ‘administrative removal’, as they are considered not to be exercising their Treaty Rights (as a worker, jobseeker or economically self-sufficient person) and therefore do not have a right to reside in the UK. Following an interview with an immigration official, Piotr was advised that to reinstate his legal status in the UK as an EU national, he would have to register for Jobseeker’s Allowance to demonstrate that he was exercising his Treaty Rights as a person looking for work. He rejected this notion, as he did not want to be subject to any conditions on his behaviour, and disagreed in principle with the concept of accepting state support. Participating in the benefits system simultaneously was an affront to the freedom he valued and an insult to his pride, both of which threatened and undermined his independence. He explained his active disobedience: ‘I won’t take any money from them because I have my honour ... I prefer not to live on any benefits. People would say that Poles are coming here to live on benefits … I don’t need that money ... The woman from Home

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Office speak me: ‘Better when you take JobSeeker’. Better for Home Office when I take money? When I take benefits, When I don’t need? She said, ‘You must take benefits or go to job!’ This is communism, woman! You don’t learn history ... I’m no good homeless. I’m not good [obedient/ compliant].’ (Piotr) Piotr had rejected temporary accommodation and refused to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance, despite advice from the Home Office that doing so could prevent administrative removal. For Piotr, sleeping rough freed him from debt and expense, and liberated him from other societal obligations and responsibility. Such anti-authority attitudes among younger Polish men have been commented on in other homelessness studies (Garapich, 2011; Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013). Piotr explained that, in Poland, anti-establishment beliefs were commonly described as being “choked with freedom” and that after the fall of Communism in Poland, many younger generations rebelled against any form of state control, including state assistance [as paraphrased through the added interpretation of the translator assisting with the interview]. To Piotr, accepting state aid or housing assistance would violate deeply held personal ethics about independence and self-efficacy. He would rather the state impose its rule on him through forced removal, than accept its control whether through welfare conditionality or other interventions. During the interview, these beliefs were explored further by way of a counterfactual example. The question was put to Piotr whether, given the same set of circumstances he is experiencing, in Poland as opposed to Scotland, he would ‘choose’ to sleep rough, to save money and secure independence. Piotr explained that in Poland, rough sleeping would not be an option at all, for practical reasons, such as a much colder climate in winter, and because being homeless carries a much greater stigma in Poland than he believed existed in Scotland. Discussions with key informants highlighted the barriers that homeless migrants may have in accessing services, over and above welfare conditionality, in terms of eligibility and behavioural requirements. These explanations go some way towards explaining why homeless migrants might avoid services. For example, attending English-speaking classes was a condition of receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance for Jakub, who rejected claiming the benefit for this reason. However, from the perspective of rough sleepers in the sample, it would seem that homelessness was more of an active choice, a response to structural constraint. As Garapich (2011: 18) explains, it should be seen as a ‘coping mechanism’ towards dealing with ‘uneven access to

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welfare’ and is a ‘real strategy that people employ for survival in the face of an uncertain future’. Greater welfare conditionality is unlikely to inspire behavioural change and the effect of which, for this group at least, is likely to give greater cause to avoid formal systems of support in the contestation of power relations (Garapich, 2011: 19). For some who do not engage in formal systems of support, participation is tantamount to being complicit in their own subjugation. Active rejection of social support and resistance to services is problematic for policies aimed at preventing and alleviating homelessness. In these extreme cases, homelessness can be an act of dissent and, for some, a strategy to ‘beat the system’, by finding resources where there are none. The findings from this research point to the limits of housing policy in responding to migrant homelessness, as the issue spans multiple policy arenas, including immigration, welfare and labour systems.

Conclusion This chapter has developed existing research surrounding homelessness and housing problems, by focusing on experiences of Polish migrants in the context of Scotland. The rise in rough sleeping among A8 nationals since EU enlargement in 2004 should be understood in the context of unprecedented migration flows to the UK and the various structural barriers confronting A8 migrants in particular. The evidence from participants in this study demonstrated the role that the factors of choice, constraint and active dissent played in the experience of homelessness. Although based on a limited sample, the chapter demonstrates how a combination of individual and structural factors can create the conditions in which homelessness is experienced. Findings from this research support conclusions from other studies focusing on homelessness (Garapich, 2011) and social exclusion (Czerniejewska and Gozdziak, 2013) among Polish migrants in the UK. These studies have found that avoidance of formal support relates to the perception that welfare conditionality has three main consequences for this group: • First, it undermines autonomy and amplifies power differentials between migrant and non-migrant, creating a further distinction between citizen and non-citizen. • Second, it stigmatises and reifies a certain social position. • Third, the combined effect of welfare conditionality is to disempower and suppress, and to denigrate and defeat personal pride.

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The resistance displayed among Polish rough sleepers supports Garapich’s (2014) ‘Homo Sovieticus’ thesis about the desire to disobey authority at all costs. Homelessness was a deliberate strategy developed by Polish participants to challenge formal law, and demonstrates what can be seen as ‘beat the system attitudes’ and ‘hostility towards capitalistic organisation of labour’ (Garapich, 2011: 17). By choosing not to participate in the housing market or in the welfare system, Polish migrants in the study developed strategies to deal with occupying a ‘subordinate position’ and ‘repressive practices of the state’ (Garapich, 2011: 19). Through ‘choosing’ homelessness (over other options), Polish migrants in the study confronted the constraints imposed on them in relation to welfare conditionality through active dissent. Viewing homelessness as an act of dissent raises important questions about the legitimacy of the state to override choice. Some key informants in the sample rejected the idea that prima facie it was ever acceptable to allow someone to sleep rough, whereas others recognised the limits of state control to extend into the private lives of individuals. Most agreed that the state had a duty to respond to housing need, with homelessness being the most extreme form, but this exploratory research raises the question to what extent the state and its constituent parts should interfere in the choice of individuals who resist social protection. Findings from this research would suggest that expanding the choice of migrants to participate in formal welfare programmes would require addressing the features which give rise to dissent, such as the erosion of autonomy, stigmatisation, and the indignity of requiring humiliating concessions for meagre levels of support. In short, engaging in formal systems of support is seen, by some, as being complicit in one’s own subjugation. Highly conditional welfare systems – which limit the entitlements of particular migrants through the application of specific eligibility criteria, while simultaneously demanding certain behavioural requirements from those migrants in order for them to access benefits and services – are likely to be unsuccessful. Future research can develop these factors, to consider how far such experiences are distinctive to the Polish community and the extent to which the research findings are more widely applicable to other urban areas.

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References Babayev, R. (2016) Re-shaping the paradigm of social solidarity in the EU: On the UK’s welfare reform and pre and post EU referendum developments, European Journal of Social Security, 18(4): 356-79. Barrass, S. and Shields, J. (2013) Immigration in an Age of Austerity: Morality, the Welfare State and the Shaping of the Ideal Migrant, ICPP Conference paper. Bowcott, O. (2009) Number of homeless in London leaps 15%, The Guardian, 7 July 2009. www.theguardian.com/society/2009/jul/07/ london-homeless-rise Busch-Geertsema, V., Edgar, W., O’Sullivan, E. and Pleace, N. (2010) Homelessness and homeless policies in Europe: Lessons from research, Conference on homelessness, 9, 10, FEANTSA. CHAIN (2012) Street to Home Annual Bulletin 2011/12, Broadway. Available: https://www.mungos.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ chain_street_to_home_bulletin_2011-12.pdf CHAIN (2014) Street to Home Annual Bulletin 2013/14, Broadway. Available: https://www.mungos.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ chain_street_to_home_bulletin_2013-14.pdf Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) (2008) Continental Drift: Understanding advice and information needs of A8 migrant workers in Scotland. Edinburgh: CAB. Crawford, J., Leahy, S. and McKee, K. (2016) The Immigration Act and the ‘Right to Rent’: exploring governing tensions within and beyond the state, People Place and Policy Online. https://researchrepository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/9191 Czerniejewska, I. and Goździak, E. M. (2014) Aiding defeated migrants: Institutional strategies to assist Polish returned migrants, International Migration, 52(1), 87-99. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2011) Housing Benefit Circular A10/2011. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ hb-circular-a102011-end-of-the-worker-registration-scheme Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2014) New rules to stop migrants claiming Housing Benefit. https://www.gov.uk/government/ news/new-rules-to-stop-migrants-claiming-housing-benefit Fitzpatrick, S. and Pawson, H. (2016) Fifty years since Cathy Come Home: critical reflections on the UK homelessness safety net, International Journal of Housing Policy, 16(4): 543-55. Fitzpatrick, S., Johnsen, S. and Bramley, G. (2012) Multiple exclusion homelessness amongst migrants in the UK, European Journal of Homelessness, 6(1): 31-58.

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Garapich, M. (2011) ‘It’s a jungle out there. You need to stick together’: Antiinstitutionalism, alcohol and performed masculinities among Polish homeless men in London, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 7(3), 1-23. Garapich, M. (2014) Homo Sovieticus revisited – anti-institutionalism, alcohol and resistance among Polish homeless men in London, International Migration, 52(1): 100-17. Gozdziak, M. (2014) Polish migration after the fall of the Iron Curtain, International Migration, 52(1): 1-3. Harris, N. (2018) Welfare rights, austerity and the decision to leave the EU: influences on UK social security law, Journal of Social Security Law, 25(1), 1-33. Home Office (2017) Operation Nexus: High Harm. IPSOS MORI (2006) ) End of Year Review 2006. Available: https:// ems.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1176/EndOf-Year-Review-2006.aspx Johnsen, S., Fitzpatrick, S. and Watts, B. (2018) Homelessness and social control: a typology, Housing Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2017.1421912 McNaughton Nicholls, C. (2009) Agency, transgression and the causation of homelessness: A contextualised rational action analysis, International Journal of Housing Policy, 9(1): 69-84. Mort, G. (1983) Establishing a Right to Shelter for the Homeless, Brook. L. Rev., 50: 939. Pleace, N. (2010) Immigration and homelessness, in E. O’Sullivan (ed.) Homelessness Research in Europe, Brussels: FEANTSA, 143-63. Ramesh, R. (2010a) Migrants from new EU states increase London homeless tally, The Guardian, 5 July 2010. www.theguardian.com/ uk/2010/jul/05/migrants-new-eu-london-homeless Ramesh, R. (2010b) Homeless Poles living on barbequed rats and alcoholic handwash, The Guardian, 12 August 2010. www. theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/12/homeless-poles-rough-sleepers Robinson, D. (2010) New immigrants and migrants in social housing in Britain: discursive themes and lived realities, Policy & Politics, 38(1), 57-77. Scottish Council for Single Homeless (SCSH) (2006) Homeless A8 Nationals - the Scottish Experience (research paper summary report), Edinburgh: SCHS. Vasilopoulou, S. and Wagner, M. (2017) Fear, anger and enthusiasm about the EU: Effects of emotional reactions on public preferences towards European integration, European Union Politics, 17(3): 1-24.

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Watts, B., Fitzpatrick, S., & Johnsen, S. (2018) Controlling homeless people? Power, interventionism and legitimacy, Journal of Social Policy, 47(2), 235-52.

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FIVE

No strings attached? An exploration of employment support services offered by third sector homelessness organisations Katy Jones

Introduction In exchange for their receipt of conditional benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Universal Credit, people experiencing homelessness are expected to engage in mandatory job search or other work-related activities. Failure to do this leaves them vulnerable to having their social security entitlements withdrawn (Johnsen et al, 2014; Batty et al, 2015). However, many homeless people have become alienated from mainstream employment support provided by Jobcentre Plus as a result of difficulties in meeting these compulsory conditions (Crisis et al, 2012). Recognising homeless people’s exclusion from the mainstream welfare system, this chapter focuses on an alternative source of employment support offered by third sector homelessness organisations. After considering the existing evidence base relating to homeless people’s experiences of conditional welfare and the role the third sector plays in offering employment-related support services, the chapter presents findings from semi-structured interviews with 27 practitioners sampled from third sector homelessness organisations operating in the Greater Manchester area. Drawing on new data, it provides an overview of the range of employment-related support currently available to homeless people accessing support from third sector providers. The chapter then considers two key potentially contradictory issues that emerged from the analysis. First, while it is possible to identify a range of employment-related support services delivered by third sector organisations’ own programmes and initiatives, much of this appears to be focused on mitigating the impacts of the increasingly conditional

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nature of the statutory welfare system. Second, while appearing critical of the increasingly conditional statutory system and the impacts that a punitive welfare state is having on the homeless people they are seeking to support, some of the approaches adopted by third sector agencies also incorporate elements of conditionality, albeit to varying degrees.

Homelessness, work and welfare Moving homeless adults into paid work is increasingly considered an important part of helping them to overcome their homelessness and sustain an ‘independent’ life off the streets (Warnes and Crane, 2000; McNaughton, 2008). Responding to recent rises in rough sleeping in UK cities, Prime Minister Theresa May emphasised employment as a long-term solution: Actually dealing with homelessness and rough sleeping is about more than just accommodation. It’s about trying to make sure people get out of the circumstances where they find themselves homeless in the first place … obviously looking longer term the key thing is ensuring people can be in work and can be earning and not find themselves in that situation. (May, 2017, quoted in Scheerhout, 2017) However, alongside a high incidence of multiple and complex needs (for example mental and physical ill health, drug and alcohol misuse), the available evidence indicates that homeless populations experience very high levels and long histories of unemployment and economic inactivity (FEANTSA, 2007; McNaughton, 2008; Homeless Link, 2013; Hough et al, 2013). A combination of factors including limited or no work experience, low or no qualifications, poor self-confidence, low self-esteem and the possession of criminal records, can make entering and sustaining work a significant challenge for homeless people, reinforcing their position outside or on the edge of mainstream employment (FEANTSA, 2007; Buckingham, 2010). Furthermore, research suggests that many homeless people who do manage to enter employment, struggle to sustain it (McNaughton, 2008; Hough et al, 2013). Added to this, as is the case for all those claiming out-of-work benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit, homeless people in receipt of such benefits are subject to strict behavioural requirements relating to job search or engagement in other work-related activities. Failure to demonstrate a willingness to

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move into employment leaves homeless people vulnerable to having their social security entitlements withdrawn (Johnsen et al, 2014; Batty et al, 2015). The imposition of behavioural conditions, and the punitive measures through which they are enforced, is highly controversial, particularly for vulnerable people with complex needs (Johnsen et al, 2014). It is argued that such approaches can worsen the situations of vulnerable adults, by pushing them away from support (Dwyer et al, 2012; Bowpitt et al, 2014), or can sometimes result in more negative behaviours such as engagement in ‘survival crime’ when entitlements are withdrawn (Johnsen et al, 2014). However, those endorsing more interventionist approaches to welfare support and services for homeless adults point to the damaging nature of behaviours in which some engage, and the positive benefits of moving people into work. As conditionality has become more firmly established within the UK welfare system, many homeless people have become alienated from mainstream employment support provided by Jobcentre Plus as a result of difficulties in meeting the work search and training requirements placed upon them as a requirement for the continued receipt of benefit (Crisis et al, 2012). The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP, 2014) introduced the Jobseeker’s Allowance (Homeless Claimants) Amendment Regulations 2014 to ‘relax’ conditionality for some rough sleepers. Here, homeless people can be granted an easement, whereby they do not have to be available for, or actively seeking, work, or participate in other schemes such as the Work Programme. The easements are dependent on claimants taking (and being able to evidence) ‘reasonable steps’ to find accommodation, and are reviewed on at least a fortnightly basis (Homeless Link, 2014). However, it has been suggested that homeless people (Johnsen et al, 2016), in line with other marginalised groups (McKeever et al, 2018), are not always aware of these arrangements. Furthermore, significant numbers of homeless people still struggle to meet the demands placed upon them by welfare conditionality within the social security system and are subject to benefit sanctions (Batty et al, 2015), suggesting that conditionality does little to help homeless people move closer to the paid labour market. Instead, the imposition of sanctions often results in ‘considerable distress’ and diverts ‘support workers away from assisting with accommodation and other support needs’ (Johnsen et al, 2016: 1). The findings presented in this chapter add to this evidence base, with practitioners reporting that people experiencing homelessness have a high level of vulnerability to benefit sanctions.

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An alternative? Third sector support for homeless jobseekers In light of their exclusion both from the statutory housing system and a range of other mainstream welfare provision, third sector organisations are of particular importance when considering support and services for homeless people (Warnes and Crane, 2000). With a long history in homelessness service provision, the third sector comprises organisations of various sizes with a range of organisational forms and stages of development. According to a 2016 survey,1 the homelessness sector in England comprises 1,567 organisations. Third sector homelessness organisations perform different, often multiple roles, ranging from community development and empowerment to public service delivery. They also vary significantly in terms of their size, resource requirements and capacity (Buckingham, 2010). Most typically, third sector organisations engage in the direct provision of services and support for homeless people. For some, this involves providing accommodation (for example, hostels and other residential projects). However, as homelessness is now understood as constituting more than simply a ‘housing issue’, organisations across the sector offer a wide range of support and services relating to wider ‘non-housing’ needs (Anderson, 2010). Day centres, for example, provide support including counselling, hot meals, educational activities, employability services and other social activities. In 2016, there were approximately 214 homelessness day centres in England, catering for around 13,000 people per day (Homeless Link, 2016). Third sector organisations have a number of key characteristics that make them distinct from those operating in the public or private sector. Institutionally separate from the state, they are, to varying extents, largely autonomous and have significant control over their activities. A key feature of many third sector organisations – and of particular relevance to this discussion – is that they involve some sort of voluntary participation. This may include two dimensions: • First, volunteers are routinely involved in service delivery and sometimes in management. • Second, since services are usually engaged with voluntarily, potential beneficiaries can choose whether or not to make use of the support on offer without penalty (Anheier, 2014: 73). 1

Homeless Link’s annual Survey of Needs and Provision (SNAP) is the most comprehensive overview of the services provided by the homelessness sector in England. 94

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Distinguished by their values, they also operate on a different basis to the private sector, where profit maximisation is typically the ultimate objective (Anheier, 2014). However, some scholars have noted a ‘blurring’ of boundaries (Buckingham, 2010; Szreter and Ishkanian, 2012), as some third sector organisations increasingly adopt state or market values and practices as a result of their involvement in public service provision, and the need to engage in and meet the conditions of associated competitive tendering processes. Others have also distinguished between larger, more ‘professionalised’ services, which are more successful in their engagement with public service delivery, and typically smaller, more ‘amateur’ services, which tend to operate outside or at the margins of such activity (Buckingham, 2010; Scullion et al, 2015). A tendency for services to develop in line with the state’s objectives and preferred approach may be observed, for example in the provision of support to help homeless people to move into the labour market or through more ‘interventionist’ approaches requiring homeless people to engage in support. Indeed, researchers have noted a trend towards increased expectations held by homelessness agencies that homeless people engage with the supportive interventions they are offering (Johnsen et al, 2014). In the UK, particularly since the late 1980s, a ‘tough love’ approach has accompanied improvements in service provision for rough sleepers, with an expectation that they would ‘come inside’ and actively engage with the support and services available to them (Fitzpatrick and Jones, 2005; Whiteford, 2010; Dobson, 2011). Conversely, as a greater degree of conditionality has become commonplace in homelessness settings, there has also been a growing interest in more relaxed approaches in providing support to this group. The ‘personalisation’ agenda for example, emphasises a need to engage homeless people ‘on their own terms’, with service users shaping and determining their own level of engagement with the support available (see, for example, Hough and Rice, 2010; Teixeira, 2010; Brown, 2013). Employment-related support in homelessness organisations Engaging adults who are experiencing homelessness in support services likely to enhance their opportunities to move into work has, in part, been recognised as a legitimate intervention by both policy makers and homelessness service providers. This is reflected in both publicly funded (albeit very small-scale) initiatives, such as the STRIVE (Skills, Training, Innovation and Employment) pre-employment pilots (to be

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discussed in more detail later), and the prevalence of education and training provision across the homelessness sector. While often critical of the expectations and practices of the statutory welfare system and the increasingly punitive ‘work first’ approach adopted by policy makers, the homelessness sector has been generally supportive of the need to support homeless people to move into (or at least closer to) paid work. While homeless adults should theoretically be able to access a range of services to develop their skills and overcome other barriers to entering and progressing in employment (including adult colleges, Jobcentre Plus, and training offered by Work Programme providers), previous research has found many to be reluctant to engage with statutory services. Many favour engagement with third sector homelessness agencies, valuing and benefiting from the specialist and tailored support they provide (Luby and Welch, 2006; Barton et al, 2006; Buckingham, 2010; Crisis et al, 2012). Consequently, although supporting people into work is not typically a primary focus for third sector homelessness agencies, many organisations now offer their service users employment-related support (McNeill, 2011). According to a 2015 survey of the homelessness sector, 50% of day centres reported directly providing in-house ‘employment, training and education’ activities in 2015 (Homeless Link, 2015). Perhaps the most well-known form of employment-related support is provided by the Crisis ‘Skylight’ centres, which focus on providing education, employment and arts-based activities at a number of centres across the country (Pleace and Bretherton, 2014). However, it is not just the large, long-established organisations that offer employment support and learning opportunities: according to the umbrella body Homeless Link: ‘the vast majority of homelessness services are supporting people to enter work, training or to engage in other activities’ (Homeless Link, 2012: 3). As part of this approach, several organisations within the homelessness sector also operate as ‘social enterprises’, directly providing work and training opportunities outside the mainstream paid labour market (Teasdale, 2010). Wellknown examples include the Big Issue, where homeless ‘vendors’ are recruited to sell street magazines and keep a percentage (albeit small) of the profits (the remainder of which are reinvested into the company and other social enterprise activities). Emmaus, self-sustaining communities originating in Paris and established in the UK in the 1990s, provide homeless ‘companions’ with food and board in exchange for working in

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a range of social enterprises, including cafés, shops, gardening projects and removal companies.2 The potential of homelessness and other third sector organisations to support homeless people towards employment has not gone unrecognised by policy makers (Buckingham, 2010; Crisp, 2015). Consequently, over the past couple of decades, a number of initiatives have been introduced, which cut across employment, skills and homelessness. For example, the ‘Places of Change’ agenda sought to encourage homelessness services to do more to ‘move service users into appropriate training and sustainable employment’ (DCLG, 2007: 6). More recently, STRIVE (Skills, Training, Innovation and Employment, mentioned above) pre-employment pilots took place in two national homelessness charities, jointly funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG/BIS, 2014). Commenting at the pilots’ inception, the then Skills and Enterprise Minister, Matthew Hancock, said: It is wrong that until now excellent education projects led by St Mungo’s Broadway and others have been denied government funding – today we are putting that right. There is no doubt that charities like St Mungo’s Broadway and Crisis are the best placed to reach those in need of help, but we are backing them in this vital task. (Varvarides, 2014) In addition, under the Coalition government, the Work Club Programme, established as part of the wider Big Society and Localism agendas in 2011, offered a small amount of funding for third sector organisations to provide non-mandatory employment support (Crisp, 2015). However, despite policy rhetoric around the value of supporting homeless adults to access the paid labour market, it is interesting to note that the amount of statutory funding for employment and skills support flowing into homelessness agencies is minimal. Indeed, according to a 2016 survey of homelessness organisations in England, only 3% of accommodation projects had received any ‘employment and education’ funding, and for day centres this was 7% (Homeless Link, 2016). Despite a growing awareness of the importance of the third sector in the provision of employment, little is known about what employmentrelated support looks like in practice, nor how broader policy shifts impact on provision in these settings. Additionally, given increasing levels of ‘interventionism’ in services supporting homeless adults, 2

See: https://www.emmaus.org.uk/emmaus_in_the_uk

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whereby expectations around engagement and/or behaviour change increasingly feature as part of the service offer, the extent to which these support services actually are ‘unconditional’ has also been questioned (Dobson, 2011; Johnsen et al, 2014).

