Social Policy Review 34: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2022 9781447365815

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SOCIAL POLICY REVIEW 34 Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2022

In association with the Social Policy Association Edited by Andy Jolly, Ruggero Cefali and Marco Pomati

SOCIAL POLICY REVIEW 34 Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2022

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Edited by Andy Jolly, Ruggero Cefalo and Marco Pomati

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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 374 6645 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press/Social Policy Association 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-6579-2 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-6580-8 paperback SPA members’ edition (not on general release) ISBN 978-1-4473-6655-3 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-6581-5 ePdf The right of Andy Jolly, Ruggero Cefalo and Marco Pomati to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them 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 Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Bristol University Press Front cover image: DANIEL LEAL / Getty Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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Contents List of figures and tables Notes on contributors Social policy in the shadow of the pandemic Andy Jolly, Ruggero Cefalo and Marco Pomati Part I 1

2 3

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Policy groups Climate justice, social policy and the transition to net zero in the UK Carolyn Snell, Matthew Scott, Kirsten Jenkins, Kelli Kennedy, Harriet Thomson, Komali Yenneti, Helen Stockton and Ian Gough Localising employment policy: opportunities and challenges Anne Green, Ceri Hughes, Paul Sissons and Abigail Taylor Getting in, being heard and influencing change: the labours of policy engagement in employment and social security research Hayley Bennett and Katy Jones The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK housing policy: how do we rebuild the foundations of the ‘wobbly pillar’? Vikki McCall, Steve Rolfe, Peter Matthews, Andrew Wallace, Grace Manyika, Steve Iafrati, Colin Clark and Moira Munro

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5

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Part II Wider developments in social policy 5 The faceless researcher: the implications of carrying out 97 research using digital methods during a global pandemic Emma Partlow 6 Caught between the local and the (trans)national: a street-level 113 analysis of EU migrants’ access to social benefits in German job centres Nora Ratzmann 7 Critical perspectives on social work and social policy practice 134 with vulnerable migrants in an era of emergencies Erick da Luz Scherf 8 The Autonomy Voucher for the elderly and people with 158 disabilities in the context of local welfare transformation: potentials and limits of Lombardy Region’s policy Franca Maino, Ilaria Madama and Federico Bruno

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The impact of the pandemic crisis on territorial inequalities: the right(s) to healthcare in Italy Gaia Matilde Ripamonti When activation policies deactivate jobseekers: inconsistencies in French integration policy Adrien Lusinchi

Index

179

203

226

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List of figures and tables

Figures 7.1

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 10.1

‘Three Ps Model’ for postcolonial policy practice and intervention with vulnerable migrants New cases per 10,000 inhabitants in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Rate of people in intensive care in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Rate of hospitalised people in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Rate of people in domestic isolation in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 New cases per 10,000 inhabitants in Lombardy, Tuscany, Campania and Calabria from 4 November 2020 to 10 January 2021 Hospitalisation rate in Lombardy, Tuscany, Campania and Calabria from 4 November 2020 to 10 January 2021 Country of origin of recipients of the PIR programme implemented by the regional consortium of the Missions Locales

Tables 2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4 6.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 9.3

Summary of key rationales for, and concerns regarding localisation of employment policies Typology of approaches to the governance of employment policy Five-parameter framework for devolution of employment policies Overview of City Strategy, employment support pilots and local employment charters Administrators’ rationalisations of their discretionary decisions Process and product innovations and expected outcomes Features of the three autonomy voucher rounds Disability vouchers per ATS – third round (2018) Elderly vouchers per ATS – third round (2018) Healthcare performance of Italy and EU-27 in 2018 Healthcare performance of Italian regions in 2018 LEA evaluation by region in 2019

143 187 188 188 189 191 191 209

27 31 32 39 121 161 166 167 167 182 183 185

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9.4 9.5

Evolution of the pandemic crisis: average values of Lombardy, Calabria, Tuscany and Campania Evaluation of risk indicators in Lombardy, Calabria, Tuscany and Campania