Employment-related support in the Greater Manchester homelessness sector Subsequent discussions in this chapter draw on data from 27 semistructured qualitative interviews with staff working across 12 third sector homelessness organisations operating in Greater Manchester, a large metropolitan county in the North West of England, UK consisting of 10 different local authorities to explore some of the issues raised above.3 The extent and nature of homelessness varies across the metropolis. Recent increases in rough sleeping in Manchester city centre have received significant media attention (see, for example, Manchester Confidential, 2016; Williams, 2017), and have been met by a pledge from the newly elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to end rough sleeping in the area by 2020 (GMCA, 2017). Alongside this, the Mayor’s office has recently been awarded a major trailblazer award from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to support the development of emergency hubs with accommodation targeted at those who are new to rough sleeping, as well as hubs to support the move from homelessness into permanent housing. The second part of the grant will be used to develop programmes of longer-term support as required by those who have spent longer amounts of time surviving on the streets. The research described in this chapter took place prior to these developments. The focus of the study from which these data are drawn was on the support offered by services that sought to help their service users to move into or closer to work. However, it is important to note that the provision of employment support was not the primary aim of any of the organisations from which the sample was drawn. Instead, this support was provided alongside other interventions to address the diverse range of complex needs faced by many of their service users, including isolation, a lack of accommodation, drug and alcohol dependency issues 3

Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, Manchester City Council, Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, Salford City Council, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council, Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council.

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and mental and physical impairments (Dwyer and Somerville, 2011). Furthermore, while welfare conditionality was not initially intended as a key focus of the research project, discussion of an increasingly conditional and often punitive welfare system featured heavily in the accounts of participants as they positioned their service in relation to the statutory employment services. In addition, they identified several ways in which such highly conditional statutory policies indirectly impacted on the support provided by the organisations in which they worked. The data presented in this chapter were generated in fieldwork conducted with workers from organisations of different types and sizes, including accommodation projects, activity centres and social enterprises. To identify potential participants, an initial desk-based review was undertaken to identify all third sector organisations operating in the Greater Manchester area that were offering some kind of employment-related support to single homeless adults. A purposive, non-random sampling strategy was then employed (Mason, 2002), inviting all staff and volunteers working in organisations identified in the desk-based review to participate in the study. The resulting sample included participants working in different roles (including support/ project workers, volunteer coordinators, and chief executives) and at a range of levels (‘operational’, ‘managerial’, ‘strategic’). Interviews were conducted between August and November 2015, in most instances in a private room within the organisation in which participants worked. With the participants’ permission, interviews were digitally audio recorded and fully transcribed. Data were then analysed thematically using NVivo. The study was conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines produced by both the British Sociological Association and the Social Research Association. Prior to the conduct of the fieldwork, ethical approval was also obtained from Lancaster University’s Ethics Committee. The extent and types of employment-related support Participants descr ibed a range of employment and training opportunities taking place within their organisations. These included: opportunities to gain new vocational skills through work experience and volunteering; digital and budgetary training; access to support to improve literacy and numeracy skills; and help with job applications and CVs. Additionally, opportunities to learn about and manage changes in the social security system and to participate in a range of ‘meaningful activities’ – including creative writing groups, gardening, and arts and cooking classes – were also often available. A small number

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of organisations also offered paid employment opportunities to those with an experience of homelessness, for example through restricting recruitment for some positions within their organisation to those who were ‘experts by experience’ (Cornes et al, 2011). According to participants’ accounts, these activities were developed in response to their service users’ needs and aspirations, building on their existing skills and achievements. Participants also emphasised the importance of ‘soft outcomes’, such as improving confidence and self-esteem, rather than focusing solely on improving a person’s skill levels or employment prospects. Activities varied in formality and were supported by a mix of external providers offering outreach support within these settings, and in-house activities by staff and volunteers. While it is important to note that the description of the support available did not come from service users themselves, the range of assistance described paints a contrasting picture to that described by jobseekers engaging with the mainstream employment support services offered through the Jobcentre and Work Programme providers, which has been criticised as being of relatively poor quality (see, for example, Wright and Stewart, 2016). However, it is also important to note that organisations varied significantly in terms of the extent of the support on offer. Throughout the interviews, practitioners commonly positioned their services in direct contrast to the statutory employment support service. Reflecting on the support that they provided to help service users into or closer to work, all felt strongly that the provision of such assistance outside of the statutory, highly conditional welfare regime was both necessary and greatly valued by their service users. On the whole, participants were very critical about the service offered by the statutory employment service. They felt that the support available through the Jobcentre or Work Programme providers was minimal (in some cases non-existent), and failed to consider homeless people’s individual needs and aspirations: ‘[The Jobcentre is] not person-centred, it’s not thinking about their individual needs, it’s not thinking about their journey. It’s not thinking about their aspirations. It’s not thinking about anything. It’s just trying to get somebody off benefit, and I’m not sure that’s the solution.’ (Manageriallevel worker, Activity Centre 2) Another commonly held belief was that the support provided by the Jobcentre did not ‘work’ for those they were supporting:

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‘I just think so many of our clients have been through various training, this and that … and job clubs and ‘You will go back to work’ and ‘this is how to do a CV’, and nothing’s worked for them.’ (Managerial-level worker, Activity Centre 12) There was a widespread perception that the statutory employment system did not involve any meaningful support for homeless service users. Rather than providing support to people, the perception of the service provided through Jobcentre Plus or the Work Programme was that they were narrowly focused on moving claimants quickly off benefit and were unresponsive to the range of barriers that homeless people might face in trying to access the labour market. Several participants believed that rather than supporting homeless people into work, the Jobcentre was more concerned with ensuring compliance with specified work search activities and that the mandatory ‘support’ on offer at the Jobcentre was ineffective in promoting paid employment, and was felt to make their lives more difficult: ‘I think particularly when you’re looking at someone who’s genuinely looking for work, the support they get from say, the Jobcentre is nil. They go, they sign, they look at the book, they come away, and then they come to us. Because we’ll spend the time sitting with them … We’ll do [CVs and help with job search] with them, even though they have an advisor [at the Jobcentre]. That advisor won’t do it with them.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 3) It is because of this, that many organisations had seen the need to develop their own employment-related support for homeless service users. While it is important to note that these accounts have not been verified by a service user perspective, the service offered by the organisation in which they worked was considered to be a highly supportive one. Crucially, that services were ‘unconditional’ was felt to be a key difference valued by their service users, particularly for those participants working in activity centres. Across the accounts of the participants, it was clear that the unconditional nature of support offered in their organisation was felt to engender a greater level of respect for the support available. That service users chose to engage voluntarily with their service was also considered to be proof of its value to them. Indeed, previous research has found that homeless people are likely to

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be reluctant to engage with providers whose services are offered on a conditional basis (Bowpitt et al, 2014; Patrick, 2017): ‘The fact that there are no conditions … I think they love it and they respect it more.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 3) ‘It’s them who want to engage with us. It’s not sort of the other way round like it is with the Jobcentre and the housing and probation and all those other services where people have to statutorily go along. The people who walk through our door choose to walk through our door and choose to access our service.’ (Strategic-level worker, Activity Centre 3) ‘It’s a really supportive environment, it’s a friendly environment. So when people want to do more, we have got kind of a progression route with training and traineeships, those sorts of things. But it’s not forced on anybody, you can do it if you want to. Everybody’s got the opportunity. Not everybody wants to and that’s fine.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 12) However, it is interesting to note that one of the above participants worked in an organisation that had hosted participants of the government’s ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ programme. Thus while they had been willing to facilitate the provision of mandatory work placements (albeit with some trepidation), it appears that they do not wholly support the principles underpinning ‘conditional’ employmentrelated support. This issue is considered further later in this chapter. One respondent also felt that the relationship between jobseekers and those trying to support them into work was pivotal in whether or not individuals would engage in such support. They felt that their service took the time and effort required to build up trusting relationships with their service users – something they felt was wholly lacking in the more process-driven environment of mainstream welfare services: ‘Some people get frustrated by the fact that they don’t have the same advisor every time they go [to the Jobcentre] … they find it very frustrating. Because it’s about building up trust. So it just becomes a bit of a paperwork exercise to get it done and dusted and out of the way because the

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relationship’s not there.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 3) Several participants also emphasised the added value of third sector organisations in providing employment support that helped service users to address the wider issues in their lives, rather than singularly focusing on moving people into paid work. In addition, the relaxing environment that such organisations offered were contrasted with the widespread anxiety experienced by many homeless people in the statutory welfare system: ‘The clients feel quite relaxed in our building and in this environment because they’re used to it. Often the people who have used the service … [we’ve supported them] from rough sleeping and we’ve got them rehoused or we’ve got them into a hostel or a project that’s supporting them with whatever need they might have … and then they continue to use the service.’ (Strategic-level worker, Activity Centre 3) Thus, the accounts of the participants demonstrate not only the range of employment-related support offered in these non-statutory services, but that practitioners believe that there is a particular need for an alternative form of non-conditional support, positioned outside of the UK’s increasingly conditional social security regime. However, as discussions in the following section indicate, the extent to which such organisations are able to provide more meaningful forms of employment-related support to homeless people is increasingly compromised, due to a need to deal with the negative consequences of conditionality within the mainstream welfare system.

Unintended consequences? Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on homelessness services The accounts of the participants show that the turn towards a more conditional welfare state has impacted on – and in fact has shaped – the services and support that third sector homelessness organisations provide in several ways. First, participants explained that the attention of staff was often diverted from other more ‘meaningful’ activities in order to help service users to meet the compulsory behavioural expectations imposed as part of their benefit claims. A large proportion of those accessing third sector support services were subject to work-search conditions

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as part of their Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or Universal Credit (UC) claims. However, participants explained that service users often struggled to meet these conditions due to a range of factors including housing instability, fluctuating health conditions, a lack of money to cover the transport costs to attend appointments, limited access to technology and poor organisational and digital skills. Recognising this, staff explained how they spent a great deal of time assisting people to fulfil their JSA/ESA/ UC claim requirements, for example by reminding service users to attend mandatory appointments or training courses or by supporting them to engage in other work-related activity: ‘[We spend a lot of time] checking that they’ve been to appointments … So if they have got appointments with say the Jobcentre or … sometimes the Jobcentre will put our residents on courses, and work placements that they need to attend – so making sure that they’re up for that and that we’re actively encouraging that routine and that they’re going there.’ (Operational-level worker, Residential Project 6) To this end, providing access and support to use computers and the internet was also common, as service users were increasingly required by the statutory employment service to look for and document their job search online as part of the new ‘digital by default’ approach to case management required by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP, 2012). Moving public services online has often been presented as both a cost-saving measure and key to a more efficient system. However, this shift in practice was identified as being incredibly difficult to manage for those homeless people who either did not have personal access to such technology or who had very poor or non-existent digital skills. Poor literacy skills were also felt to be a key barrier: ‘The majority of people that we’re supporting back into employment are under Jobseeker’s Allowance so as part of that claim they have things that they have to be able to do. So usually I would do the initial claim with them online because a lot of people that come in don’t know how to use a computer, or they can’t read and write.’ (Operationallevel worker, Activity Centre, 10)

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It is highly likely that such demands on support workers will increase in future as Universal Credit, which is to be processed and delivered entirely through online systems, replaces JSA and five other meanstested social security benefits. A second way in which the conditional social security system impacted on service provision was that, in supporting their service user to meet the demands of this system, several participants also described adjusting the provision offered by their own organisations to fit around the typically inflexible conditions imposed by the Jobcentre or Work Programme providers. Participants explained how they recognised that meeting the demands of the Jobcentre had to be prioritised over service users’ engagement with their own organisation’s support services, in order to reduce the possibility of a benefit sanction being applied and the negative outcomes that this would subsequently lead to: ‘Nine times out of ten we would manipulate our training around what they need to do for [the Jobcentre] because it’s not as flexible for them to change what they need to change. And then they run the risk of them being sanctioned, which would be horrific.’ (Operational-level worker, Residential Project 6) As such, it was accepted that service users may not be able to commit to regular engagement in a course or other form of employment-related support offered by their organisation. A number of participants who worked in organisations providing a range of education and training opportunities felt that their service offered the flexibility needed by service users, who were expected to meet work search conditions. This approach, they felt, was not widely adopted by mainstream colleges or training providers, thus limiting service users’ opportunities to improve their skills and chances of accessing work outside of the provision (or lack thereof) offered through the mainstream employment service. This echoes findings from a study by Scullion et al (2015), which emphasises the importance of organisations that were willing to accept those who ‘make mistakes’, or otherwise fail to fit into the requirements of mainstream providers. It also exposes a perverse consequence of conditionality, or ‘counterproductive’ conditionality (Dwyer, 2018), whereby the prioritisation of mandated activities prevents homeless people from engaging in more meaningful activities that correspond to their longer-term goals:

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‘I think everything here is structured around those kind of circumstances which is another thing that’s different compared to other providers. I know at [adult education provider] it became difficult if people weren’t able to attend regularly and [adult education provider] did what it could to manage that as well. But I think here we do, over and above in terms of trying to support people and make sure that’s ok… . You know, so that they don’t feel like they can’t come back [if they miss an appointment] … So I think we definitely operate on the understanding that that’s gonna happen and we have all sorts of things in place to make sure that doesn’t derail things.’ (Strategic-level worker, Activity Centre 11) Supporting service users to meet such conditions appeared to be driven by an aim to prevent them from incurring sanctions, rather than a belief that by fulfilling these conditions, their prospects in the labour market would be improved. That the act of ‘job-searching’ was referred to as ‘universal job-searching’ by one respondent, perhaps reflects a tendency towards compliance with conditionality requirements over employment outcomes within UC, as noted elsewhere (Wright and Stewart, 2016; Wright et al, 2016). Under UC, continued receipt of benefit is dependent on service users documenting their search through the online ‘Universal Job Match’ system. In some instances, participants appeared wholly focused on supporting service users to satisfy the requirements of the employment support service, in order that they could continue to receive their social security payments, rather than supporting them to move into work itself. Perhaps more striking though was the high level of assistance now offered to homeless service users to deal with the consequences of benefit sanctions associated with an increasingly punitive welfare state. As has been found elsewhere in research exploring homeless people’s experience of benefit sanctions (Batty et al, 2015; Johnsen et al, 2016), participants reported a high incidence of sanctioning experienced by their service users. As a result, a great deal of ‘crisis work’ was required, to assist those whose only source of income had been removed. This routinely had to take precedence over other activities that could help to improve service users’ position in the paid labour market, or address their wider support needs. Such ‘crisis work’ involved the provision of food parcels and referrals to local food banks, support in challenging sanction decisions, and identifying other forms of financial support and debt advice for those who had been sanctioned:

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‘There’s an element of crisis work that has become a priority at times … welfare reform [has had a] massive impact on benefit. The number of people in situations where they’re … they’ve been going for week after week without money. And we’re working with people who we are trying to support in those circumstances … that kind of work has taken a priority over the last year or so.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 12) This echoes findings from research by Johnsen et al involving focus groups with homelessness practitioners, who reported that conditionality and the sanctions associated with it was found to divert ‘support workers away from assisting with accommodation and other support needs’ (Johnsen et al, 2016: 1). Several participants also noted recent increases in the demand for their service, which they related directly to high levels of sanctioning among those in receipt of social security benefits. As a result of this, several people explained that their ‘client group’ had become much broader. While still predominantly providing support to single homeless people and others with multiple and complex needs, some organisations had widened their remit and were now supporting families and others who were on a low income or struggling to cope with the impact of benefit sanctions: ‘We’ve found that since benefits have changed, that’s impacted on our service in terms of who accesses our service … so we get a lot of people now who have benefit needs as well so we advocate on their behalf to the DWP quite often. A lot of our work actually does involve that now … it’s very relevant to our clients, the benefit side of things … and the implications of them not having their benefits up and running.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 12) One respondent also described how the experience of a benefit sanction could have broader negative impacts on service users, aside from a lack of financial resource. Benefit sanctions, it was believed, could also damage a person’s motivation and aspirations, which in turn led to a risk of disengagement not only from the mainstream welfare system but also from the third sector support as well:

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‘It can kind of hamper someone’s outlook and their hope from what they can achieve if they’re being hit by sanctions … that’s more challenge for how stable they are and how positive their outlook is which can affect how well they engage in the project and how much they are looking ahead.’ (Managerial-level worker, Activity Centre and Social Enterprise 5) It has been recognised that conditionality can cause people to disengage with the welfare system (Fletcher et al, 2016); however, the accounts of participants suggests that this could extend further for homeless service users, impacting on engagement with wider non-statutory services. This could result in individuals becoming even more isolated and marginalised.

No strings attached? Conditionality in homelessness services Analysis of the accounts of participants working in third sector organisations indicates that welfare conditionality has in some ways also impinged on the support and services provided by the voluntary sector, further ‘blurring’ the boundaries between the third sector and the state. This can be seen through the development of arrangements and partnerships with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and local Jobcentre Plus services, whereby several of the homelessness organisations sampled had become both facilitators and enforcers of the behavioural conditions placed on those homeless people claiming social security payments. For example, a small number of participants described how their organisation had become involved in the provision of compulsory work experience opportunities as part of the DWP’s highly controversial (and now suspended) ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ scheme, whereby claimants were required to engage in unpaid work or face withdrawal of their benefit through the application of sanctions. Describing their organisation’s participation in such activities, participants’ accounts suggest a degree of apprehension and uneasiness in their collaboration with this element of the UK’s conditional welfare regime: ‘[I]f you don’t think about it … mandated volunteering is a bad thing, it’s terrible. And if you’re of a certain social inclination you wouldn’t want to align yourself with forcing

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people to volunteer.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 12) Indeed, the use of the oxymoronic term ‘mandated volunteering’ here links to wider debates about the contradictory nature of requiring people to volunteer, and concerns about the potentially negative impacts that this can have (Stukas et al, 1999; Veldboer et al, 2015). However, contradictorily, and despite this unease, all participants indicated that they remained convinced that the benefits of participating in such schemes outweighed any negative aspects. To justify this position, they cited high levels of satisfaction among those undertaking the compulsory and unpaid work placements offered by their organisations, including continued voluntary participation in their organisation, once the mandatory the placement ended: ‘Sometimes people turn up and they didn’t really want to be there … [but] 80 per cent of the people who come and do a mandatory placement stay on afterwards … some of them are still volunteering now. Because people like it … people feel like they’ve found somewhere where they can start to develop themselves rather than somebody else telling them this is where they need to go and this is what they need to do to get there.’ (Operational-level worker, Activity Centre 12) Another respondent, who worked in a social enterprise that was offering volunteering opportunities to Work Programme participants, expressed resentment about the fact that they were providing work experience and training opportunities without receiving any financial recognition. Their perception was that private sector Work Programme providers who were being financed on a Payment by Results basis, were profiting as a result of the unfunded intensive support that third sector organisations were providing: ‘There’s no funding available for that, we don’t get paid to provide that service.’ (Strategic-level worker, Social Enterprise 8) Moreover, the general principle underpinning welfare conditionality – that access to services be ‘subject to the condition that those who receive them behave in particular ways, or participate in specified activities’ (Deacon, 1994: 5) – was also reflected in some of the

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support and services provided by the third sector organisations that took part in the research. Certain services on offer were conditional on homeless individuals meeting specific criteria and behaving in particular ways. For example, support from several of the residential projects was conditional on engagement in volunteering activities and support plans; further evidence of an expectation that homeless people are required to actively engage with the support and services made available to them in non-statutory settings (Fitzpatrick and Jones, 2005; Whiteford, 2010; Dobson, 2011). In some instances, residential organisations required residents to sign off and stop claiming social security benefits. This was due to a desire within certain organisations for greater autonomy and to maintain a self-sustaining community away from ‘state control’. If service users were required to undertake mandatory work-search, training and placements away from the project, this took them away from contributing to their self-sustaining community. This aversion to drawing monies from the state extended to other sources of government finance. Giving the example of ‘Supporting People’ funding (a source of finance commonly used across the homelessness third sector), one respondent explained: ‘Generally, if you take the devil’s coin, you dance the devil’s tune. Supporting People money for example, if you take the Supporting People money then you have to do the Supporting People audit, tick all their boxes, fill in their pro formas … and do all their stuff. We won’t do that.’ (Strategic-level worker, Residential Project and Social Enterprise 7) However, in exchange for room and board, several residential projects imposed their own requirement that residents engage in ‘volunteering’ for a certain number of hours per week: ‘Everybody who comes to our service has to agree to do a minimum of 12 hours a week [of] voluntary work. So what we don’t want is people just coming here sitting around doing nothing because that’s not productive for anyone.’ (Strategic-level worker, Residential Project 4) The reasons for this varied. In one case, these requirements were introduced to prevent idleness and to encourage proactivity. This chimes with earlier research findings recognising that ‘coercive welfare’

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in certain contexts may have a positive impact on people’s lives (Phoenix, 2008), by rewarding the proactive endeavours of citizens who make a perceived positive contribution and service to the wider community (Flint, 2009). In other cases, a requirement to volunteer was in keeping with the desire to maintain a ‘self-sufficient’ community. Failure to contribute to the work of the organisation or abide by a number of rules stipulated could result in them being evicted from the property. Commenting on similar organisations, Johnsen (2010) has questioned the value of such models based on ‘enforced’ volunteering, due in part to a lack of robust evidence relating to positive outcomes resulting from them. Furthermore, while on the one hand service users are not required to engage with the service, on the other hand the extent to which this is a free choice is somewhat questionable. Faced with an alternative source of accommodation and income (with no such conditions), it is unclear whether they would ‘choose’ to take up this offer of support on these terms.

Conclusions This chapter has considered alternative sources of employment-related support for homeless people offered by third sector organisations. Drawing on analysis of data from 27 semi-structured interviews with homelessness practitioners, it has shown the diverse activities offered in these settings, which aim to support those experiencing homelessness to move into (or at least closer to) the paid labour market. While the evidence presented in this chapter does not allow for a full assessment of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of support offered by this alternative form of employment-related support for homeless adults, the continued existence of such ‘voluntary’ services can be considered testament to the desire of homeless men and women to access support to move into work, despite typically not faring well in the ‘work first’ approach of the mainstream welfare system. Thus, there is arguably an important role for non-conditional support outside the statutory system to help homeless people take the first steps towards work, for example through support to build confidence and identify strengths and to engage in training and education programmes. However, the research presented here also highlights two further key issues. First, while a range of employment-related support services continue to be offered by third sector homelessness organisations, out of necessity, efforts within the sector increasingly concentrate on mitigating the

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impacts of the highly conditional statutory social security system. As such, in many ways third sector ‘employment’ support work is often focused on helping people to comply with mandatory behavioural conditions required for continued receipt of benefit and/or supporting those who fall foul of benefit sanctions. The accounts of homelessness practitioners presented here depict a welfare system that is failing to provide security and support for some of the most vulnerable adults in UK society. That there is a need for such agencies to help homeless people to manage their interactions with the Jobcentre and Work Programme providers points to failures in the current system of UK social security provision which undermines the notion that the welfare state should be there to support individuals in a time of need. This suggests that the emergence of a more conditional welfare state has impacted on the support and services provided by organisations which largely operate outside of it. The extent to which this impact might be considered an unfortunate and unintended consequence of welfare conditionality is open to debate. Increasing levels of conditionality in welfare service and benefit provision have occurred alongside a stated desire by some (Cameron, 2010) to devolve state responsibility by ‘empowering’ third sector organisations and other local actors to be responsive to the needs of vulnerable people. In an era characterised by austerity and the retrenchment of the welfare state (Szreter and Ishkanian, 2012; Crisp, 2015), third sector organisations are tasked with dealing with the consequences of those who fall foul of a welfare state in which social security is increasingly aligned to specified individual responsibilities (Dwyer, 2016). A second key issue emerging from this analysis is that while appearing critical of the conditionality inherent in the mainstream social security system, and of the negative impacts that a progressively punitive UK welfare state is having on homeless people, certain third sector organisations are increasingly incorporating elements of conditionality – albeit to varying degrees – in their own services. Additionally, in some instances, third sector agencies even act as the facilitators and enforcers of the conditional welfare state through their involvement in workfare-type initiatives such as the Mandatory Work Activity programme. As such, these organisations can, in some respects, be considered to be involved in supporting a system that they roundly criticise as promoting exclusion among their clients.

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Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) (2007) Places of Change Programme: Application Guidance. https://www. bipsolutions.com/docstore/pdf/19206.pdf Department for Communities and Local Government/Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DCLG/BIS) (2014) New support to give homeless people ‘basic building blocks’ for work. https://www.gov.uk/ government/news/new-support-to-give-homeless-basic-buildingblocks-for-work Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2012) Digital strategy. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/193901/dwp-digital-strategy.pdf Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (2014) The Jobseeker’s Allowance (Homeless Claimants) Amendment Regulations 2014. www. legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1623/pdfs/uksi_20141623_en.pdf Dobson, R. (2011) Conditionality and homelessness services, Social Policy and Society, 10: 547-57. Dwyer, P. (2016) Citizenship, conduct and conditionality: sanction and support in the 21st-century UK welfare state, in M. Fenger, J. Hudson and C. Needham (eds) Social Policy Review 28: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, Bristol: Policy Press, 41-62. Dwyer, P. (2018) Final findings overview, Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change Project. www. welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/40414_ Overview-HR4.pdf Dwyer, P. and Somerville, P. (2011) Introduction: Themed section on exploring multiple exclusion homelessness, Social Policy and Society, 10: 495-500. Dwyer, P., Bowpitt, G., Sundin, E. and Weinstein, M. (2012) The support priorities of multiply excluded homeless people and their compatibility with support agency agendas. www.researchcatalogue.esrc.ac.uk/ grants/RES-188-25-0001/outputs/read/abfe6665-58a9-4cfe-81c4d997effa7b08 FEANTSA (2007) Multiple barriers, multiple solutions: Inclusion into and through employment for people who are homeless. Brussels: European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless. Fitzpatrick, S. and Jones, A. (2005) Pursuing social justice or social cohesion? Coercion in street homelessness policies in England, Journal of Social Policy, 34: 389-406. Fletcher, D., Flint, J., Batty, E. and McNeill, J. (2016) Gamers or victims of the system?: Welfare reform, cynical manipulation and vulnerability, The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24: 171-85.

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Flint, J. (2009) Subversive subjects and conditional, earned and denied citizenship, in M. Barnes and D. Prior (eds) Subversive citizens: Power, agency and resistance in public services, Bristol: Policy Press, 83-98. Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) (2017) Ending rough sleeping by 2020 – new Mayor puts words into action. https://www. greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/news/article/135/ending_rough_ sleeping_by_2020_-_new_mayor_puts_words_into_action Homeless Link (2012) ETE & accreditation: Meaningful activities in homelessness services, London: Homeless Link. Homeless Link (2013) Critical mass: Final research report, London: Homeless Link. Homeless Link (2014) Guidance on ‘The Jobseekers Allowance (Homeless Claimants) Amendment Regulations 2014’. London: Homeless Link. Homeless Link (2015) Support for single homeless people in England: Annual review 2015. London: Homeless Link. Homeless Link (2016) Support for single homeless people in England: Annual Review 2016. London: Homeless Link. Hough, J. and Rice, B. (2010) Providing personalised support to rough sleepers: An evaluation of the City of London pilot, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Hough, J., Jones, J. and Rice, B. (2013) Longitudinal qualitative research on homeless people’s experiences of starting and staying in work, London: Broadway. Johnsen, S. (2010) Residential Communities for Homeless People: How ‘Inclusive’, How ‘Empowering’? A Response to ‘Routes Out of Poverty and Isolation for Older Homeless People: Possible Models from Poland and the UK’, European Journal of Homelessness, 4: 273-80. Johnsen, S., Fitzpatrick, S. and Watts, B. (2014) Conditionality briefing: Homelessness and ‘street culture’, welfare conditionality study briefing paper, York: University of York. Johnsen, S., Watts, B. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2016) First wave findings: Homelessness. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2016/05/WelCond-findings-homelessness-May16.pdf Luby, J. and Welch, J. (2006) Missed opportunities: The case for investment in learning and skills for homeless people, London: Crisis. Manchester Confidential (2016) Homelessness in Manchester - Have we reached crisis levels? http://confidentials.com/manchester/ homelessness-in-manchester-have-we-reached-crisis-levels Mason, J. (2002) Qualitative researching, London: Sage Publications Ltd. McKeever, G., Simpson, M. and Fitzpatrick, C. (2018) Destitution and paths to justice: Final report, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

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McNaughton, C. (2008) Transitions through homelessness: Lives on the edge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McNeill, J. (2011) Employability Pathways and Perceptions of ‘Work’ amongst Single Homeless and Vulnerably Housed People, Social Policy and Society, 10: 571-80. Patrick, R. (2017) For whose benefit? The everyday realities of welfare reform, Bristol: Policy Press. Phoenix, J. (2008) ASBOs and working women: a new revolving door?, in P. Squires (ed.) ASBO Nation: The criminalisation of nuisance, Bristol: Policy Press, 289-303. Pleace, N. and Bretherton, J. (2014) Crisis Skylight, an evaluation: Year one interim report, London: Crisis/University of York. Scullion, L., Somerville, P., Brown, P. and Morris, G. (2015) Changing homelessness services: Revanchism, ‘professionalisation’ and resistance, Health and Social Care in the Community, 23: 419-27. Scheerhout, J. (2017) Prime Minister Theresa May vows to spend £500m to help the homeless, during visit to Stockport, Manchester Evening News, 1 May 2017. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ news/greater-manchester-news/prime-minister-theresa-vowsspend-12971625 Stukas, A., Snyder, M. and Clary, E. (1999) The effects of ‘mandatory volunteerism’ on intentions to volunteer, Psychological Science, 10: 59-64. Szreter, S. and Ishkanian, A. (2012) Introduction: What is big society? Contemporary social policy in a historical and comparative perspective’, in S. Ishkanian and A. Szreter (eds) The big society debate: A new agenda for social welfare? Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Teasdale, S. (2010) Models of social enterprise in the homelessness field, Social Enterprise Journal, 6, 23-34. Teixeira, L. (2010) Still left out? The rough sleepers ‘205’ initiative one year on, London: Crisis. Varvarides, P. (2014) Employment pilot for London homeless wins government support, LocalGov. http://bit.ly/2A3Gkmp Veldboer, L., Kleinhans, R. and van Ham, M. (2015) Mandatory volunteer work as fair reciprocity for unemployment and social benefits? IZA: Institute of Labour Economics Discussion Paper No. 9111. Warnes, A. and Crane, M. (2000) Meeting homeless people’s needs: service development and practice for the older excluded, London: King’s Fund. Whiteford, M. (2010) Hot tea, dry toast and the responsibilisation of homeless people, Social Policy and Society, 9: 193-205.

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Williams, J. (2017) The number of people sleeping rough in Greater Manchester has risen dramatically, Manchester Evening News, 25 January 2017. www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greatermanchester-news/number-people-sleeping-rough-greater-12504539 Wright, S. and Stewart, A. (2016) First Wave Findings: Jobseekers. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ WelCond-findings-jobseekers-May16.pdf Wright, S., Dwyer, P., McNeill, J. and Stewart, A. (2016) First wave findings: Universal Credit. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2016/05/WelCond-findings-Universal-CreditMay16.pdf

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SIX

Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK Liviu Dinu and Lisa Scullion

Introduction Roma are recognised as one of Europe’s largest minority ethnic groups, with estimates of more than 10 million Roma residing across the European Union (EU) (Council of Europe, 2011a; European Commission, 2012), with around 8 million thought to reside within Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Tanner, 2005; Soros Foundation, 2012). Although the term ‘Roma’ is sometimes contested (see, for example, Kovats, 2001; Matras, 2013), it is now widely used across Europe as a generic descriptor for a diverse range of communities and there is a consensus that Roma remain one of the most socially disadvantaged communities across Europe (Amnesty International, 2011; Bartlett et al, 2011). Following the Accession of the ten CEE countries in 20041 and 2007,2 it is suggested that approximately 1.7 million CEE nationals now reside in the UK (Hawkins, 2016), which includes a significant Roma population. The arrival of large numbers of CEE migrants to the UK has been met with political and public debate around the need to curtail migration due to perceived impacts on indigenous labour market opportunities coupled with fears about the demands placed on the welfare system (Cook et al, 2012). There is little doubt, though, that public debates surrounding Roma migrants, within this broader category of CEE migration, has triggered particularly prejudiced reactions and specific attention in the wider anti-immigration rhetoric (Cahn, 2004; Dougherty, 2013; Okely, 2014), resulting in Roma often 1

2

The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Bulgaria and Romania.

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being framed as ‘benefit tourists’ (Clark and Campbell, 2000; Martin et al, 2017). Although counter-narratives have been offered (Martin et al, 2017), little is known about how Roma actually experience navigating the social security system in the UK, particularly in a situation of increasingly conditional rights for European migrants (Dwyer and Scullion, 2014; O’Brien, 2015). The aim of this chapter is to begin to explore some of these issues in more detail, providing an important starting point for understanding the multifaceted and overlapping forms of conditionality that impact on Roma. Members of this community can be subject to targeted policies within their home countries, but can also subsequently experience restricted access to welfare in the UK as ‘migrants’ and in their everyday interactions with the increasingly conditional unemployment benefits system (Dwyer et al, 2018). The chapter begins by highlighting some of the pervasive narratives in relation to Roma that focus on their supposed disproportionate representation in benefits systems, and the subsequent responses of some member states to such (mis)representations. We then focus specifically on Roma migrants in the UK, providing a brief overview of where Roma feature in current research around social welfare experiences. Finally, drawing upon ongoing exploratory research with Roma migrants who are currently claiming social security benefits in the UK, we provide insights into their experiences of navigating this system, how they respond to the conditionality inherent in the UK social security system, and also their wider employment experiences. While recognising that these are emerging findings, we highlight how claiming benefits appears to be a last resort after multiple job search attempts. Furthermore, there are suggestions that the welfare conditionality embedded in the UK social welfare system has the potential to lead Roma to disengage with the benefits system altogether and seek informal employment in order to meet their basic needs.

Who are Roma? Due to complexities associated with linguistic and cultural identities, ‘“the Roma” are a particularly difficult social group to conceptualise accurately’ (Kovats, 2001: 7-8). Regardless of debates around the conceptualisation of Roma, it is now widely accepted across the EU as a generic term to describe a diverse range of communities, tribes and clans. The term ‘Roma’ was first chosen at the inaugural World Romani Congress held in London in 1971 and can include people who identify themselves as Roma, Sinti and Kale, whose ancestors originate

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from northern India (Council of Europe, 2006). However, it can also include other indigenous groups such as Gypsies and Travellers resident in Ireland and the UK, and Yenish communities living in Switzerland and France, who do not routinely see themselves as part of the Roma community (Council of Europe, 2011a). Regardless of ongoing debates around ethnicity and membership of ethnic groups, it is recognised that Roma face entrenched and ongoing discrimination and exclusion across a number of areas of everyday life. These include: • housing, with Roma often living in poor quality accommodation, segregated from the majority population (Phillips, 2010; Molnár et al, 2011; Škobla and Filčák, 2016; Gatti et al, 2016); • health, with Roma life expectancy being 8–15 years lower than majority populations (Council of Europe, 2011b); • education, with illiteracy rates among Roma estimated as being in excess of 50%, and segregated schooling common in some countries (Farkas, 2007; Symeou et al, 2009); • employment – discrimination against Roma is widespread (Cace and Preoteasa, 2010; Bartlett et al, 2011), and Roma labour market experiences are characterised in terms of horizontal and vertical segregation, that is segregation into low-skilled, low-paid and precarious employment coupled with limited opportunities to progress (Scullion et al, 2014). Furthermore, employment rates of Roma are much lower than that of the non-Roma population, with a recent survey across nine EU member states suggesting that an average of 30% of Roma are in paid work compared to 70% across the non-Roma population (FRA, 2016: 10). This polarisation is even greater in relation to young people (those aged 16 to 24 years), with an estimated 63% of Roma young people not in education or employment, compared to 12% of non-Roma young people (FRA, 2016: 21). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the endemic exclusion in their countries of origin, some Roma have made use of their rights to free movement and have migrated to other European member states, including the UK. It is often difficult to enumerate migrant populations (Hillygus et al, 2006), and Roma especially (Clark, 1998), but it has been suggested that there are around 200,000 Roma living in the UK (Brown et al, 2013, 2014), although estimates vary greatly from 80,000 (European Commission, 2014) to up to one million (Craig, 2011). Regardless of the statistics, the portrayal of Roma as ‘benefit

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tourists’ has become common in the media in the UK (Martin at al, 2017), but also in other locations across Europe that have experienced a significant migration of Roma (FRA, 2009).

Roma and conditionality: a response to the ‘welfare dependency’ narrative? Existing research has highlighted competing discourses around Roma exclusion, which are reminiscent of long-standing individualist versus structuralist debates in relation to poverty (Lister, 2004). Drawing on research with both Roma and non-Roma populations, for example, Brown et al (2013) found that Roma typically emphasised poverty, discrimination and racism as impacting on their daily lives, while non-Roma (including some policy makers) focused on the supposed ‘dysfunctional behaviour or culture of Roma themselves’ (Brown et al, 2013: 54). The experiences of exclusion from the labour market, in particular, have played a role in shaping a range of pejorative stereotypes applied to Roma, including accusations of laziness, welfare dependency, inherent dishonesty and criminality (Sigona and Trehan, 2009; Balibar, 2009; Fox et al, 2012; McGarry, 2013; Parker and López Catalán, 2014; Okely, 2014; Kóczé, 2017). Some commentators go so far as to suggest that, instead of protecting this minority, certain actors in the institutions of member states are implicated in reinforcing and legitimising the stigmatisation of Roma (Dougherty, 2013). Indeed, it is evident that welfare conditionality is increasingly playing a role in the lives of Roma across Europe as a means of addressing some of the supposed ‘dysfunctional behaviour’ noted earlier, with Roma being subject to multiple and overlapping forms of conditionality as ‘migrants’ but also as individuals accessing unemployment benefits. Across Europe, access to many unemployment welfare benefits has become increasingly conditional upon recipients accepting compulsory work or training opportunities (Lødemel and Trickey, 2001; Dean, 2006). Concerns that linking basic rights to welfare to activity in the paid labour market can potentially exacerbate the social exclusion of those who are not in paid employment or training have a wider resonance (Dwyer, 2004) – particularly in relation to Roma who, in some member states, are disproportionately impacted by such measures. For example, state-subsidised job creation schemes are a common feature of some CEE countries (for example Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), which have used long-standing ‘public works programmes’ as a means of addressing long-term unemployment, by providing work

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for those who are registered for social welfare benefits (Koltai, 2012). It is acknowledged that Roma are often disproportionately represented in these programmes (Lajčáková, 2014; Muhič Dizdarevič, 2014). In some countries (for example Hungary and Slovakia), such programmes appear to be the main (or in some cases the only) employment available to unemployed Roma (Brown et al, 2014). Concerns have been raised about the high level of conditionality inherent in such programmes, with suggestions that refusal to take part in, or dismissal from, the Hungarian scheme, for example, could result in a loss of benefit for up to two years (Kóczé, 2014). The concentration of Roma in such schemes has also been criticised on ‘racialised’ grounds (Lajčáková, 2014), with concerns raised around such schemes creating ‘a permanent underclass of unskilled workers’ (Byrne, 2015), trapping people in an ‘employment-benefits cycle’ (Brown et al, 2014: 34). However, applying conditions to the receipt of social welfare benefits is not solely a feature of labour market activation policy, but it is also used as a coercive tool in relation to school attendance in some countries. Discussions on the educational attainment of Roma are long-standing, focusing on combinations of ‘structural’ and ‘individual’ factors, such as: ‘systemic’ educational segregation in some member states (O’Nions, 2010); ‘sporadic and unsystematic school attendance’ (Symeou et al, 2009: 514); and the low value placed on education by some Roma parents (Cozma et al, 2000). Some member states (Romania, Hungary and Slovakia) have implemented policies, whereby benefits can be stopped, if parents do not ensure that their children regularly engage in education (Barany, 2002; Ringold et al, 2005). Again, such measures can disproportionately impact on Roma populations (Barany, 2002), with suggestions that for some Roma parents, education becomes ‘an obligation to the state rather than to their children’ (Ringold et al, 2005: 79). From ‘welfare dependency’ to ‘benefit tourism’: UK policy responses Following the enlargement of the EU, and the unprecedented movement of people from CEE countries to Western Europe, it is apparent that this migration has reinforced some of the existing prejudices towards Roma (Martin et al, 2017). It is acknowledged that the reasons for Roma migration differ to some extent from other CEE migrants – with their migration triggered by economic factors but also by ‘a wish to escape the endemic prejudice and persecution they face in their country of origin’ (Cook et al, 2011: 60). However, the arrival of Roma migrants in the UK has been presented by politicians