192 193

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Notes on contributors Hayley Bennett is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on UK social security and labour market policies and programmes. She is co-convener of the Social Policy Association’s (SPA) Employment and Social Security Policy Group. Federico Bruno is Research Fellow at the University of Milan. He obtained his PhD in Political Studies with a dissertation on the role of ordoliberalism during the Euro crisis. His research interests include European politics and the role of ideas and ideologies in politics. Ruggero Cefalo is Postdoctoral Researcher in Sociology and Comparative Welfare Policies at the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna. His research interests are in school-to-work transitions, social policies, multilevel governance, spatial disparities and youth studies. Colin Clark is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). His main research interests are in the fields of ethnic and racial studies and migration studies. Colin’s specialist area is Romani Studies and he is editor of the journal Romani Studies. Outside of UWS, he acts as a director on the board of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights and is a trustee for Romano Lav (Roma Voice). He is also a research adviser and committee member for the Traveller Movement, the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Advisory Council for the Education of Romanies and other Travellers. @profcolinclark Erick da Luz Scherf is a Social Work graduate student at the University of Stavanger and an Affiliated Researcher in the ERC-funded Human Rights Nudge project at the University of Copenhagen. His latest research interests encompass human rights, migration, social policy and postcoloniality. Ian Gough is Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE). He is also Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath. His current research project, supported by an ESRC grant, is on the intersection of climate change mitigation policy and social policy. Anne Green is Professor of Regional Economic Development at the City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI), University vii

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of Birmingham. She is co-lead for the SPA’s Employment Policy in Context Group. Her research interests span skills and employment, the changing geography of work, local labour markets, urban and regional development, migration, inclusive growth, productivity and policy evaluation. Ceri Hughes is Research Associate in the Work and Equalities Institute at the University of Manchester and co-lead for the SPA’s Employment Policy in Context Group. Her research explores labour market inequalities in the UK and how these are shaped by government and employer policies and practices. Her ongoing PhD research at the LSE is drawing on the concept of time as a resource to examine some of the work expectations that are embedded in UK activation policy. Steve Iafrati is Assistant Professor of Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on people’s experiences of welfare, including housing vulnerability and its broader social costs. Kirsten Jenkins is an early career Lecturer in Energy, Environment and Society within the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) group of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Kirsten is also the Programme Director for the cross-college Energy, Society and Sustainability MSc programme, which is run in partnership with the School of Geosciences. Andy Jolly is Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Plymouth, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Community Research and Development, University of Wolverhampton. His research interests are in household food security in the UK and bordering practices in children’s social care. Katy Jones is Research Fellow in the Centre for Decent Work and Productivity at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is a member of the SPA’s Employment and Social Security Policy Group. Kelli Kennedy is a social policy researcher working to understand how policy structures impact food (in)security. Her expertise includes comparative policy analysis of the US, UK and Canada, case study research design and interdisciplinary social sciences research. Adrien Lusinchi is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Paris-Saclay and the Centre for Employment and Labour Studies. His research focuses on various public employment policies, particularly those aimed at young people and refugees. viii

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Notes on contributors

Ilaria Madama is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan. Her principal research areas include EU social governance and comparative social policy, with an interest in the political and institutional dynamics behind the development and reform of benefits, regulations and services across European countries in the fields of minimum income protection, social inclusion and work–life balance. Franca Maino is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan, where she teaches ‘Social and Labour Market Policies’, ‘Healthcare and LTC Policy’ and ‘The Welfare State and Social Innovation’. She is the Director of the Observatory on Percorsi di secondo welfare. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche and Stato e Mercato. Grace Manyika is Research Assistant at the University of Stirling, a community activist and a member of the SPA. Her interests are in equality, inclusion and empowerment on issues affecting access to housing, services and justice for vulnerable groups of people including migrants, asylum seekers, low-income homeowners and adults receiving social care services in their own homes. Peter Matthews is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Stirling. His research focuses on inequalities in housing and urban services, with a particular focus on concentrated neighbourhood deprivation and inequalities experienced by LGBTQ+ people. Vikki McCall is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Housing, University of Stirling. Her work has included research on housing and ageing, focusing on the role of front-line workers, service users, social inclusion, co‑production, volunteers and the policy process. Moira Munro is Professor of Public Policy and Leader of the Social Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow. Emma Partlow is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Birmingham in the area of disability and employment, focusing specifically on the disabled experiences of paid work. Her research interests lie primarily within disability research, grounded within sociological understandings amid a contemporary focus upon policies, legislation and lived experiences. A broader focus and area of interest rests within inclusive research methodologies and conducting ethical research. ix