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and by the media as a significant challenge, because of the perceived difficulties of integrating Roma into British society. Central to some of the debates surrounding Roma migrants have been questions around their motivations for migration. Rather than focusing on the widespread exclusion of Roma, these have determined their migration as welfare-motivated, depicting Roma as ‘benefits tourists’ – a term often used to describe someone who purportedly travels to the UK with the primary objective of claiming benefits – or ‘undeserving migrants’ (Stevens, 2003; Tanner, 2005; Shutes, 2014; Ginsburg, 2015; Martin et al, 2017). Fox et al (2012) suggest that the image of Roma migrants in the UK has followed a ‘Roma frame’ that not only emphasises their so-called deviant behaviour, but also implies ‘racial inferiority’ and ‘cultural backwardness’. It is not the purpose of this chapter to provide an in-depth analysis of political, public and media debate in relation to Roma, as this has been addressed in detail by other researchers (see, for example, Clark and Campbell, 2000; Tremlett, 2012; Richardson, 2014). What is clear from their research is that in the UK (and across Europe), discussions around ‘benefit tourism’ have become central to the narratives in relation to Roma, not only in the media but also among the political elite (Martin et al, 2017), with EU enlargement amplifying some of these discussions (Harris, 2016, 2018). However, these debates have been in existence for many years in the UK (Clark and Campbell, 2000; Tremlett, 2012), and have often been accompanied by the introduction of more restrictive policy measures. During the 1990s and early 2000s, many Roma were arriving in the UK seeking asylum. This was an era when the issue of asylum had been placed high on the political, public and media agenda, and a threat had been identified in the shape of the ‘undeserving’ or ‘bogus’ asylum seekers (Bloch and Schuster, 2002; Sales, 2002). There was a view that the increase in asylum applications – including applications from Roma – was due to perceptions of an overgenerous welfare benefits system in the UK (Tanner, 2005). Consequently, a succession of legislation was introduced, which aimed to restrict entry to the UK, but also to reduce the rights of those who had managed to enter. This included the introduction of the ‘White List’ as part of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 – a list of seven countries that were considered ‘safe’ for their citizens to live in. As such, applicants from these countries could be automatically excluded and their claims deemed unfounded. The ‘White List’ included most of the countries from which Roma were arriving and, consequently, very few were

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granted refugee status and allowed to stay in the UK during that time (Horton and Grayson, 2008). For migrants in the UK, it is evident that conditionality operates in overlapping ways (Dwyer and Scullion, 2014; Dwyer et al, 2018). At a broad level, migrants’ rights are stratified by a complex regime of entitlements depending on their sociolegal status (Dwyer et al, 2011). For EU migrants specifically, recent years have seen the introduction of a series of measures that have reduced or removed the social welfare rights of EU nationals migrating to, or residing in, the UK (Dwyer and Scullion, 2014; Kennedy, 2014; O’Brien, 2015) and other EU member states (see, for example, Heindlmaier and Blauberger, 2017; Dwyer et al, 2018). As then UK Prime Minister, David Cameron stated in a press release in 2014: ‘we have clamped down on abuses, making sure the right people are coming for the right reason’. These restrictive measures include: • a minimum earnings threshold; • the ‘Genuine Prospect of Work’ (GPoW) test; • a loss of entitlement to Housing Benefit for newly arrived EU nationals who are ‘jobseekers’ (Kennedy, 2014); • a stricter interpretation of the ‘habitual residency test’ (Dwyer et al, 2016). Furthermore, a language acquisition element has been added for some claimants, who can be mandated to learn English and face having their benefits stopped if they refuse these classes (Porter, 2011; HM Treasury/DWP, 2014). Consequently, it is suggested that there is now a greater ‘burden of proof ’ on EU migrants to demonstrate their eligibility to social welfare benefits than that required by UK citizens (Dwyer et al, 2016). The GPoW test has received particular scrutiny. Introduced in 2014, it requires EU migrants to provide ‘compelling evidence’ that they have a ‘genuine prospect of work’, which is perhaps impossible unless migrants are able to produce a written statement from an employer with a future start date for a job (Dwyer et al, 2016). Overall, there are concerns around how the complex rules and regulations are being interpreted and applied by welfare professionals, and how this may impact negatively on migrants who are trying to access these systems (O’Brien, 2015). Although such policies are not specifically targeting Roma, as EU migrants, Roma are subject to such restrictions and additional requirements in relation to UK social welfare benefits.

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There is a growing body of research focusing on Roma migrants in the UK; however, to date there is little focus on their experiences in relation to the social security benefits system specifically. There are a few notable exceptions, where research has provided some evidence of the difficulties Roma face in accessing the welfare system. A study by Fremlová et al (2009), for example, highlighted that the primary motivation to migrate was to find employment and through that, to provide a better life for their children. Self-employment (including selling The Big Issue) was identified as the most frequent type of employment, with Roma often taking up low-skilled and low-paid positions. With specific reference to social security, the study identified language barriers, a lack of understanding of the system and limited understanding on the part of welfare administrators, as all impacting on the ability of Roma to access welfare in the UK. However, the study was based on a survey of local authorities, so did not draw on the perspectives of Roma migrants themselves. A further survey carried out by Scullion and Morris (2009) did focus on the views of Roma, albeit as a small sample within a larger study focusing on CEE migrant workers in Peterborough, UK. It found high levels of unemployment among the Roma participants, with a large proportion in receipt of some form of social security benefit. However, as a primarily quantitative survey, it did not provide any detail on Roma migrants’ interactions with the welfare system. Two more recent studies have provided relevant contributions in relation to the treatment of Roma when accessing the UK benefits system (Paterson et al, 2011; Dagilyte and Greenfields (2015). Indeed, the study by Paterson et al (2011) represents the first research in the UK to focus on the unequal treatment of Roma in this system. Using a combination of interviews with service providers, case studies and surveys, the research showed that language barriers, insufficient advice and support, and the complexity of welfare rules and regulations were creating difficulties in relation to both access to benefits and the appeals process. Furthermore, this research raised questions around the ethicality of benefit sanctions (now a significant feature of the UK’s highly conditional welfare state) being applied to Roma migrants, given that a lack of understanding rather than an unwillingness to comply was often at the root of non-fulfilment (see Oakley, 2014, Dwyer et al, 2018 for wider allied concerns). Exploratory research by Dagilyte and Greenfields (2015) examined the impact of the 2013-14 UK welfare reforms on Roma migrants in the UK, focusing on consultation with workers in local government agencies and organisations providing welfare advice and guidance.

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Their research suggested that access to social security benefits was not a primary driver for Roma migration, indicating very low levels of awareness of the UK welfare system. Similar to the findings above, this research reiterated some of the key issues in relation to accessing welfare, rather than people’s experiences once in the system. Furthermore, while their study did include the perspectives of Roma migrants, those who participated had neither actual experience of the welfare benefits system, nor a future intention to claim benefits. Indeed, as Dagilyte and Greenfields (2015: 1) state, research on the extent and nature of benefit claims by the Roma community remains ‘exceptionally limited’. Thus, although some research has explored the experiences and impact of welfare conditionality on migrants more broadly (Dwyer and Scullion, 2014; Dwyer et al, 2016), there has been little focus on the experiences of Roma as a ‘particularly vulnerable’ group (Dagilyte and Greenfields, 2015) in the UK’s increasingly conditional social security regime. The existing body of research provides important insights, but is firmly grounded in the experiences and perceptions of those providing welfare advice and support, rather than through the lens of Roma migrants themselves.

Roma migrants in the UK: emerging work and welfare insights The remainder of this chapter aims to begin addressing some of the issues raised above by providing insights from ongoing research focusing on the impacts of welfare conditionality from the perspectives of Roma migrants in the UK. The analysis draws upon six in-depth interviews with Roma migrants living in the Greater Manchester area of the North of England. With the exception of one person from Hungary, the participants were all from Romania. Four were female, two male and participants were between 21 and 52 years old. Four of the five participants had children living with them in the UK. Two of the participants had degree-level qualifications. The participants had been living in the UK for between two and four years. They all had experience of claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) in the UK apart from one participant, who was claiming Employment and Support Allowance (in the Support Group). All the interviews conducted with Romanian Roma migrants were conducted in Romanian, and the interview with the Hungarian national was conducted in Romani. Purposive sampling was used to identify participants, with the assistance of various organisations and ‘gatekeepers’, who were providing welfare support to Roma and other

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migrant communities in the fieldwork areas. The researcher (Dinu) also has an ‘insider’ position due to his Romanian citizenship and Romani ethnic background, which, in many cases, helped to engender trust in the research process. However, to minimise the potential biases or ethnocentrism that could arise from this insider position (Greene, 2014), reflexivity was required, including using a field journal and regular debriefing with supervisors. In addition to the interviews with Roma migrants, the following discussions also draw on data generated in interviews with four frontline workers representing statutory or third sector organisations, who were providing welfare advice and support to Roma migrants (and other marginalised populations). Two interviews with front-line workers were conducted in Romanian and two in English. All interviews were audio-recorded, with permission, transcribed verbatim and translated into English by the interviewer. The data were coded and thematically analysed using a QSRNVivo software package to aid storage and retrieval of data. The interviews were carried out between March and July 2017. The research was subject to review by the Research Ethics Panel at the University of Salford. We recognise that, given the sample size, the research is exploratory in nature; however, it provides emerging insights from the perspective of Roma migrants themselves. Ensuing discussions focus on two interrelated issues: Roma participants’ experiences in the UK paid labour market; and their allied experiences of the UK social security benefits system. Although this chapter aims to explore the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK, this cannot be separated from experiences of accessing employment, as this is part of the context in which Roma have to access welfare support. Experiences in the UK paid labour market Supporting other recent research focusing on Roma migration to the UK (Pemberton and Scullion, 2013; Brown et al, 2015; Martin et al, 2017), the migration motivations of participants was often framed around a narrative of migration providing greater employment opportunities. Indeed, counter to the pervasive ‘benefit tourism’ narrative (Martin et al, 2017), participants referred to the lack of employment opportunities in their countries of origin and the impact that this had had on their quality of life (Brown et al, 2015). As one participant stated:

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‘I came here [to find] a better job, earning more money. Life in Romania … you can have a salary that you can hardly live with.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37) However, as highlighted in previous research (Fremlová et al, 2009; Cook et al, 2011; Brown et al, 2016), the discussions around migrating for employment were often also framed in broader discussions around escaping persecution in Roma participants’ countries of origin. Experiences of entrenched discrimination and racism in their homelands and better prospects of employment in the UK featured in their accounts: ‘I heard from my friends and relatives that [the UK] is much better than in [Romania] … Without school or profession you will never get anything [other] than a job for a day and worthless money … and when you are ‘tigan’ [Roma] it is much worse, because you always need a recommendation or something, someone who could guarantee for you in the sense you will not steal something or you don’t make trouble.’ (Romania Roma male, aged 25) It was clear that participants had perceived there to be greater opportunities in the UK labour market; however, their accounts revealed a somewhat different reality in relation to their actual experiences of paid work in the UK. The majority experienced challenges in accessing the paid labour market, with suggestions that looking for work in the UK was a very different experience from looking for work in their country of origin. The interviews suggest that a complex interplay of issues impacted on people’s experiences of accessing work in the UK, including previous education and training, English language skills and discrimination. The importance of English language is widely acknowledged in studies relating to the integration of migrant populations in the UK (Drinkwater et al, 2010; Rutter, 2015). With regard to Roma, as highlighted previously, this is compounded by low levels of education and, for some, illiteracy (Poole, 2010). In accordance with the findings from previous research (Fremlová et al, 2009; Brown et al, 2016), there was a willingness to learn English, but often difficulties in accessing English language courses: ‘I don’t know [how] to speak this language [English] but I would like to learn it. I went with my husband to register

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[at] these English classes … [there were] like one hundred people waiting. They said to come back in about a month.’ (Romania Roma female, aged 21) A willingness to learn English among Roma was also reiterated in the interviews with support workers, who talked not only about a lack of availability of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision, but also the timing and location of some of the courses, which acted as a barrier for some people to attend. While English language skills are associated with better employment outcomes, as Rutter (2015: 117) highlights, having poor language skills ‘does not mean that migrants will be unable to find any work; rather, their employment opportunities may be more restricted’. However, even for those with higher levels of education and more developed English language skills, there were still difficulties in accessing the labour market. As indicated earlier, two participants were educated to degree level. One of these had expressed surprise at the difficulty they faced, and suggested a different ‘culture’ in terms of how people find employment, with the UK being a very much an ‘online system’: ‘I never thought it will be hard to find a job … but I applied, and applied … first I thought that if I am going to shops, look for example I went to this … Trafford Centre, right. Very nice place … and I sought so many shops and restaurants. I said … it is impossible not to find something here … I distributed my CV and I talk with the managers … most of them said that I should apply online.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37) In addition to issues of language, education and understanding the UK system, some participants felt that discrimination may have been a factor in the difficulty they faced in accessing employment. For some, this related to the colour of their skin or the particular style of dress they wore (that is, clothes perceived to be ‘Roma clothes’). As one participant stated: ‘I had a small job cleaning restaurants. I was going to various restaurants … Look at me. I am white, but I cannot give up on these outfits, you know. That manager hired me without caring about my clothes or the scarf on my head. But that man was an exception. Since last year I keep struggling to find something else. I don’t know [how] to speak English,

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I don’t know how to read in Romanian even, but I see their eyes [referring to employers] and how they look at me when they are sending me home.’ (Romania Roma female, aged 21) Given the difficulties Roma participants faced in accessing or maintaining employment, a number talked about participation in the ‘grey economy’ through informal or ‘cash in hand’ work: ‘I never had a contract. I don’t know what that is … I worked as a butcher for one year and I always received my money [cash] in hand … my schedule was from 8 [am] to 8 [pm], but I had one day free every week, so I was alright with this.’ (Romania Roma male, aged 25, living in UK with partner and child) Although such informal working practices were common, it is worth noting that routinely participants did not seem to be aware of the illegality of such work, or chose to disregard this. As Morris (2016: 4) highlights, ‘Roma often work in unregulated sectors of the economy, taking temporary jobs through non-statutory employment agencies, with very low wages, illegal deductions and poor working conditions’. This had been a regular feature of some participants’ employment experiences in the UK: ‘We were sent from one warehouse to another. A few months or more on a warehouse, then if there is no work they send you home. If you are lucky enough, they will call you and will give you a job elsewhere, if not, you stay in the house and wait for them to call … everyone knows that we are actually getting less money than the factories are paying, because the agencies [take] the difference.’ (Hungarian Roma female, aged 52) Indeed, the sense of financial security provided by a job appeared to take primacy over the conditions and the legality, particularly when securing paid work had been so difficult in their country of origin. The ability to provide for their family was at the forefront of people’s motivations: ‘I don’t need more than a job here, but I am also aware that I will never have more than a low paid job. I don’t

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expect anything else than having enough money to live [a] decent [life] with my family. I am aware that we are like strangers here, we are migrants … I am not stupid, I can see this at work, [on] the bus, everywhere I go. However, I am confident in my child’s future. He was born here, and I will do all that I can to provide him a better future than I had.’ (Romania Roma female, aged 21) For some, self-employment had also become an important employment opportunity. One woman, for example, was currently selling The Big Issue, which offered a sporadic income: ‘I am selling [the] “Big Issue” for more than two years now. I am an old, ill woman and I cannot work in a factory as I used to in Romania. Sometimes you earn some money, sometimes you leave with empty hands, but I am pretty satisfied with doing this. I teach my daughters to do the same, and they can make some money to feed their children. What can we do, something else?’ (Romania Roma female, aged 52) The support workers also reiterated that self-employment was common, due to difficulties that Roma faced in accessing the labour market: ‘Most of the Roma migrant men here in [Greater Manchester] are working as self-employed, especially because they just realised it’s much easier to earn money this way since finding a job is so hard for them. For example, Hungarians just bought some tools, a lawn mower, and they started knocking on the people’s doors, you know. Cutting the grass, cleaning the back yard, picking up the metal, you know, anything that would bring money into the house.’ (Support Worker 3) For some support workers, there was an admiration of the tenacity and agency of Roma in a situation of constraint, as demonstrated in the preceding quotation. However, other support workers acknowledged that the type of employment that Roma were undertaking also demonstrated the lack of ‘social mobility’ that Roma are able achieve (Support worker 2).

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From work to welfare: experiences of welfare conditionality in the UK’s social benefit system The previous section set out some of the issues that Roma migrants often face, when trying to find paid employment in the UK. As highlighted previously, this is important contextual information that helps us to understand not only why Roma may need to claim social security benefits, but also the ongoing barriers they may face in trying to move back into employment. The discussion that follows provides interesting insights into perceptions of the support offered by Jobcentres; how Roma can experience particular difficulties relating to the increasing conditionality applied to migrant populations in the benefits system; and how the conditions attached may lead some Roma to abandon their claims for benefits, effectively exiting collectivised systems of social assistance. As highlighted previously, all but one of the Roma participants were (or had been) claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). They had all previously worked in the UK, some in more than one job, often for considerable lengths of time. Across the interviews, one of the main reasons cited for applying for JSA was to obtain some form of provisional support, until they were able to find another job. For many, there was a feeling of frustration and disappointment at not being able to find work, or in some cases, at being made redundant. As such, for some, applying for JSA represented a last resort, as one participant suggested: ‘I believe[d] that it would help me to find a job and I could earn some money to get around and cover some expenses. I knew [it was] not a big [amount] of money and it’s a lot of hassle, but I thought that it could be beneficial. I was really frustrated and angry. I could not understand why it is so hard to find a job. I needed help, but also I was out of money.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37) Additionally, for some participants, the Jobcentre was perceived as a key institution that could provide support and advice in their quest for finding a job. Participants’ initial interactions with the Jobcentre were discussed in relatively positive terms, with many describing the advisors as professional and empathetic at the initial stage of the claim: ‘It was with a nice lady. She told me some things about JSA and she requests my [National] Insurance number, my

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passport and she kindly asked me to answer some questions … and in the meantime she filled in my answers on the computer.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37) One participant also talked positively about the support they had received from the Jobcentre in relation to supporting her to learn computer skills: ‘I explained that I do not know how to work on my computer. They understood and then in a couple of weeks they sent me to go to computer classes … I learn[t] useful things about how to use a computer, and how to go online, and search what you need. It was really good for me … if I would have been in Hungary, maybe I would have never learn to use a computer.’ (Hungarian Roma female, aged 52) Although this participant expressed positive views in relation to the practical support provided by the Jobcentre, she described the frustration at being unable to secure paid work, but also an underlying feeling that their motivations were being questioned: ‘I went to some interviews, for example as a cleaning lady … but I was not hired for some reason. However, despite all of my efforts, they still reminded me, and all of us there, all the time to look for work, to look for work. As if, all of us were considered to come there [to the Jobcentre] only to take their money, rather than looking for work.’ (Hungarian Roma female, aged 52) Other participants did not feel that they had received any employment assistance; rather that the conditions had created additional stress. Although the financial support was appreciated, they had not found employment through the Jobcentre: ‘The money I received it helped me in a period when I was pretty down. But the stress of being on this programme, papers, mandatory meetings, I would not say it was helpful at all. I have not received any job offers … these circumstances did not give me any advantages, since I found a job by chance and through my own efforts.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37)

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Furthermore, a number of participants suggested that although initially supportive, at successive appointments, the behaviour of the advisors sometimes became increasingly inflexible, and in some cases, intimidating. It was felt that this changing demeanour related to the difficulties that some participants were facing with the conditions of their claim. For example, one Roma mother tried to explain her specific circumstances, to make the advisor aware that she might not be able to attend some of the scheduled meetings due to childcare. However, she felt that her childcare responsibilities were not sufficiently taken into consideration, and in fact, she was directly told about how it would impact on her JSA claim, if she did not attend: ‘I told her that I have a small child and I am not sure that I will come on time and that I don’t know if I will be able to come all these days. But then she replied to me that I need to find a way to solve any issue and if I want to receive [JSA] it will be necessary to be present at all of these meetings, that I need to participate in group gatherings, and look for work online.’ (Romanian Roma female, aged 37) Childcare responsibilities have been highlighted elsewhere as a barrier for claimants (and indeed for accessing employment more broadly) (Patrick, 2017). Research focusing on lone parents, for example, demonstrates the increasing expectation for lone parents to engage in work-related activities (Johnsen, 2016), while more broadly concerns have been raised around the lack of affordable childcare, and the difficulty of finding employment that fits around childcare responsibilities (Patrick, 2017) The issues that this woman describes also relate directly to the conditionality embedded within the UK out-of-work benefits system, whereby all claimants have to agree and sign a Claimant Commitment, which outlines their mandatory requirements to actively seek work. Failure to undertake these work-related responsibilities can result in benefit sanctions. However, in addition to the standard behavioural requirements required of all JSA recipients, as EU migrants resident in the UK, Roma face an intensified level of conditionality linked to the application of the ‘Genuine Prospect of Work’ (GPoW) test and the increasing ‘burden of proof ’ on migrants in relation to their social security benefit claims (Dwyer et al, 2016). It was apparent from the interviews that this was having an impact on Roma participants. Indeed, support workers referred to how the GPoW test had resulted in many Roma migrants’ claims being stopped, after ‘failing’ the test:

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‘The Romanian Roma migrants, [the] majority are failing [the GPoW]. Because if somebody is going to a [GPoW] interview, what the Jobcentre wants to see [is] basically, actually, most likely, they would have to have a job offer.’ (Support Worker 2) Again, English language was a key factor in how people experienced their interactions with the Jobcentre, but the interviews also highlighted a lack of understanding from some participants as to the processes that they were being asked to undertake. As one participant explained in relation to the GPoW test: ‘I went there with my sister because she knows [how] to speak English. When I went there I just thought it is going to be a discussion about how I manage to [look] for a job and about the problems I [have] and about, you know … my needs. Well, [it] didn’t happen like I was expecting because I was just required constantly to answer with “Yes” or “No” like a robot, without having the opportunity to explain what I wanted to say.’ (Romania Roma male, aged 25) Although the majority of participants were claiming JSA, one was currently claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) (in the Support Group). This person had been living and working in the UK for three years, but had subsequently experienced health problems. She described the difficulty she had faced in trying to claim ESA, particularly in relation to ‘proving’ that she was no longer able to work. As she explained: ‘I got tired of this. I go to the doctor every three months for sick notes. I had foot surgery, my back. It hurts my back and I was recommended surgery too. How [much] proof would somebody want to believe that you cannot work anymore?’ (Romania Roma female, aged 52) The increasing sense of ‘tiredness’ in this woman’s account was reflected in some of the other interviews. More generally, participants demonstrated initial positive interactions with Jobcentre advisors, which became increasingly frustrating due to the ‘hassle’ of intensive job search requirements and attendance at work-focused interviews. In some cases, it was evident that this was likely to lead to disengagement

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with the system. For example, at the time of interview, one participant was deliberating on whether or not to continue on JSA: ‘The whole experience [has] made me come home very angry and humiliated … and I [am] seriously pondering to quit, to going back [to the Jobcentre] and giving up this Jobseekers help.’ (Romanian Roma male, aged 28) The issue of welfare conditionality increasing the likelihood of exit from the social security system was reiterated in the interviews conducted with support workers. As such, it was suggested that if the conditionality required to claim social security benefits came to be viewed as too onerous, people will simply exit the benefits system and look to meet their basic needs through work in the informal economy or through self-employment: ‘And it takes a lot of time and effort … so they would rather, prefer to find, you know, another option like finding another source of income … OK, this business didn’t work well, I’ll see if I can become a “pedlar”, or see if I can do something else instead … [be]cause it’s a lot of hassle for them.’ (Support Worker 2) This latter point in relation to the ‘hassle’ associated with claiming benefits and the subsequent disengagement or ‘diversion’ away from benefits has been raised elsewhere (see Finn and Goodship, 2014; Watts et al, 2014). Advocates of welfare conditionality would suggest that such outcomes are precisely what the principle of conditionality is trying to achieve, fitting the rationale of people having individual responsibility or ‘obligations’ to meet their own – and their family’s – welfare through paid work (Mead, 2001). For the opponents of welfare conditionality, however, concerns have been raised in relation to its role in ‘punishing the poor’ or scapegoating disadvantaged groups. Indeed, Deacon (2004: 111) describes its purpose as being to ‘regulate and punish the behaviour of marginalised groups that fail to conform to socially constructed norms’. As such, it is suggested that welfare conditionality places an additional burden on individuals and groups who already experience deep social and economic inequalities (Griggs and Evans, 2010). The emerging insights from the personal accounts in this chapter certainly suggest that this may be particularly true of Roma, one of the most socially excluded minority communities across Europe. Although

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Roma perceive there to be greater employment opportunities in the UK, migration does not appear to address the concentration of Roma in low-paid, low-skilled and insecure work. Rather, it appears to remain a feature of their labour market experiences in UK, as it was in their countries of origin. Some support workers emphasised the agency of Roma, who are tenacious in adapting to situations of constraint. However, our concern relates to the role that welfare conditionality may play in reinforcing the subordinate position of Roma, particularly if some do decide to disengage from the social security system and ‘disappear’ into informal and unregulated employment, which in turn may undermine their right to reside in the UK.

Conclusions There is a pervasive narrative surrounding discussions of poverty, social security benefits and Roma that often focuses on the behaviour and culture of Roma (Brown et al, 2013), which can deflect attention away from the structural causes underpinning the poverty and disadvantage that Roma experience. Indeed, a common discourse has emerged in relation to the ‘dependency’ of Roma on social welfare. The response in some European countries (particularly, but not exclusively, CEE nations) has been the linking of eligibility to access certain social welfare benefits to mandatory participation in specified labour market schemes (Koltai, 2012; Lajčáková, 2014; Muhič Dizdarevič, 2014) or – beyond employment policy – linking access to basic social assistance to other ‘appropriate behaviours’, for example school attendance (Ringold et al, 2005). In the UK, although policy changes do not focus specifically on Roma migrants, there have been a plethora of measures that aim to curtail EU migrants’ access to social welfare and/or that impose stricter conditions for those in receipt of benefits (Dwyer and Scullion, 2014; O’Brien, 2015). These measures are influenced by wider antiimmigration debates, with perceptions of ‘benefit tourism’ being a driver of such debates, and Roma vilified as a key perpetrator in this narrative (Clark and Campbell, 2000; Martin et al, 2017). As such, it is evident that Roma are subject to multiple and overlapping forms of welfare conditionality, in their countries of origin, but also as ‘migrants’ whose access to welfare is increasingly restricted in ‘host’ countries (such as the UK). There is a growing body of research focusing on the social welfare experiences of Roma in the UK (see, for example, Paterson et al, 2011;

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Dagilyte and Greenfields, 2015) and also research that offers counternarratives to the ‘benefit tourism’ discourse (Martin et al, 2017). However, little research to date has attempted to provide an in-depth understanding of how Roma experience welfare conditionality in the UK social security system. Recognising that, we have drawn upon initial analysis of ongoing exploratory research, and this chapter has provided emerging insights from the perspective of Roma themselves. It is clear that, following the enlargements of the EU in 2004 and 2008, primary motivations underpinning much CEE Roma migration to the UK are to escape endemic discrimination in their countries of origin and a desire to access a better quality of life, particularly through the pursuit of perceived labour market opportunities. Indeed, although migrant Roma labour market experiences in the UK are often characterised by low-paid and low-skilled work, this is often an improvement on the situation previously experienced in their countries of origin (Martin et al, 2017). That said, there appeared to be a sense of growing dissatisfaction among Roma at being unable to find or maintain employment in the UK, with some being surprised at the discrimination and difficulties they had faced in finding work. It is also evident that even those people with higher qualifications and greater language skills experienced difficulties in securing formal employment. In some cases, Roma participants were concerned that discrimination and racism may play a role. The ‘benefit tourism’ narrative places access to social welfare benefits at the heart of Roma motivations for migration. However, the interviews with Roma revealed that people were accessing benefits after often sustained periods of employment in the UK. Indeed, for some, initiating a claim for JSA was a ‘last resort’ after their own job search attempts had appeared to fail. Once they engaged with system, they soon became dissatisfied with the limited support on offer from the Jobcentre, given their initial perceptions that the system would support them to find a job. The narratives of the Roma participants demonstrate the acknowledged difficulties many people face in meeting the increasing conditionality within the system, particularly when negotiating childcare and other responsibilities (Berrick, 1991; Dwyer, 2004), but also in having to demonstrate additional eligibility due to EU migrant status (Dwyer et al, 2016). Faced with these obstacles, the emerging evidence indicates that some Roma were deliberating whether to exit from the UK benefits system, with welfare conditionality perhaps pushing some Roma away from collectivised systems of social security. It may be the case that these individuals would rather take their

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Dean, H. (2006) Activation policies and the changing ethical foundations of welfare. In: ASPEN/ETUI conference: activation policies in the EU. Brussels: ASPEN/ETUI. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3784/1/ activation_policies_(LSERO).pdf Dougherty, S. (2013) 14 unbelievably racist things European (and Canadian) politicians are saying about the Roma, Global Post. www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/131118/14unbelievably-racist-things-politicians-said-about-roma Drinkwater, S., Eade, J. and Garapich, M. (2010) What’s behind the figures? An investigation into recent Polish migration to the UK, in R. Black, G. Engbersen, M. Okolski and C. Paniru (eds) A Continent Moving West? EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press: 73-88. Dwyer, P. (2004) Creeping Conditionality in the UK: From Welfare Rights to Conditional Entitlements?, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2): 265-87. Dwyer, P. and Scullion, L. (2014) Conditionality Briefing: Migrants, www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/ Briefing_Migrants_14.09.10_FINAL.pdf Dwyer, P., Jones, K., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. (2016) Migrants and Conditionality. Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change. York: The University of York. www. welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ WelCond-findings-migrants-May16.pdf Dwyer P., Jones, K., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. B. R (2018) The impact of conditionality on the welfare rights of EU migrants in the UK, Policy and Politics, forthcoming. Dwyer, P., Scullion, L., Lewis, H. and Waite, L. (2011) Forced labour and UK immigration policy: status matters?. JRF programme paper: Forced labour. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://www.jrf.org. uk/report/forced-labour-and-uk-immigration-policy-status-matters European Commission (2012) National Roma Integration Strategies: A first step in the implementation of the EU Framework, Belgium: European Commission. European Commission (2014) Report on the implementation of the EU framework for National Roma Integration Strategies, Belgium: European Commission. Farkas, L. (2007) Segregation of Roma Children in Education: Addressing Structural Discrimination through the Race Equality Directive, Luxembourg: European Commission.

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Finn, D. and Goodship, J. (2014) Take-up of benefits and poverty: an evidence and policy review, London: Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion. Fox, J., Morosanu, L. and Szilassy, E. (2012) The Racialization of the New European Migration to the UK, Sociology, 46(4): 680-95. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (2009) EUMIDIS European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey - Data in Focus Report 1: The Roma. http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2009/ eu-midis-data-focus-report-1-roma European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (2016) Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Roma – Selected findings. Luxembourg: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra2016-eu-minorities-survey-roma-selected-findings_en.pdf Fremlová, L., Ureche, H. and Oakley, R. (2009) The movement of Roma from new EU Member States: A mapping survey of A2 and A8 Roma in England. Patterns of settlement and current situation of new Roma communities in England, London: Equality. Gatti, R., Karacsony, S., Anan, K., Ferré, C. and Paz Nieves, C. (2016) Being Fair, Faring Better Promoting Equality of Opportunity for Marginalized Roma, Washington: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. Ginsburg, N. (2015) Migration, in S. Isaacs, D. Blundell, A. Foley, N. Ginsburg, B. McDonough, D. Silverstone and T. Young (eds) Social Problems in the UK: An Introduction, London: Routledge, 92-116. Greene, M. J. (2014) On the Inside Looking In: Methodological Insights and Challenges in Conducting Qualitative Insider Research, The Qualitative Report, 19(29): 1-13. Griggs, J. and Evans, M. (2010) Sanctions within conditional benefit systems: A review of evidence, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Harris, N. (2016) Demagnetisation of Social Security and Health Care for Migrants to the UK, European Journal of Social Security, 18(2): 130-63. Harris, N. (2018) Welfare rights, austerity and the decision to leave the EU: influences on UK social security law, Journal of Social Security Law, 25(1), 1-33. Hawkins, O. (2016) Migration Statistics. BRIEFING PAPER Number SN06077, 26 May 2016, London: House of Commons. Heindlmaier, A. and Blauberger, M. (2017) Enter at your own risk: free movement of EU citizens in practice, West European Politics. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402382.2017.1294383

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Hillygus, S., Nie, N., Prewitt, K. and Pals, H. (2006) The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. HM Treasury/DWP (2014) Further curbs to migrant access to benefits announced, News Story, 8 April 2014. https://www.gov. uk/government/news/further-curbs-to-migrant-access-to-benefitsannounced Horton, M. and Grayson, J. (2008) Roma New Migrants: Local Research in the UK and European Contexts, A Conference Report of Roma New Migrants: A Research and Information Day. http://www. redtoothcreativesolutions.com/aded/docs/Roma_Conference_ Report.pdf Johnsen, S. (2016) First Wave Findings: Lone Parents, Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change, York: The University of York. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2016/05/WelCond-findings-lone-parents-May16.pdf Kennedy, S. (2014) People from abroad: what benefits can they claim?, House of Commons Library Standard Note SN/SP/6847, London: House of Commons. Kóczé, A. (2014) Roma MATRIX Country Report: Hungary, Salford/ York: University of Salford/University of York. Kóczé, A. (2018) Race, migration and neoliberalism: distorted notions of Romani migration in European public discourses, Social Identities, 24(4), 459-73. Koltai, L. (2012) Work instead of social benefit? Public works in Hungary, Mutual Learning Programme: Peer Country Comments Paper – Hungary, Spring Peer Reviews. http://ec.europa.eu/social/ BlobServlet?docId=10515& Kovats, M. (2001) Problems of Intellectual and Political Accountability in Respect of Emerging European Roma Policy, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE), 1/2001: 1-10. Lajčáková J. (2014) Roma MATRIX Country Report: Slovakia, Salford/ York: University of Salford/University of York. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Blackwell/Polity Press. Lødemel, I. and Trickey, H. (2001) An offer you can’t refuse: workfare in international perspective, Bristol: Policy Press. Martin, P., Scullion, L. and Brown, P. (2017) ‘We don’t rely on benefits’: challenging mainstream narratives towards Roma migrants in the UK, Social Policy Review 29, 199-217.

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Matras, Y. (2013) Scholarship and the Politics of Romani Identity: Strategic and Conceptual Issues, RomIdent Working Papers No. 1, University of Manchester. http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/ virtuallibrary/librarydb/web/files/pdfs/354/Paper1.pdf McGarry, A. (2013) Romaphobia: the last acceptable form of racism, London: Zed Books. Mead, L. (2001) Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship, New York: Free Press. Molnár, Á ., Ádám, B., Antova, T., Bosak, L., Dimitrov, P., Mileva, H., Pekarcikova, J., Zurlyte, I., Gulis, G., Ádány, R. and Kósa, K. (2011) Health impact assessment of Roma housing policies in Central and Eastern Europe: a comparative analysis, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 32(1): 7-14. Morris, M. (2016) Roma communities and Brexit: Integrating and empowering Roma communities in the UK, London: IPPR. Muhič Dizdarevič, S. (2014) Roma MATRIX Country Report: Czech Republic, Salford/York: University of Salford/University of York. O’Brien, C. (2015) The pillory, the precipice and the slippery slope: the profound effect of the UK’s legal reform programme targeting EU migrants, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 37(1): 111-36. Oakley, M. (2014) Independent review of the operation of Jobseeker’s Allowance sanctions validated by the Jobseekers Act 2013, London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Okely, J. (2014) Recycled (mis)representations: Gypsies, Travellers or Roma treated as objects, rarely subjects, People, Place and Policy, 8(1): 65-85. O’Nions, H. (2010) Different and unequal: the educational segregation of Roma pupils in Europe, Intercultural Education, 21(1): 1-13. Parker, O. and López Catalán, O. (2014) Free Movement for Whom, Where, When? Roma EU Citizens in France and Spain, International Political Sociology, 8(4): 379-95. Paterson, L., Simpson, L., Barrie, L. and Perinova, J. (2011) Unequal and Unlawful Treatment. Barriers Faced by the Roma Community in Govanhill when Accessing Benefit and the Implications of Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, Glasgow: Oxfam and Govanhill Law Centre. Patrick, R. (2017) For whose benefits? The everyday realities of welfare reform, Bristol: Policy Press. Pemberton, S. and Scullion, L. (2013) The policies and politics of managed migration: Exploring mature labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe into the UK, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39(3): 443-61.

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Phillips, D. (2010) Minority ethnic segregation, integration and citizenship: a European perspective, Journal of Ethnic and Minority Studies, 36(2): 209-25. Poole, L. (2010) National Action Plans for Social Inclusion and A8 migrants: The case of the Roma in Scotland, Critical Social Policy, 30(2): 245-66. Porter, A. (2011) Learn English to get a job or lose benefits, says Cameron, The Telegraph, 15 September 2011. www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/politics/david-cameron/8761311/Learn-English-to-get-a-jobor-lose-benefits-says-Cameron.html Richardson, J. (2014) Roma in the News: an examination of media and political discourse and what needs to change, People, Place and Policy, 8(1): 51-64. Ringold, D., Orenstein, M. A. and Wilkens, E. (2005) Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle, Washington DC: The World Bank. Rutter, J. (2015) Moving up and getting on: Migration, integration and social cohesion in the UK, Bristol: Policy Press. Sales, R. (2002) The deserving and the undeserving? Refugees, asylum seekers and welfare in Britain, Critical Social Policy, 22(3): 456-78. Scullion, L. and Morris, G. (2009) A study of migrant workers in Peterborough, Salford: University of Salford. Scullion, L., Brown, P. and Dwyer, P. (2014) “You cannot consider it a job because it just gives us food for a day”: Roma, paid work and unemployment, Paper presented to the Social Policy Association Symposium on Roma Integration in the European Union, University of Sheffield, 15 July 2014. Shutes, I. (2014) Migration, Welfare and Citizenship, in B. Anderson and M. Michael (eds) Migration: A COMPAS Anthology, Oxford: The ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), 49-50. Sigona, N. and Trehan, N. (2009) Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe. Poverty, Ethnic Mobilisation, and the Neoliberal Order, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Škobla, D. and Filčák, R. (2016) Infrastructure in Marginalised Roma Settlements: Towards a Typology of Unequal Outcomes of EU Funded Projects, Sociológia, 48(6): 551-71. Soros Foundation (2012) Roma Inclusion in Romania: Policies, Institutions and Examples, Bucharest: Soros Foundation Romania. Stevens, D. (2003) The Migration of the Romanian Roma to the UK: A Contextual Study, European Journal of Migration and Law, 5(4): 439-61.

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Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions Emily Ball

Introduction While conditionality has been a facet of the UK welfare state since its birth, academic and policy literature has highlighted that there has been increasing conditionality in the design, referral criteria and delivery of welfare support services, particularly in the last two decades (Watts et al, 2014; Ball et al, 2016). Conditionality can be defined as a contractual relationship based on ideas of social responsibility, where the citizen receives social assistance from the state, which is reciprocated by practices of positive behaviour change by the citizen (Dwyer, 2004). The ‘terms’ of conditionality are therefore inherently behaviour-based. Individuals have access to their social rights only if certain (governmentally defined) desirable behaviours are performed. This is often linked to ideas of the neoliberal worker-citizen, where individuals must demonstrate their independence from the state through jobseeking behaviours (Gray, 2014). Conditionality is not limited to social security benefits only, but is also applicable in other areas of national and local social policy, including parenting, housing and education. For example, in the context of housing, the tenant must adhere to certain tenancy conditions, including not committing anti-social behaviour, in order to maintain tenure. Both long-standing and new behaviour-based expectations that are placed on families accessing certain benefits and public services are not always fully understood or easily adopted by families themselves. Consequently, vulnerable families continue to garner the attention of services, due to frequently facing periods of crisis and, more recently, increasingly finding their benefits being sanctioned, as they are unable to meet the required behavioural expectations. In turn, this has created ongoing demands by politicians for more intensive and enforcement-

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based approaches to address unacceptable behaviour, including those that ‘grip’ the whole family and their problems before long-term effects of poor behaviour manifest themselves (CLG, 2012). The development of Intensive Intervention Projects and the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) – programmes rolled out nationally to work intensively with families to correct problematic behaviour – established during New Labour and the Coalition governments respectively, are examples of this approach to dealing with ‘problem families’. They are the focus of this chapter. Such programmes aim to change the anti-social behaviour, parenting practices and general functioning of vulnerable families through an assertive approach of support and sanctioning (Nixon et al, 2006). Packages of support are delivered by a keyworker, who, using creative social work practice, works with the whole family and coordinates support for positive behaviour change in families with complex emotional and practical needs (Batty and Flint, 2012). Government claims, almost from the outset, that the programme framework was successful in turning families round led to subsequent funds being allocated to their roll-out (Crossley, 2015). However, the effectiveness and ethicality of this one worker/one family framework has caused concern among academics and practitioners, particularly regarding how government rhetoric has framed understandings of social exclusion (and, crucially, how to tackle it), without necessarily having rigorous evidence to back up policy makers’ claims and solutions (Casey, 2012; Hayden and Jenkins, 2014). Critics have argued that individualising family behaviour, and apportioning blame to individual pathology rather than structural factors, encouraged successive UK governments to overestimate the success of ‘problem family’ policy interventions, while simultaneously marginalising the impact of issues such as mental health and learning difficulties, which could prevent behaviour change in families and put more pressure on already vulnerable families (Garrett, 2007; Gregg, 2010). However, some authors have argued that mandatory support provided by intensive intervention projects is meaningful for families and offers increased resources, which can create a situation where families become motivated to change their behaviour (Bannister et al, 2007; Nixon et al, 2010). This chapter explores what is meant by ‘behaviour change’, by considering the success of change in families subject to intensive interventions. Drawing on new empirical research carried out in a northern city in England, this chapter argues that an implication of overestimating the success of interventions is that research covers only

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engagement and non-engagement of families. It does not consider families who are subject to conditionality where change is more complex – for example in families who cannot change, who resist change or who do not make progress or cannot maintain behaviour change. In reality, initial and sustained behaviour change may be unachievable for some families subject to interventions. In fact, keyworkers recognise that families cannot achieve politically defined goals or sustain outcomes when families require immediate practical help. Therefore, this chapter considers the policy implications of non-behaviour change, by exploring the concept of ‘good enough’ change, defined by practitioners as enabling enough progress for families to function from day to day without equating to transformative behaviour change. This is because working with families is not always about behaviour change or changing families, but can be about solving immediate problems and meeting basic needs.