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Marco Pomati is Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University. His recent work focuses on the creation and validation of policy-relevant living standards measures in Europe, the UK and Africa. Nora Ratzmann is a post-doctoral researcher whose experiences include assignments at Oxford University, RAND Europe, UNESCO and the Expert Council of German Foundations for Migration and Integration. Her focus is on migration politics and social inequality. She currently holds positions as research fellow at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), LSE. Nora obtained her PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics in 2019. Gaia Matilde Ripamonti is a PhD candidate in Politics, Public Policies and Globalization at the Department of Political Science of the University of Perugia. Her main research interests are social policy and healthcare systems at national and regional levels. Steve Rolfe is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Stirling. His research focuses on two main areas – housing outcomes for vulnerable households, and community activism and empowerment. Matthew Scott is Research and Policy Officer at National Energy Action, the national fuel poverty charity working across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from Newcastle University and is co-convenor of the SPA’s Climate Justice and Social Policy Group. Paul Sissons is Professor of Work and Employment at the University of Wolverhampton. Paul’s recent research has examined wage progression for low-paid workers; subnational approaches to development and ideas around inclusive growth; the links between skills, business models and productivity; and the place-based impacts of creative freelancing. Carolyn Snell is Reader in Social Policy at the University of York. Her research interests focus on the relationship between the environment, justice and social policy. Her most recent research has considered the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy. She is co-convenor of the SPA’s Climate Justice and Social Policy Group.

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Notes on contributors

Helen Stockton is a social researcher with over 15 years of applied research experience spanning the quantitative and qualitative paradigms. Her areas of expertise and interest include energy and social policy issues relating to poverty, social justice and energy transitions, and the ways that knowledge can be better brokered between academia, policy and practice. Abigail Taylor is Research Fellow in the City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include employment support policy, skills, and regional and local labour markets. Harriet Thomson is Associate Professor in Global Social Policy and Sociology at the University of Birmingham. Andrew Wallace teaches in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. His research interests span housing, urban and community studies. Komali Yenneti is Lecturer in Geography, Urban Planning and Environment at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton. She is also an Honorary Fellow at the Australia–India Institute and is the founding Chair of the International Geographical Union’s Young and Early-Career Geographers Task Force (IGU-YECG). Her research addresses some key environmental and social challenges and is particularly informed by interdisciplinary theories and concepts of social justice, vulnerability and inequality across energy, climate and the urban sectors.

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Social policy in the shadow of the pandemic Andy Jolly, Ruggero Cefalo and Marco Pomati In common with last year’s Social Policy Review, the COVID-19 pandemic remains the ever-present backdrop to research and policy globally in 2022. Although we have not included a separate section on the pandemic for this year’s volume, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 is a recurring thread across the chapters. While contributions to Social Policy Review 33 in 2021 focused on the initial impact of the pandemic on social security and welfare systems which were not designed to respond to a global pandemic, chapters this year are more reflective in tone, responding to the greater accessibility of data about policy responses to the pandemic across different contexts. We have divided the volume into two sections: Part I contains contributions from the new Social Policy Association policy groups, with chapters exploring climate justice, employment policy and housing. Part  II continues the international theme of last year, with contributions covering social policy developments across the UK, Europe and further afield. In Chapter 1, in the context of last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, Snell et al review climate justice, social policy and the transition to net zero in the UK on behalf of the Climate Justice and social policy group. They suggest that social policy has a key role in a just transition to net zero, by ensuring that no one is left behind in the transition, and they explore the policy implications for the areas of housing, employment and food. Chapter 2 by Green et al from the Employment Policy in Context group explores the changing role of the local state in employment policy, drawing out the opportunities and challenges of localisation of employment policy. In a similar vein, Bennett and Jones from the Employment and Social Security Policy group discuss active labour market policies in Chapter 3. They assess the role of social policy academics in influencing government policy and advocating a ‘pragmatic realist’ approach where social policy researchers engage with knowledge exchange practices, but recognising the responsibility of policymakers to engage with insights from social policy research. In the final submission to the policy groups section, McCall et al assess the impact of COVID-19 on housing policy, suggesting that the pandemic has transformed the role of housing from the so-called wobbly pillar famously identified by Torgersen (1987) to a ‘cornerstone’ role where home and housing have become central to tackling COVID-19 and the 1