Policy context: defining families as a problem Constructing certain types of families as problematic to society is not new. Families who are seen to cause problems to society and do not conform to wider normative values and lifestyles have always been negatively labelled. Welshman (2017) has coherently outlined a range of administrative labels applied to families since the 1940s that appear to reflect similar ‘problematic’ characteristics. These include large families, household squalor, lack of parental discipline, parental unemployment and no household routine (Taylor and Rogaly, 2007). More recent definitions describe these problem families as ‘antisocial’, in that families intentionally socially exclude themselves from accepted normative values (RTF, 2006). Another term used to describe such families is ‘troubled’, that is families who trigger high costs to the public purse, claim benefits, have children out of school, potentially suffer from mental health problems and exhibit criminal and/or anti-social behaviour (CLG, 2012). It is suggested that these families choose not to take advantage of the opportunities available to them to potentially become socially mobile and to benefit from neoliberal society (Gray, 2014). The long-standing presence of a minority of families who cause problems to society – whether they are labelled anti-social, a problem or troubled – has led certain politicians to attach causation to the omnipotence of families, particularly favouring discourses of cycles of poverty, where poverty is constructed as (the

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outcome of) a ‘culture’ of poor behaviour passed down over the generations (Welshman, 2017). A clear pattern that determines whether families are labelled discursively over time is their relationship with the welfare state, with families who claim public assistance viewed both politically and culturally as deficient in morals, integrity and values. While the welfare state is a long-standing manifestation of the social contract for all citizens, which allows universal access to education, health and pensions, the image of the welfare state (particularly reflected by the media and by politicians who support the retrenchment of the welfare state) is often understood to be primarily about out-of-work benefits. As a result, benefit claimants are often pauperised and stigmatised (Arthur, 2015). While working-class prejudice and class divisions exist in general, some have argued that the ‘underclass’ is a section of the working class who fail to fulfil their obligations to society, while taking advantage of their right to welfare (see, for example, Mead, 1982; Murray, 1984). These discourses are associated with laziness, deviousness, dependency, undeservingness and lack of aspiration (TepeBelfrage and Montgomerie, 2016). For such advocates of the underclass discourse, the disadvantages faced by families with problems is often attributed to individual behaviour, irresponsibility and making poor choices. These behaviours are reinforced by the generosity of the state, which is believed to encourage dependency and to discourage work norms. Although it is more generally acknowledged that poverty does not occur in a vacuum, and that social and environmental factors are significant, advocates of the underclass thesis see flawed individual behaviour as the cause of and, and behaviour-based policies as the solution to, the existence of a so-called underclass. Such beliefs are routinely accompanied by devaluation of wider systemic factors and the presumption that families subject to family intervention programmes have agency in line with the general population. Furthermore, events such as the 2011 UK urban riots that occurred in several urban areas in England, served as a political opportunity for the ‘scroungers’ versus ‘skivers’ debate to re-emerge, justifying certain punitive policies within welfare reform to target and get tough on the behaviour of those who, in reality, are likely to experience social exclusion and marginalisation (Arthur, 2015; Jensen and Tyler, 2015). As can be seen in the report by Louise Casey, Director General of the Troubled Families Programme in 2012, the presence of many problems is seen as due to a long-standing culture of worklessness within

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certain families (Casey, 2012). This has led some critics of recent social policy developments to argue that it is perhaps the cycle of ineffective economic policy over time that is the problem, rather than individual irresponsibility (Lambert, 2016). Consequently, we see a roundabout of new reconfigurations of administrative labels of families with critiques of the previous government’s ineffective handling of the issues, only for the current government to ‘rediscover’ problem families/poverty, and re-frame them in discursive ways (Ball et al, 2016). As a result, the New Labour Governments, the Coalition Government and the current Conservative administration have all set out to tackle the ‘lack of respect’ and ‘the slow motion moral collapse’ that the UK was experiencing by those who were dependent on the state, disrespected authority and behaved in offensive and uncivil ways (RTF, 2006; Cameron, 2011). These administrations asserted that problem families make rational choices and deliberately decide to behave in certain ways that disrupt wider social cohesion. Problem families were, once again, deemed to require government intervention in order to alleviate problems in the private realm that were becoming issues in the public sphere. The solutions were behaviour-based, through a ‘tough love’ approach. Governments believed that to deal fully with problem families, they and their problems would need to be intensively ‘gripped’ and, ultimately, forced to change their behaviour. The rationale for this policy approach was based on a critique of an overgenerous and unconditional welfare state that did not require any meaningful reciprocation from the claimant and was thought to undermine the values of individual responsibility embedded in paid employment (Gray, 2014). A common feature of intervention policy was to retrain and reeducate families, often through the values of hard work, practical support and advice, underpinned by enforcement-based mechanisms. For example, during New Labour’s terms in office, a whole range of mechanisms (including Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, Parenting Contracts, Acceptable Behaviour Orders and Intensive Intervention Projects) were rolled out. These marked a shift away from reactive and short-term services to early intervention and prevention approaches through three tiers of: universal provision; specialist and preventative services; and corrective interventions (Millie, 2009; Hayden and Jenkins, 2014). This rationale was to insure against and manage the potential risk of adolescents experiencing poor outcomes in the future. Intensive interventions were particularly significant, as there was an increased impetus on the household as a site for social reproduction and resocialisation (Flint, 2012).

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The design and rationale of intensive intervention projects Recently, there has been a re-emergence of the caseworker approach that gained traction in the 1940s by family service units (Starkey, 2002). Designated caseworkers or keyworkers enter the households of the referred families and work assertively and holistically with members of the household to advocate on behalf of the families and to resolve problematic behaviour. In contemporary forms of intensive interventions, this model focuses on encouraging families to manage their problems and their lifestyle, and to learn new skills in order to deal with crises, drawing on a combined practical, educative and therapeutic approach to achieving family change (Thoburn, 2015). Delivered by the local authority and the voluntary sector, this model has been also been labelled a ‘triple track’ approach of early intervention, non-negotiable support and enforcement, with support variously delivered in the family home, in dispersed tenancies or 24 hours a day in a core unit (Ball et al, 2016). The first phase of support is about addressing the urgent needs of families and putting practical routines in place. Subsequent phases include referrals to specialist support services (Nixon et al, 2010). While similar types of pastoral support from the 1940s are still offered today, additional support focuses on substance abuse, mental health treatment, applying for social security benefits/signposting to other services, and assistance with unemployment or children not in education (Jones et al, 2015). In terms of service management and delivery, the keyworker model also improves the joining up of services, creates comprehensive packages of support and ensures consistent delivery of support by the same person/organisation. The key skills that the worker must have include listening, empathy, determination and good communication skills (Nixon et al, 2006). Originally, family service units were voluntary. However, contemporary projects can be compulsory or can require voluntary consent. There may be disengagement or enforcement action, if families do not cooperate with keyworkers on their support plans. Therefore it is important to note that conditionality and the requirement for behaviour change are implicit in these programmes. The Troubled Families Programme Under the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) (2012 to the present), the keyworker model still forms the core model of delivery to families. However, the big difference is that support programmes have become

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marketised by the Payment by Results programme (CLG, 2012). Some argue that this has incentivised organisations delivering support to families to claim payments without fully addressing the needs of families (Crossley, 2015). The types of families who were referred to both family intervention programmes and TFP projects were often large, working-class families with a long history of service intervention. There were often issues with low levels of education and skills, anti-social behaviour, substance misuse, parenting issues, poverty and debt, mental health, disability, worklessness and domestic violence (Jones et al, 2006; Flint et al, 2011; Dixon et al, 2010; Bewley et al, 2016). The results of intensive interventions during the New Labour period are largely positive: projects can significantly challenge anti-social behaviour, reduce social exclusion and isolation, and lower the risk of homelessness and children entering into care, which many of the families referred to projects were facing (Nixon et al, 2006; Local Government Leadership and City of Westminster, 2010). However, there appeared to be less success in dealing with mental health problems and sustaining any positive changes in behaviour over time (Pawson et al, 2009; Lloyd et al, 2011). Furthermore, qualitative research documented that families in general liked their keyworkers and valued the support that they received, and felt more competent and better equipped in anger management and parenting techniques (Nixon et al, 2006). However, results of the national evaluation of the TFP showed less success, with Bewley et al (2016: 142) stating: ‘We were unable to find consistent evidence that the Troubled Families programme had any systematic or significant impact. The vast majority of impact estimates were statistically insignificant, with a very small number of positive or negative results.’ Further issues debated in the intensive intervention literature centre on concerns surrounding the ethicality of intensive family intervention programmes. In particular, discourses of domination and surveillance over families suggest that such progammes may be a way of punishing poor people based on middle-class prejudice (Garrett, 2007). Concerns are particularly related to the ‘core unit’ (an on-site residential unit supervised by project staff 24 hours a day in order to deliver a high level of intensive support to families), a feature that is often integrated into projects that take a punishing and deficit-based approach. Authors are concerned that families are contained in a surveillance-based and punitive environment to force them to change their behaviour in line with normative frames of reference, and to shamefully reflect on and psychoanalyse their past, without addressing the structural or root causes of problems or improving their lives.

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Furthermore, there are concerns that achieving behaviour change relies too heavily on the ability of key workers to be likeable and have people skills, in addition to speculation as to whether support plans are really co-produced by keyworkers and families or whether professional practice overshadows families’ own life experiences (Morris, 2013). Consequently, there are concerns that families are referred for the wrong reasons (for example mental health and learning difficulties) rather than for anti-social behaviour – and that their voices are missing in how interventions are constructed. Critics argue that the problems that families face are not due to poor lifestyle choices, but an effect of broader policy, which individualises social marginalisation (Gregg, 2010). However, supporters have argued that while there are both pastoral and disciplinary elements to projects, concentration on the punitive elements of interventions neglects the positive elements of intensive interventions, including empowerment and socially inclusive and holistic approaches to working with families, particularly where families have increased opportunities to access a range of services (Bannister et al, 2007; De Verteuil, 2014). Additionally, supporters have responded to the critics by arguing that any positives of intensive interventions tend to be reconfigured as ‘draconian’ by critics, despite the fact that such projects ‘indicated a way forward’ in terms of reducing anti-social behaviour and homelessness, improving parenting, and decreasing costs to local authority services (Jones et al, 2015: 125). Having set out how problem families have been conceptualised in UK policy, alongside a consideration of key literature in respect of the effectiveness of family intervention policies, the chapter now moves on to consider the extent and types of behaviour change that such interventions may facilitate. It does this by presenting analysis of new empirical data generated in fieldwork undertaken for a doctoral study. Before considering the varied impacts evidenced by the study, a short methods note is required.

Research outline and methodological approach The families who took part in the research had been referred for support under the case study local authority’s TFP. Families were recruited via practitioners who were working with families under the TFP framework from the public, private and third sectors. As the focus of this chapter is on how practitioners negotiate policy expectations surrounding successful behaviour change, the research findings only present data from practitioners.

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The linked aims of the research project that informs this chapter were to: • identify the service providers that families were engaged with, establish what support had been delivered and how the circumstances of families may or may not have changed as a result; • understand how successful behaviour change was conceptualised by practitioners; • explore the anticipated and actual outcomes achieved by practitioners working with families. The study considered the anticipated outcomes of behaviour change in national and local policy, and whether these were comparable to the realities of behaviour change in families on the ground. The research utilised a longitudinal qualitative approach, with data collection taking place between January 2015 and January 2016. The case study site was a local authority in a northern city in England. This city had its own established multi-agency support team model and a three-tiered service approach, which was rolled out across the local authority. Interviews were undertaken with 18 key informants and frontline practitioners within the social care, housing and voluntary sector, who were both contracted by the local authority to deliver Troubled Families services, and independent of the local authority. Additionally, ten families were observed for periods of between one and seven months in order to capture the micro-processes of behaviour change, including points of crisis, success and slippage. Participant observation was also carried out during a 13-week parenting course, with five parents being interviewed at the end of the course.

Defining behaviour change in family intervention policy Examples of behaviour change have been discussed in many studies evaluating intensive family interventions (for example Jones et al, 2006; Nixon et al, 2006; Dixon et al, 2010; Lloyd et al, 2011), but rarely with any kind of conceptualisation of behaviour change outcomes. This makes analysing behaviour change progression in families particularly difficult. However, Batty and Flint (2012) have developed a typology of behaviour change outcomes that can be framed in terms of family journeys ranging from crisis management to stabilising outcomes to transformative change (see Figure 1).

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As Figure 1 illustrates, behaviour change can be allocated to three different categories: • The first category is crisis management. This is where families often enter projects at their most ‘chaotic’, when problems have accumulated to a point where families are unable to manage certain aspects of daily life. • The second stage of behaviour change can be labelled as ‘stabilising’ outcomes. This is about maintaining initial change and limiting any continuing problems. • Finally, transformative change is achieved, both in terms of soft outcomes and hard outcomes (as detailed in Figure 1). When transformative change occurs, problems such as anti-social behaviour and crime are reduced, and the need for formal actions such as eviction or procedures to instigate the removal of children from parents and place them in public care is prevented. Families experience increases in soft outcomes, such as self-esteem, general wellbeing, feelings of being in control and greater perception of improved family cohesion. Existing literature suggests that keyworkers support families to reach behaviour change outcomes via goal-setting and change-based approaches, including motivational interviewing, social learning theory and the keyworker approach. (For a deeper discussion of these approaches, see Thoburn et al, 2013; Sen, 2016.) These techniques draw on strengths-based approaches and skills-based pathways. However, while the operational aspects of the keyworker role are already established, what are not clear in much existing research are the micro-processes of how families achieve these outcomes and what factors influenced and/or prevented change. Successful behaviour change was evidenced in the research, for example in three families where support with budgeting and finance and signposting to medical and housing services enabled a range of problems to be addressed and behaviour change to be achieved. This included the forming of better relationships with services, families no longer breaching their tenancy conditions and improved family functioning. Families perceived that they experienced less family conflict and had increased the quality time they spent together, and adults felt more in control of parenting their children. However, it was more common that achieving behaviour change in families was much more complex, and also more rudimentary in practice, when compared to expectations set out in local and national

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Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions Figure 1: Typology of outcomes in family intervention policies

Transformative

Achieving change: ‘Hard’ outcomes: Improved education (attendance and attainment) Entry to training or employment Reduction or cessation of risky behaviour (drugs, alcohol, sexual, peer groups) Reduction or cessation of antisocial or criminal behaviour Prevention of entry to criminal justice system Prevention of eviction or children being taken into care ‘Soft’ outcomes: Improved self-confidence and self-esteem Improved mental and physical health Improved domestic environment and dynamics Improved social and personal skills Raised aspirations

Stabilising

Improving stability: Maintaining domestic environment Maintaining family relatinships and dynamics Maintaining family relationships with agencies and services Managing relationships with peer groups and neighbours Ensuring attendance at school and keeping of appointments Ensuring attendance at support service sessions Limiting of drug and alcohol misuse Limiting of risky sexual behaviour

Crisis management

Reducing immediate risk or harm and responding to trauma: Relationship breakdown Offending incidents Conflict with neighbours or peers Increased use of drugs/alcohol Ill health (mental and physical) Emotional breakdown or fragility Pregnancy or risky sexual behaviour Imminent risks of enforcement action, sanction or withdrawal of services Escalating child protection or domestic violence risks or incidents

Source: Batty and Flint, 2012: 354

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policy. While time spent in relation to both the frequency and duration of support could be a factor affecting behaviour (interventions could involve a small number of house visits each week or support for up to two years), the significant vulnerabilities that families faced were also important with regard to behaviour change. This is not to say that families were unaware of the issues they faced, or could not understand the intervention (although this could be the case on some occasions); however, the duration and depth of problems could create barriers to change. The three key behavioural outcomes of family intervention projects as evidenced by the study, including the absence of behaviour change, are now discussed. All the names of the participants have been anonymised and replaced with pseudonyms.

No behaviour change While much research acknowledges that families do not always engage with services, and this can culminate in disengagement and/ or enforcement actions (see, for example, Nixon et al, 2006; Pawson et al, 2009; Dixon et al, 2010), there is less of a focus on families who are compliant but cannot change their behaviour. It was clear that some respondents struggled to achieve and maintain change and stability. Consequently, the ability of families to function often required the help of services (even when the families were not intentionally involved in anti-social behaviour). For example Carla (service user, community regeneration charity), who had had a long history of service intervention and agency help, found it very difficult to manage her problems independently, which often culminated in periodic crises. Carla’s keyworker stated: ‘The trouble is before I was involved, [homelessness charity] were involved for six months and prior to that she had [another organisation] involved, she has never not had someone there doing things for her, picking up the pieces when she’s forgotten, or failed to do things herself, and it is difficult because I have been told by [housing association] I am not to work with her, I have no one to refer her on to, cos she doesn’t really fit into anybody’s criteria, it is just the level of support she needs ... it is frustrating when you don’t see any progress cos all you want is for someone’s life to improve, even if it is just small measures and every time you got a step forward it wasn’t long before you were going

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straight back to square one again.’ (Keyworker, community regeneration charity) Carla suffered from a range of mental health problems that had led her to engage in avoidance behaviours and frequently to get into a crisis. On one occasion, Carla had gone away to her home town for a number of weeks. As a result, she had run out of medication and had been sanctioned by Jobcentre Plus for missing an appointment. Carla and her son lived off biscuits and sandwich paste, while the situation was managed by the keyworker, both administratively and via foodbank vouchers. Carla’s keyworker argued that this scenario could have been managed if Carla had taken action beforehand. Additionally, the keyworker also stated that supporting Carla was not necessarily about dealing with anti-social behaviour, but sustaining her basic needs in her home, which often had to be done informally and unpaid by the keyworker, as the nature of the programme’s referral criteria, delivery and funding constraints mean that these services are unavailable. Families who were aware that they found it difficult to manage without help from services could feel uneasy about not having access to support and wanted to keep a level of service engagement in their lives. This culminated in a lot of additional informal support being delivered to certain families, but this had led to attachment issues in some cases. Keyworkers were happy to allow this, in order to stop families falling into crisis: ‘I’m not going to see them every week, we’re not in crisis at this moment in time, we’ve got some issues going off but we’re not in crisis and I’d much rather deal with the issues than deal with crisis. So for the sake of going and visiting once every few weeks cos he’s got a letter that he doesn’t understand and me going it just wants binning or make a quick phone call, it’s done, no crisis. The last thing I want is for him not to deal with it and just hide it cos then what? He’ll face it but then don’t remember what’s been said, gets in a flap, misunderstands what’s being said so he might as well ignore it.’ (Manager and keyworker, community regeneration charity) After five years of both formal and informal support, the keyworker for the family in the aforementioned quote stated that while there had been no improvement for the family, significantly the support had prevented the situation from deteriorating further. The keyworker

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stated that the family will always have chaotic dynamics, which support may not necessarily be able to change, but support was important in order to stop cycles of crisis. This creates a situation where practitioners have to agree that the service can do no more for the family (unless it is informally continued), as the family cannot change and may create an overattachment to services, but prevents further enforcement action from happening, such as child removal. As long-term support is not necessarily funded in perpetuity, practitioners were having to informally manage families by working with them, or by referring them to services that had less stringent referral criteria or had other resources available to prevent families from falling into crisis.

Relative behaviour change While relative behaviour change may not be quantifiable in terms of policy expectations, it is significant progress in terms of family capabilities. Families can exhibit varied steps in behaviour change, such as engaging with services, attending appointments, opening letters, taking down phone messages or redecorating their home, and so on. However, when such change occurs, it represents a significant achievement for the family, rather than in relation to broader policy outcomes: ‘You can’t really track progress cos they are really little steps a lot of them, it only makes sense to the person who works with that person, I have got someone who is 21 now if you are going to judge it objectively, she has not made any sort of headway but for her as a person it is a lot and it is going to be a long hard slog, so sometimes I think you have to get your point across that things are changing.’ (Keyworker, housing association) This type of progress that is pertinent to the family and the family’s wellbeing was labelled by practitioners as ‘distance travelled’ (see Flint et al, 2011) – or ‘good enough’ progress in terms of behaviour change. This was a balance between the limitations of keyworker practice, the family’s capabilities, and local and national policy aspirations. This was an informal measurement tool of family progress. This is borrowed from the notion of good enough parenting (Boddy et al, 2011), where keyworker decisions are informed by the balance between what is seen as ‘successful’ behaviour change as set out in policy and what families

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could realistically achieve. Deciding what was ‘good enough’ for each family was informally and widely adopted into professional practice across the projects. For example: ‘This moment in time I have minimal concerns because their money issues are better than I thought they would be at this point, they are managing better than I thought and I feel we have taken them as far as they are capable of going at this point, so although there are things that could be better, we are not going to be able to take them any further at this point, they might be able to make improvements in the future but right now they are at their capacity to change.’ (Keyworker, family intervention project) The idea of ‘good enough’ progress was used as a discretionary measure to sign off family cases, or to rehouse families, not because they were ‘fully’ successful in changing their behaviour, but because the family had achieved ‘distance travelled’ that was significant for the family and for the keyworker, and had also met certain policy requirements. Furthermore, one family who took part in the research were still being put forward for rehousing, although there remained issues with parenting, child welfare, health and addiction that had not been amended during the intervention. However, the family’s progress was deemed ‘good enough’ by frontline practitioners, because they had demonstrated a capacity to change, by maintaining paying rent and by cooperating with services.

Temporary behaviour change It could be argued that the policy term ‘turned round’ suggests permanent and transformative change in family behaviour. However, analysis indicates that families could often change their behaviours and/ or their routine successfully, but only temporarily. After a period of time, both during the intervention and post-disengagement, families could return to past habits and behaviours after a period of prior sustained behaviour change. It must be noted that this form of behaviour change would often occur because services were removed, either because the intervention had ended or funding had ceased. This was the case in one family, where to manage the son’s mental health problems, particularly his anxiety, he could only engage with education via home education and specialist teaching units for children with anxiety. However, when these

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services were removed (due to funding constraints), he was unable to cope with, and to engage in, mainstream education, and his mental health deteriorated as well as his access to education. It was evident that practitioners viewed sustaining behaviour change as a greater issue than changing behaviour itself. Keyworkers acknowledged that, in some cases, despite being ‘capable’, families would not be able to sustain success after interventions had finished: ‘Turned round had this feeling of a point in time when a family suddenly flips, sustained success is saying we want to know that that turnaround point is maintained long term, I agree with that, I think we should, cos some families will require top-ups, they may have a different crisis, so it’s now how we support them all with the exit plan and say if you want to maintain the progress you’ve made these are things you need to keep doing.’ (TFP service manager, local authority) Patterns of temporary behaviour change were common in Craig and Annie’s family, for example. The family (service users in the family intervention project) had worked with social services on several occasions. Each time they would successfully meet the behaviour change requirements of the intervention. These interventions were based largely on enhancing Craig and Annie’s ability to parent their children and ensure that the living environment was hygienic. However, the family’s case was continually being reopened, due to new reports made by the children’s school and by the family’s neighbours, registering concerns about the decline in the children’s welfare. These incidents included severe bruising found on two of the children, sexualised behaviour displayed by one of the children, publicly smacking and aggressive behaviour directed towards the children by Craig, cumulative school absenteeism by the eldest son, and the unsanitary state of the children’s living environment: ‘What has always been said about Annie and Craig is that they do not maintain the interventions what they learn, they are quite capable of carrying them out but they do not maintain and it always goes back, and this is why they seem to get social care back all the time, what I have said to Annie and Craig is that this time we are aiming to maintain things. I have pointed out to the family that in the past the house has been very very dirty even though they do

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do the cleaning, this is the time to try and keep on top of it and with bedtimes … you are constantly challenging, and challenging and challenging and it becomes draining.’ (Keyworker, Family Intervention Project) The keyworker attributed Annie and Craig’s inability to maintain behaviour change as laziness, as the keyworker believed that Annie and Craig had previously demonstrated the skills to be independent and in control of their children’s behaviour management. However, over time, Annie and Craig would lose interest and momentum in maintaining their household routine and would eventually relax their parenting standards, until re-involvement of services became necessary. The keyworker suspected that Annie and Craig’s lenient parenting was encouraged by their eldest child, who would become increasingly defiant until he got his own way. However, Annie and Craig’s failure to enforce boundaries also affected their four younger children. Their inconsistent bedtime routine culminated in the children staying up late each night, and the noise would disturb the next door neighbours and end in subsequent complaints to the local authority. As the keyworker outlined in the previous quote, the challenge for her was not teaching Annie and Craig new skills, it was about getting them to maintain a structured and consistent routine. Evidence of support used to reinforce household routine was evident in the family home in the form of weekly cleaning rotas, daily routine timelines for the children (for example dinner at 6pm, bath at 7pm, bed at 8pm) and behaviour charts. Additional practitioner perspectives on why change could have a temporary lifespan centred on new and unexpected challenges that families faced. During interventions, families both independently and with support from the keyworker were able to resolve the situation. However, the skills they learnt from one problem were not always transferred to new crises or different problematic scenarios. This put several of the families at a high risk of regressing into avoidance behaviour. The temporary and fragmented nature of change may explain the cyclical nature of families who were repeatedly re-referred for support. Practitioners were advocates of providing long-term support for this reason: ‘We are taking families that are really vulnerable, some that are really damaged, we are trying to give you the skills to equip them for life, we are doing it over two years and we are still trying to equip them for life that is really hard

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and in short term work you go, let’s do a tiny bit here and they are expecting it to last for how long and you can’t.’ (Keyworker, family intervention project) Practitioners appeared implicitly to reject the idea of families being ‘turned round’ and were willing to accept that there were limits to the impacts of support. Despite the setbacks that families may experience in overcoming new challenges, it was often agreed among practitioners that if families did not sustain behaviour change, and required further support in the future, they would not require the extent of social care interventions they needed at the beginning of the current intervention.

The relationship between behaviour change, severe mental health problems and unmet basic needs Behaviour change was not regarded as linear or as straightforward as lives being transformed by interventions from practitioners. This was also clear working with families over a number of months, where behavioural journeys were complicated. In fact, what counts as ‘success’ by practitioners was nuanced and was very much informed by the capabilities of families. This culminated in practitioners having to negotiate their own informal measures of success against the Payment by Results system, as well as trying to stop families falling into crises. As already discussed, ideas of what was considered to be ‘successful’ behaviour change were reconceptualised by practitioners as ‘good enough’, based on the ‘distance travelled’ by particular families. There was also evidence that practitioners used ‘creaming’ and ‘parking’, a strategy used by agency staff to work with clients who have the capacity to enter the workplace quickly (‘creaming’), or warehouse those who are much further from the labour market (‘parking’) (Carter and Whitworth, 2015). This is where practitioners would carry on informally working with families, even if their case had been closed, in addition to closing families’ cases before they were ‘turned round’, as families had done enough in the present but with the expectation that further intervention would be required in the future. As already noted, this was because a large amount of support, particularly at the start of interventions, was about getting families back on their feet, which was insignificant with regard to policy expectations but fundamental in meeting families’ basic needs. The literature (see Nixon et al, 2006) has highlighted that the referral of families to intervention projects because of anti-social behaviour often unveils a range of unaddressed social problems and unmet needs

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within the family, and is symptomatic of wider social exclusion. This was the case where referrals for anti-social behaviour were too narrow with regard to the issues families were facing. However, it was also the case where the referral was an outcome of family problems that were not committed intentionally. This often led to families feeling labelled as anti-social for behaviour that they did not feel they had purposefully or directly committed. Anti-social behaviour that was indirectly committed by families was often due to a lack of skills and unmet basic needs, which had manifested themselves in families being unable to engage in necessary tasks (such as paying rent), living in unsanitary conditions and/or having a poor diet and lifestyle. Consequently, families could frequently find themselves in a period of crisis that would attract the attention of services. For example, as one family intervention project manager noted: ‘We had one family in here not long ago, it wasn’t so much ASB [anti-social behaviour] really, one of the complaints was that the postman had reported to social care the number of flies inside the property, when they’d been round to deliver mail, inside was crawling with flies and it was cos there was rotten food and other substances, so you do get families where that is actually the main issue.’ (Manager, family intervention project) Needs relating to medical conditions, health, nutrition and personal and financial security were present and had not been managed, addressed and/or discovered by families or by services. Having unmet needs and poor skills could be disabling for families. For instance, respondents could find it difficult to get out of bed, go food shopping or cook a meal. This scenario was described by practitioners as a ‘retreat’ from life. As a result, practitioners were not dealing with families who were simply low functioning but managing to get through daily life; they were working with families who had a range of complex issues that had manifested themselves over a long period and had subsequently eradicated any sense of routine. As a result, for practitioners, the pressing matters were not about addressing the wider issues – such as the anti-social behaviour or self-esteem or poor parenting – but were about supporting families to get access to food, medical support, beds and about addressing poor housing conditions. Often, a considerable amount of the allocated support time was spent in encouraging families to address their own basic needs, rather than advancing families beyond

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a basic support level or addressing policy expectations, such as improved employment, education and training outcomes. This ‘retreat’ from everyday life was argued by practitioners to culminate in a range of avoidance behaviours, lack of self-care and multiple periods of crisis. The visibility of such issues was also an indication to practitioners that mental health problems were inextricably linked to these behaviours. In accordance with a large body of the existing intensive interventions literature (for example Pawson et al, 2009; Gregg, 2010), depression was a common form of mental illness experienced by all the families and the parents taking part in the research. This is alongside other diagnosed and suspected personality and mental health disorders, including panic disorders, agoraphobia, anger management problems and suicidal tendencies, in both adults and children. Families who had severe mental health needs were difficult to work with, which is why services would often see the same families re-enter the system. The charity involved in the research complained that often families with mental health problems were ‘offloaded’ onto them, when other support services delivered by the local authority had failed to work. The mental health problems experienced by the families appeared to be long-standing and often informed or exacerbated by a range of traumatic incidents – not only in childhood, but also in adulthood. These traumatic incidents experienced by families included domestic violence, rape, child abuse, child neglect, bullying, bereavement, cancer and the transmission of HIV. While most families had family members who were taking medication for depression (on occasion, each other’s medication), access to wider psychological services was not forthcoming. Families were not always aware of where to access help, were socially isolated, or felt that this situation was ‘normal’. Such services routinely had lengthy waiting lists, and access to help was often for short periods and delivered by untrained staff. Trauma appears to be a concept that is underdeveloped by practitioners and by wider social policy in general. Unaddressed trauma is one of the reasons why behaviour does not change in families, particularly in scenarios where families could not articulate their needs or understand the need to change their behaviour and/or could not access the required support to change their behaviour. It was clear from the research that the families were ‘swamped’ with problems that were influenced by trauma (Shildrick et al, 2016). The reality is that mental health services are increasingly being delivered at a distance, where families are moved on with problems unresolved due to mental health issues. Retraining practitioners to adopt a trauma-informed approach

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might be able to stop families from being re-referred for unchanged behaviour. However, this would require training practitioners to screen families for trauma and to use techniques that will not retraumatise individuals or put them under further pressure. A growing body of critical literature has questioned whether social policy can turn round very ‘damaged’ families as quickly as advocates of the TFP states it has (Gregg, 2010; Tepe-Belfrage and Montgomerie, 2016). This has led Crossley (2015) to argue that the TFP is presented as a perfect social policy, as all local authorities appear to have turned round the allocated number of troubled families that central government expected them to reform. In fact (as the TFP service manager and many of the practitioners in the case study city discussed), the term ‘turned round’ and what constituted successful behaviour change was subjective, ambiguous and could not with certainty be attributed to the TFP itself. However, the system of Payment by Results can incentivise claims of success, particularly at a time when there have been a series of dramatic cutbacks to services. Indeed, several practitioners admitted to having to ‘play the game’, in order to secure central government funding. Nevertheless, there are policy and service implications for families where there is compliance but behaviour change cannot be achieved, despite enforcement and/or multiple service intervention. A pervasive presence of mental health issues among service users questions whether it is ethical that a programme aims to trigger behaviour change, but fails to give adequate consideration to the capacity of service users to change their behaviour, given the severity and often long-standing nature of their mental health needs. In fact, it is more long-term pastoral care that is needed, rather than unrealistic work or family functioning expectations.

Conclusions In considering the micro-processes and the ambiguity of behaviour change and the disconnect between policy and practice, this chapter has shown that while there was some evidence of successful behaviour change, other behavioural outcomes also ensue. These include: an absence of behaviour change (often linked to hyper-vulnerability and attachment issues); relative behaviour change (something that is not necessarily quantifiable in policy terms but pertinent to the family); and also temporary, unsustained behaviour change. The analysis presented suggests that behaviour change was, on occasions, fluid and temporary, but in some circumstances could also

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be transformative and stabilising at the same time. As a result, there was a disconnect between what counted as successful behaviour change in policy and the reality of behaviour change within families. This questions the core ideas underpinning policy, and whether it is possible to ‘grip’ families and their problems and ‘make’ them change their behaviour, particularly when considering the wealth of risk factors that families face. This also invites consideration as to whether families should face measures to make them change their behaviour, when the construction of the problem and the founding premise of interventions are at odds with family needs and realities. The lesson from the study is that behaviour change cannot be guaranteed. Clearly, behaviour change is unsustainable if it is forced. This fundamentally questions the appropriateness and effectiveness of family intervention policies that prioritise sanctioning ‘problem’ families who are unable to comply with the requirements of policy makers to change their behaviour systematically and permanently. Working to support such families to meet their basic needs and to achieve incremental steps along the way is more realistic and beneficial to all concerned. This fundamentally returns to why welfare conditionality – mandatory engagement of families under threat of sanction such as eviction and loss of children to public care – is likely to be unsuccessful. The research evidence stressed that it is a matter of supporting families to address the myriad disadvantages and issues they face, rather than coercing them into change. References Arthur, R. (2015) Troubling times for young people and families with troubles – responding to truancy, rioting and families struggling with adversity, Social & Legal Studies, 24(3): 443-64. Ball, E., Batty, E. and Flint, J. (2016) Intensive Family Intervention and the Problem Figuration of ‘Troubled Families’, Social Policy and Society, 15(2): 263-74. Bannister, J., Hill, M. and Scott, S. (2007) More sinned against than sinbin? The forgetfulness of critical social policy?, Critical Social Policy, 27(4): 557-60. Batty, E. and Flint, J. (2012) Conceptualising the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes of intensive family intervention projects, Social Policy and Society, 11(03): 345-58.

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Pawson, H., Davidson, E., Sosenko, F., Flint, J., Nixon, J., Casey, R. and Sanderson, D. (2009) Evaluation of Intensive Family Support Projects in Scotland, Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Respect Task Force (RTF) (2006) Respect Action Plan, London: Respect Task Force. Sen, R. (2016) Building Relationships in a Cold Climate: A Case Study of Family Engagement within an ‘Edge of Care’ Family Support Service, Social Policy and Society, 15(2): 289-302. Shildrick, T., MacDonald, R. and Furlong, A. (2016) Not single spies but in battalions: a critical, sociological engagement with the idea of so-called ‘Troubled Families’, The Sociological Review, 64(4): 821-36. Starkey, P. (2002) Can the piper call the tune? Innovation and experiment with deprived families in Britain, 1940–1980s: The work of family service units, British Journal of Social Work, 32(5): 573-87. Taylor, B. and Rogaly, B. (2007) ‘Mrs Fairly is a Dirty, Lazy Type’: Unsatisfactory Households and the Problem of Problem Families in Norwich 1942–1963, Twentieth Century British History, 18(4): 429-52. Tepe-Belfrage, D. and Montgomerie, J. (2016) Broken Britain: Postcrisis austerity and the trouble with the troubled families programme, in A.A. Hozic and J. True (eds) Scandalous economics: Gender and the politics of financial crises, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 79-91. Thoburn, J. (2015) The ‘Family Recovery’ Approach to Helping Struggling Families, in J. Davies (ed.) Social work with troubled families: A Critical Introduction, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 74-99. Thoburn, J., Cooper, N., Brandon, M. and Connolly, S. (2013) The place of ‘think family’ approaches in child and family social work: Messages from a process evaluation of an English pathfinder service, Children and Youth Services Review, 35(2): 228-36. Watts, B., Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G. and Watkins, D. (2014) Welfare Sanctions and Conditionality in the UK, York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Welshman, J. (2017) Troubles and the family: changes and continuities since 1943, Social Policy and Society, 16(1): 109-17.

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EIGHT

Editor’s afterword Peter Dwyer

As noted in the introductory chapter of this edited collection, welfare conditionality – which links recipients’ eligibility to collectively provided social security benefits and wider welfare services to compulsory, specified individual responsibilities and behavioural requirements, under threat of sanction for non-compliance – has become a core element of welfare reform in many nations since the mid-1990s. Within a diversity of national and regional settings across the globe, politicians of all hues from across the mainstream political spectrum have been happy to embrace and endorse the mantra of ‘no rights without responsibilities’ (Giddens, 1998). Recalibrating welfare states around a principle of behavioural conditionality, which emphasises a particular individualised notion of reciprocity that relegates and denies more collectivised claims to welfare rights variously based on need, universalistic entitlement and/ or human rights serves twin purposes. This approach offers populist appeal for those characterised as responsible, hard-pressed ‘workers’, whose efforts are seen as worthy of reward (see, for example, May, 2016; Morrison, 2017). Simultaneously, it also offers a powerful, farreaching and apparently common-sense justification for the reduction or removal of the basic social rights of those deemed as irresponsibly inactive or idle – and thus undeserving of collective support. The language used varies according to geography – for example ‘shirkers’ or ‘scroungers’ in the UK; chômedu (‘dole queue rider’) in France; ‘dole bludgers’ in Australia; and ‘welfare queens’ in the US (respectively Byrne, 2011; Osborne, 2012; Hérail and Lovatt, 1987; McCauley, 2017; Gilman, 2014). However, all such people are seen as irresponsibly failing to contribute, and thus personally reneging on their side of the individualised welfare contract between citizen and state that welfare conditionality overtly propagates. Although rights to social security and welfare remain embedded within international human rights law and treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UN General Assembly, 1966), post-2008 many national governments have

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responded to the global economic crisis, by enacting welfare reforms that prioritise individual responsibility and economic efficiency above and beyond collectivised social rights (Taylor-Gooby, 2009). The combination of significant ongoing economic change and sustained welfare reform agendas has seen the emergence of a new politics of welfare which, in turn, seeks to legitimise a new, and much more highly constrained, conditional type of welfare state in the future (Bonoli and Natali, 2012). While it is vital to acknowledge and clearly recognise that welfare state retrenchment has caused significant harm, with the largest burdens being borne by the most vulnerable in society (Taylor-Gooby, 2012), it is wrong to conceive the advance of welfare conditionality as simply being a relatively recent and necessary response to a particularly severe crisis in the public purse. Welfare conditionality became an increasingly significant organising principle for the delivery of welfare in the decades of relative global prosperity prior to the 2008 global financial crash that formed the backdrop to its latest period of extension and intensification in collectivised welfare systems within, and beyond, the UK. Ultimately, its emergence and dominance arose because of a widespread acceptance among many mainstream politicians and policy makers of New Right ideas on the definition, causes and solutions to a narrowly defined, welfare-dependent ‘underclass’ (see, for example, Murray, 1984, 1990; Mead, 1982, 1986, 1997). Emerging in the late 1960s, the New Right has mounted a concerted, and in many ways successful, challenge to the post social democratic Second World War vision of a ‘welfare state based on the principle of universal entitlement derived from citizenship’ (Cox, 1998: 3). The philosophical foundations of New Right ideology, which combine economic liberalism and social conservatism, have provided governments engaged in welfare reform with a heady mix of both monetary and moral justifications for the establishment of a new and highly conditional welfare settlement (Dwyer, 1998, 2000, 2008). This new ‘neoliberal’ world of welfare asserts the centrality of paid work above all other forms of social contribution, and ‘has ultimately delegitimised any deviation from full-time employment and denigrated the position of low income groups’ (Edmiston, 2018: 29) who, for various reasons, rely on social welfare benefits to meet their basic needs. Welfare conditionality routinely asserts the need for social welfare recipients to demonstrate individual responsibility and agency by demonstrably looking for, or finding, paid work as directed. Somewhat paradoxically, however, it simultaneously demands passive compliance with non-negotiable behavioural requirements

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under the threat of strong sanctions for disobedience. In combination this enables the enforcement of a particular moral order upon economically disadvantaged people within society. Significantly, welfare conditionality also provides a powerful individualised justificatory framework for those who want to downplay the structural causes of social inequality, and places ‘the blame for the predicament of those whose right to publicly funded welfare is reduced or removed firmly at the door of the individuals concerned’ (Dwyer, 2004: 266). Defending the New Right-informed approach of the Thatcherite government, in which he then served as Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd wrote: ‘compulsion by the state implies not the fulfilment, but the absence or failure of personal responsibility’ (Hurd, 1988: 14). If, as this statement suggests, enforcing individual responsibility through sanctions-backed welfare conditionality is an impossibility, the question remains what, then, is the real purpose of the overtly behavioural turn in contemporary social policy? The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from discussions in the preceding chapters of this book is that welfare conditionality is really about blaming and punishing poor people for their marginalisation, while simultaneously justifying their exclusion from ever-reducing support, offered via collectivised, publicly financed welfare rights. The behaviour change agenda is a smokescreen that obscures this much harsher reality. References Bonoli, G and Natali, D. (2012) The politics of the new welfare state, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Byrne, L. (2011) Liam Byrne’s speech in full, Labour Party Conference speech by Liam Byrne, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8790389/Labour-PartyConference-Liam-Byrnes-speech-in-full.html Cox, R. H. (1998) The consequences of welfare reform: how conceptions of social rights are changing, Journal of Social Policy, 27(1) :1-16. Dwyer, P. (1998) Conditional citizens? Welfare rights and responsibilities in the late 1990’s, Critical Social Policy, 18(4): 519-43. Dwyer, P. (2000) Welfare Rights and Responsibilities: Contesting social citizenship, Bristol: Policy Press. Dwyer, P. (2004) Creeping conditionality in the UK: from welfare rights to conditional entitlements, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2): 265-87.

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Dwyer, P. (2008) The conditional welfare state, in M. Powell (ed.) Modernising the Welfare State: the Blair Legacy, Bristol: Policy Press, 199-218. Edmiston, D. (2018) Welfare inequality and social citizenship, Bristol: Policy Press. Giddens, A. (1998) The third way: The renewal of social democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gilman, M. E. (2014) The Return of the Welfare Queen, The American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 22(2), University of Baltimore School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 201416. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2423540 Hérail, R. J. and Lovatt, E. A. (1987) Dictionary of modern colloquial French, London and New York: Routledge. Hurd, D. (1988) Citizenship in the Tory democracy, The New Statesman, 29 April, 14. May, T. (2016) Statement from the new Prime Minister Theresa May, Prime Minister’s First Speech, 13 July 2016, London, Prime Minister’s Office. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-fromthe-new-prime-minister-theresa-may McCauley, D. (2017) Budget’s war on drugs as Treasurer Scott Morrison warns welfare recipients: ‘It’s a two-way street’, News.com.au https:// www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/budgets-waron-drugs-as-treasurer-scott-morrison-warns-welfare-recipients-itsa-twoway-street/news-story/1d996d4defc9bf944ee7613c177d3bf1 Mead, L. M. (1982) Social programs and social obligations, Public Interest, 69, Fall: 17-39. Mead, L. M. (1986) Beyond entitlement, New York: Free Press. Mead, L. M. (1997) Citizenship and social policy: T. H. Marshall and poverty, Social Philosophy and Social Policy, 14(2): 197-230. Morrison, S. (2017) The right choices to secure better days ahead, Budget Speech 2017-18 Parliament House http://sjm.ministers.treasury. gov.au/speech/007-2017/ Murray, C. (1984) Losing ground, New York: Basic Books. Murray, C. (1990) The underclass revisited, Washington: American Institute for Public Policy Research.http://www.aei.org/publication/ the-underclass-revisited/ Osborne, G. (2012) George Osborne’s speech to the Conservative Conference: full text. https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/ george-osbornes-speech-conservative-conference-full-text Taylor-Gooby, P. (2009) Reframing social citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Taylor-Gooby, P. (2012) Root and branch restructuring to achieve major cuts: the social policy programme of the 2010 UK Coalition government, Social Policy and Administration, 46(1): 61-82. UN General Assembly (1966) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 December, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 993: 3, www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c0.html [accessed 25 October 2018]

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Index Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and tables. Page numbers followed by n indicate footnotes.

A A8 countries 72n A8 migrants 72–74 activation policies 44, 45 ‘administrative removal’ 83 advance payments 19, 21, 31, 32, 34 agency bounded 42–43, 58–62 Polish homeless migrants 78–83, 86 Alternative Payment Arrangements (APAs) 19, 21, 29, 30, 32–33 Anderson, I. 94 Anheier, H. 95 anti-social behaviour 46, 149, 166–167 ‘anti-social’ families 151 Arthur, R. 152 Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 124 asylum seekers 124 ‘at risk’ 41n austerity 44, 45, 176

B Ball, E. 153, 154 Bannister, J. 150, 156 Barrass, S. and Shields, J. 69 basic needs 167–168 Batty, E. and Flint, J. 150, 157 behaviour change outcomes 159 ‘beat the system’ attitude 70, 74, 75, 81, 85, 86 see also disengagement; dissent Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. 44 Beddoe, L. 20 behaviour change 5, 9–10 behaviour change outcomes 157–160, 159, 169–170 no change 160–162 relative change 162–163 temporary change 163–166 families 150–151, 153, 155–156 female offenders 56–58 and mental health problems 168–169

and unmet basic needs 167–168 behavioural conditionality 2, 4, 10, 175 families 149–150 homelessness 84–85, 92–93 Universal Credit (UC) 17, 18 benefit sanctions 6, 44, 45 by benefit type 48–49 families 149 female offenders 49–51 homelessness 45, 106–108 lone parents 43 mental health conditions 161 Roma migrants 126 Universal Credit (UC) 17, 23 ‘benefit tourists’ 120, 121–122, 124, 139 Bewley, H. 155 Big Issue 96, 132 Boddy, J. 162 Bonoli, G. and Natali, D. 176 bounded agency 42–43, 58–62 Brewer, M. and De Agostini, P. 45 Brexit 70, 71 Brown, K. 20, 34 Brown, P. 121, 122, 128 Buckingham, H. 94, 95, 97 budgeting advances 19, 21, 31, 32–33, 34 Butler, P 44

C Cafcass 46 Cameron, David 125 carceral archipelago 47n cared for children 47, 49, 58, 59–61 carers 18 Carter, E. and Whitworth, A. 166 caseworkers see keyworkers Casey, Louise 152–153 ‘cash in hand’ work 131 ‘centaur state’ 44–45 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries 119, 119n, 122–123 childcare 135 children 164–165

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Dealing with welfare conditionality in care 47, 49, 58, 59–61 ‘chivalry thesis’ 46n choice, homelessness as 78–83, 86 Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) 73 ‘civic contribution’, Netherlands 3 Claimant Commitment 18, 135 Clark, C. and Campbell, E. 120, 138 Clasen, J. and Clegg, D. 1 class see social class Coalition government 44, 70–71, 97, 153 ‘coercive welfare’ 110–111 communitarian thinking see new communitarian thinking computer skills 104 conditionality see behavioural conditionality; welfare conditionality Conservative government 44, 153 Cook, J. 119 ‘core units’ 155 ‘counterproductive’ conditionality 105 Cox, R.H. 176 Cozma, T. 123 Cracknell, R. and Keen, R. 44 Crawford, J. 71 ‘creaming’ 166 criminal justice system (CJS) 7 see also female offenders crisis management 158 Crisis ‘Skylight’ centres 96 ‘crisis work’ 106–107 Crisp, R. 97 Crossley, S. 150, 155, 169 cultural attitudes 74–75 Czerniejewska, I. and Goździak, E.M. A8 migrants 72 ‘beat the system’ attitude 70, 74–75, 81, 84 Polish homeless migrants 80, 85

D Dagilyte, E. and Greenfields, M. 126–127 Daly, M. and Kelly, G. 51 day centres 94, 96 Deacon, A. 2, 109, 137 ‘deep social exclusion’ 73–74 Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) 97, 98 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) EU nationals 71, 72 IT skills 104 Jobseeker’s Allowance (Homeless Claimants) Amendment Regulation 2014 93 ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ programme 108

Universal Credit (UC) 7, 15, 16, 17, 18–19, 20, 21, 49, 50 welfare conditionality 3, 10 Work Programme (WP) 54, 54n deportation 83 depression 168 deservingness see undeservingness DeVerteuil, G. 156 disabled individuals 18–19 discrimination Polish migrants 76–77 Roma 121, 129, 130–131 Universal Credit (UC) 26–27 see also prejudice; stigma disengagement 70, 74, 78–79, 80, 85–86, 108 see also dissent dissent 70, 83–85, 86 see also disengagement diversionary policy 46n domestic violence refuge 29, 30, 32 Donzelot, J. 43, 46 Dougherty, S. 122 Duncan-Smith, Ian 16, 17 Dwyer, P. behavioural conditionality 93 ‘counterproductive’ conditionality 105 dependency discourse 45 New Labour government 44 New Right 176 Universal Credit (UC) 49 welfare conditionality 3, 149, 177 Dwyer, P. and Bright, J. 51 Dwyer, P. and Scullion, L. 125, 127, 138 Dwyer, P. and Wright, S. 17, 34, 44, 45

E easements 18–19, 93 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 4–5 economic crisis 176 Edmiston, D. 176 education 121, 123, 130, 163–164 see also literacy Emmaus 96–97 employment 30, 61–62 female offenders 53–55 homeless people 81, 92 Roma 121 STRIVE pre-employment pilots 97 see also self-employment; unemployment Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) 48, 49, 104, 136 employment support services 8, 95–112 Greater Manchester 98–103 conditionality exercised in 108–111 impact of statutory welfare conditionality on 103–108

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Index see also Jobcentre Plus; Work Programme (WP) engagement see disengagement England 72 English language skills 129–130, 136 entitlements, status-based 2 ethics/ethicality 4, 5, 47–48, 126, 150, 155 Etzioni, A. 2 EU migrants EU Treaty Rights 71, 83 housing 70, 71–72 welfare benefits 72, 125 see also Polish homeless migrants; Roma migrants EU Referendum 70, 71 exclusion 121

gendered justice 46–47 Genuine Prospect of Work (GPoW) test 71, 125, 135–136 Giddens, A. 175 Gillies, V. 46 global economic crisis 176 ‘good enough’ behaviour change 162–163, 166 government discourse 44 Gray, M. 149, 151, 153 Greater Manchester employment support services 98–103 conditionality exercised in 108–111 impact of statutory welfare conditionality on 103–108 Gregg, D. 156 ‘grey economy’ 131

F

H

families behavioural conditionality 149–150 benefit sanctions 149 defined as a problem 151–153 residential family support units 155 ‘troubled’ families 151 ‘turned round’ families 163, 164, 166, 169 family intervention policies impact on women 46–47 Intensive Intervention Projects 150, 153, 154 see also Troubled Families Programme (TFP) female offenders 7, 42–43, 62–63 behaviour change 56–58 bounded agency 58–62 employment 53–55 gendered justice 46–47 poverty 45 punitive welfare 49–53 study methods and background 47–49 Fitzpatrick, S. 74 Fitzpatrick, S. and Jones, A. 95, 110 Fletcher, D. 108 Fletcher, D.R. 51 Fletcher, D.R. and Wright, S. 42 flexibility 105 Flint, J. 111, 153 food insecurity 51, 61 Foucault, M. 47n Fox, J. 124 Fremlová, L. 126

Habitual Residency test 72 Hancock, Matthew 97 hardship loans/payments 19, 21, 31, 49, 49n, 50 Harrison, M. and Hemingway, L. 20 Harrison, M. and Sanders, T. 20 Hawkins, O. 119 health 121 Hedderman, C. and Gunby, C. 46 Hewson, A. and Roberts, I. 55 Hills, J. 44 Homeless Link 93, 94, 96, 97 homelessness behavioural conditionality 84–85, 92–93 benefit sanctions 45, 106–108 day centres 94, 96 as dissent 70, 83–85, 86 employment 92 employment support services 8, 95–112 conditionality exercised in 108–111 Greater Manchester 98–103 impact of statutory welfare conditionality on 103–108 multiple exclusion homelessness 73n, 74 Polish migrants 7–8, 72–75 choice and agency 78–83, 86 dissent 83–85, 86 welfare conditionality 76–78 residential projects 110–111 support services 94 US 75, 76 welfare conditionality 76–78, 91, 92–93 ‘Homo Sovieticus’ syndrome 74, 86 housing 29, 30, 32–33, 149 EU nationals 70, 71–72 Roma 121 see also homelessness; squatting

G gambling problems 27–28 Garapich, M. 72, 74, 84–85, 86 Garrett, P.M. 155 Garthwaite, K. 61

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Dealing with welfare conditionality Housing Benefit 72 housing conditions 73 human rights 175 Hungary 123 Hurt, Douglas 177

I illiteracy see literacy immigrants see migrants Immigration Act 2016 71 immigration policy 70–72, 83 inequality 45 ‘instrumental behaviourism’ 10 see also behavioural conditionality Intensive Intervention Projects 150, 153, 154 see also Troubled Families Programme (TFP) in-work claimants 17 IT skills 104

J Jensen, T. 44 job searches 104, 106, 130 Jobcentre Plus benefit sanctions 50, 161 homeless people 93, 100–101, 105 Roma migrants 133–134 support from 25, 26 Jobseeker’s Allowance (Homeless Claimants) Amendment Regulation 2014 93 Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) 48–49, 72, 104, 133, 135, 137 Johnsen, S. behavioural conditionality 93 homelessness agencies 95, 107 lone parents 45, 135 volunteering 111 welfare conditionality 91 Jones, A. 154, 156 justice, gendered 46–47

K Kennedy, S. 18, 19 keyworkers 154, 155, 156 Kóczé, A. 123 Kotova, A. 49 Kovats, M. 120

L Lambert, M. 153 language skills 129–130, 136 learning disabilities 25–26 life expectancy 121 Lipsky, M. 2 Lister, R. 7, 42, 58, 59, 61, 62, 122 literacy 104, 121

London 74 lone parents 43, 45, 46, 135

M Manchester see Greater Manchester ‘mandated volunteering’ 108–109 ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ programme 102, 108 Martin, P. 122, 123, 124, 128, 139 mass media 44 Massachusetts, US 75, 76 May, Theresa 92 McCarthy, L. 45 McKeever, G. 52 Mead, L. 137 mental health conditions 25, 27, 155, 161, 163–164, 168–169 migrants Polish homeless migrants 7–8, 72–75 choice and agency 78–83, 86 dissent 83–85, 86 welfare conditionality 76–78 Roma migrants 8–9, 119–120, 121–122, 123–139 access to UK labour market 128–132 welfare conditionality 133–138 Millie, A. 153 Morris, K. 156 Morris, M. 131 Mort, G. 75 multiple exclusion homelessness 73n, 74

N need 2 unmet basic needs 167–168 neoliberalism 58, 74, 149, 176 Netherlands 3 new communitarian thinking 2 New Labour government 6, 44, 153, 155 New Right 176, 177 Nixon, J. 150, 154, 155 non-engagement see disengagement non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 8 see also third sector organisations

O online advisors 28–29 online services 104 Operation Nexus 71 outcomes behaviour change outcomes 157–160, 159, 169–170 no change 160–162 relative change 162–163 temporary change 163–166 soft outcomes 100, 158 ‘stabilising’ outcomes 158

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Index

P paid employment see employment parenting 164–165 ‘parking’ 166 Paterson, L. 126 Patrick, R. 135 Payment by Result 109, 155, 166, 169 penal-welfare nexus, women at 7, 42–43, 62–63 behaviour change 56–58 bounded agency 58–62 employment 53–55 gendered justice 46–47 poverty 45 punitive welfare 49–53 study methods and background 47–49 ‘penal-welfarism’ 41 ‘personalisation’ agenda 95 Peterborough 126 phone charges 23–24 ‘Places of Change’ agenda 97 Pleace, N. 70 Pleace, N. and Bretherton, J. 96 Polish homeless migrants 7–8, 72–75 choice and agency 78–83, 86 dissent 83–85, 86 welfare conditionality 76–78 poverty 45, 59, 61, 151–152 ‘poverty porn’ 44 powerlessness 42, 53 prejudice 119–120, 155 see also discrimination; stigma Prison Reform Trust 46, 48 probation services 46 public spending 44 ‘public works programmes’, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries 122–123 punitive welfare 42, 44–45, 49–53

R racism 76–77, 129 Ramesh, R. 72, 74 Referendum to leave the EU 70, 71 rent payments 27, 29, 30, 32–33 residential family support units 155 residential homelessness projects 110–111 resistance see dissent ‘Right to Rent’ 71 Robinson, D. 70 Roma (ethnic group) 119, 120–121 ‘public works programmes’, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries 122–123 ‘Roma frame’ 124 Roma migrants 8–9, 119–120, 121–122, 123–139

access to UK labour market 128–132 welfare conditionality 133–138 rough sleepers dissent 70 employment 81, 92 Manchester 98 Polish migrants 7–8, 73–74, 79–83, 84–85, 86 ‘tough love’ approach 95 see also homelessness Rutter, J. 130

S sanctions see benefit sanctions Scotland 72, 75–76 homeless migrants case study 75–86 choice and agency 78–83, 86 dissent 83–85, 86 welfare conditionality 76–78 Scottish Centre for Single Homeless (SCHS) 73 Scullion, L. 105 Scullion, L. and Morris, G. 126 self-employment 126, 132 Shildrick, T. 168 Sigona, N. and Trehan, N. 122 single parents see lone parents social class 3–4, 152, 176 ‘social enterprises’ 96–97 social exclusion 7, 73–74, 151 soft outcomes 100, 158 spending cuts 44 see also austerity squatting 82 ‘stabilising’ outcomes 158 Starkey, P. 154 status-based entitlements 2 stereotypes 122 see also stigma Stevens, D. 124 stigma female offenders 49, 53 homelessness 80, 84 Roma 121–122, 123–124 Universal Credit (UC) 26–27 welfare conditionality 85 welfare recipients 43, 44, 152 see also discrimination; prejudice ‘street level bureaucrats’ 2, 53 STRIVE pre-employment pilots 97 support workers see keyworkers supported housing 29 ‘Supporting People’ funding 110 ‘survival crime’ 51–52

T Tanner, A. 119 Taylor, B. and Rogaly, B. 151

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Dealing with welfare conditionality Taylor-Gooby, P. 6, 176 Teasdale, S. 96 technology 104 Tegenprestatie (‘civic contribution’), Netherlands 3 telephone charges 23–24 Tepe-Belfrage, D. and Montgomerie, J. 152 third sector employment support 8, 95–112 Greater Manchester 98–103 conditionality exercised in 108–111 impact of statutory welfare conditionality on 103–108 third sector organisations 94–95 see also non-governmental organisations (NGOs) ‘Third Way’ reforms 6 Thoburn, J. 154 training 99 transformative change 158 Transforming Rehabilitation reforms 2010-15 46 trauma 168–169 ‘troubled’ families 151 Troubled Families Programme (TFP) 9–10, 46, 150, 154–156 anti-social behaviour 166–167 behaviour change outcomes 157–160, 159, 169–170 no change 160–162 relative change 162–163 temporary change 163–166 mental health conditions 168–169 research outline and methodology 156–157 unmet basic needs 167–168 ‘turned round’ families 163, 164, 166, 169

U underclass thesis 3–4, 152, 176 undeservingness 44, 52–53, 124, 175 unemployment 92, 126 see also worklessness Universal Credit (UC) 6–7, 15, 16, 49, 104, 105 additional support 18–35 access to 29–32 barriers to 22–29 demographics of interviewees 22 denial of 32–34 advance payments 19, 21, 31, 32, 34 behavioural conditionality 17, 18 benefit sanctions 17, 23 criticism 19 EU nationals 72 job searches 106

online advisors 28–29 payment 17–18, 28 vulnerability 7, 15–16, 18–19, 20–21, 34 (see also Universal Credit (UC): additional support) in-work claimants 17 US 75, 76

V Vasilopoulou, S. and Wagner, M. 71 volunteering 55, 61, 94, 108–109, 110–111 vulnerability 19–20 Universal Credit (UC) 7, 15–16, 18–19, 20–21, 34 (see also Universal Credit (UC): additional support)

W Wacquant, L. 44 Warnes, A. and Crane, M. 94 Webster, D. 43 welfare, punitive 42, 44–45, 49–53 welfare conditionality advocates 3–4, 137 by benefit type 48 claimants’ perception 52 critics 4, 137, 170 definitions 1–2, 69, 149 gendered dimension 45 government endorsement 6, 44–45 homeless people 91 Polish homeless migrants 76–78, 85 homelessness services exercised in 108–111 impact on 103–108 international implementation 3, 175, 176–177 policy reach 6 resistance to 84–85 Roma migrants 133–138 see also behavioural conditionality ‘Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change’ (WelCond) project 5–6 welfare dependency 16, 17, 44, 45, 138 welfare reform 176 Welfare Reform Act 2012 71 welfare settlements, ‘classic’ 2 welfare spending 44 welfare state 152 welfare system 42 Welshman, J. 151, 152 Wenham, A. 46 ‘White List’ 124–125 women family intervention policies 46 at penal-welfare nexus 7, 42–43, 62–63 behaviour change 56–58

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Index bounded agency 58–62 employment 53–55 gendered justice 46–47 poverty 45 punitive welfare 49–53 study methods and background 47–49 welfare conditionality 45 welfare reforms 44 work ‘cash in hand’ work 131 Genuine Prospect of Work (GPoW) test 71, 125, 135–136 ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ programme 102, 108 ‘public works programmes’, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries 122–123 see also employment Work Club Programme 97 Work Programme (WP) 54, 54n, 100, 101, 105, 109 working class 152 worklessness 16, 152–153 see also unemployment Work-Related Activity Group within ESA (WRAG) 48–49, 62 Wright, S. and Stewart, A. 106

X xenophobia see racism

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This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice.

Edited by Peter Dwyer

Peter Dwyer is Professor of Social Policy at the University of York.

 

The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.

Dealing with welfare conditionality

“This compelling and often affecting account of the attempts of various arms of the welfare state to enforce ‘good’ behaviour by service users will interest readers across the social sciences.” Mark Simpson, Ulster University

edited by

Peter Dwyer

dealing with w e l fa r e conditionality Implementation and effects

ISBN 978-1-4473-4182-6

www.policypress.co.uk Policy Press PolicyPress

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