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need for safe, secure and liveable housing has become apparent as a public health issue. In Chapter 5, Partlow opens Part II with a reflection on the impact of COVID-19 on social policy research, exploring the use of digital methods in a global pandemic and the ways in which they can both include and exclude as well as entrench power imbalances. Partlow makes the case for researchers ‘showing their face’ in digital research by not concealing their identities to research participants. In Chapter 6, Ratzmann analyses EU migrants’ access to social security benefits in German job centres, exploring how street-level bureaucrats deal with the challenges of solidarity within an increasingly culturally diverse society. The analysis identifies a variety of responses and styles of decision-making, based on discretion and ‘street-level’ practices which highlight ideas of deservingness, reciprocity and belonging. Chapter 7 also considers policy and practice towards migrants during the pandemic. Da Luz Scherf argues that there is an urgent need to pay attention to critical voices in social work and social policy, and to ‘decolonise’ the process of knowledge production. The following two chapters explore regional differences in health and welfare in Italy during the pandemic. In Chapter 8, Maino, Madama and Bruno discuss the ‘autonomy voucher’ programme for people with care needs in Italy’s Lombardy region, using it as an example of social innovation in policy. The authors argue that while there are innovative elements to the programme, its implementation showed limits which have reduced the programme’s overall impact. Chapter 9 explores the impact of the pandemic on the different regional healthcare systems in Italy. Subnational governments put in place various strategies to address the COVID-19 spread and the pressure on healthcare provision. Ripamonti argues that the pandemic has highlighted regional healthcare inequalities, with some regional healthcare systems proving more adaptable than others, drawing a particular contrast between systems based around hospitals and those orientated around community-based healthcare. Lusinchi discusses a qualitative study of activation policies in France in Chapter 10, reflecting on their implementation through Missions Locales. The author identifies a paradox of ‘deactivation’ where the policy produced the opposite outcome to its intended effect, generating a feeling of discouragement that contradicts the objectives promoted by public policies within the activation paradigm. References Torgersen, U. (1987) ‘Housing: the wobbly pillar under the welfare state’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 4(sup1): 116–26, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02815737.1987.10801428.

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Part I

Policy groups

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1

Climate justice, social policy and the transition to net zero in the UK Carolyn Snell, Matthew Scott, Kirsten Jenkins, Kelli Kennedy, Harriet Thomson, Komali Yenneti, Helen Stockton and Ian Gough The Climate Justice and Social Policy Group (CUSP)

Introduction Climate change is both global in scope and unprecedented in scale and has been described by the UN as ‘the defining issue of our time’ (UN, 2020). There has been scientific consensus that human activity has been causing climate change for some time (Oreskes, 2004; Cook et al, 2013), with the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2021) confirming that it is ‘unequivocal’ that human activity has warmed the atmosphere, land and oceans. There is also substantial evidence surrounding the impacts of climate change; it threatens food, water and energy security, and it poses acute risks to lives and livelihoods through extreme weather events, especially heatwaves, droughts, cyclones and sea level rise (UN, 2020). The urgency of addressing climate change was encapsulated by the UN Secretary General in a speech given on 21 September 2021: It is a wake-up call to instill a sense of urgency on the dire state of the climate process  … Based on the present commitments of Member States, the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7 degrees of heating, instead of 1.5 we all agreed should be the limit. Science tells us that anything above 1.5 degrees would be a disaster … (UN, 2021) Additionally, it is clear that the impacts of climate change have significant potential to heighten inequalities across society (Roberts and Parks, 2006; Gough, 2013; UN, 2019; Snell, 2022). As such, fundamental policy transformations are required to ensure just processes of adaptation (ways of living with climate change) and mitigation (ways of reducing our 5

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contribution to climate change). Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the discourse around climate policy has emphasised the importance of a ‘just transition’ (UN, 2015; Wang and Lo, 2021). Broadly conceived, the concept of a just transition underscores the importance of protecting those affected by the transition to a low carbon economy and taking early action to minimise negative impacts and maximise positive opportunities (IISD, 2021). Social policy has a pivotal role to play in helping analyse and understand how challenges related to climate change can be faced, and how the most vulnerable can be shielded from negative consequences. Moreover, social policy has a key role to play in ensuring that policymaking and implementation leaves no one behind, recognising that different groups and communities are affected differently by both climate change and policies put in place to address it. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the relationship between social policy and climate change, including the concepts of climate justice and the just transition; to explore current climate policy in the UK; and to consider the path ahead. The chapter draws on three key areas of social policy that will be affected by climate change and climate policy in the UK: housing, employment and industry, and food. Each case study considers current policy, likely changes, issues of (in)justice and how negative impacts might be avoided.

Climate change and climate (in)justice As described earlier, the impacts generated by both climate change and climate policy have significant potential to heighten inequalities across society. In the UK, for example, people living in socially deprived coastal communities have been identified as more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than those in other communities (JRF, 2011). Meanwhile, other areas home to a large proportion of the country’s coal and gas industry, such as parts of North East Scotland, the Shetland Isles and areas of the North of England, will suffer the effects of ‘local deprivation’ as a result of the decline of those industries, echoing the closure of heavy industry in the 1980s. Intersections of different socio-economic and demographic factors are also likely to heighten vulnerability to climate change or related policies, including for people with disabilities (Snell et al, 2018), gypsies and traveller communities (JRF, 2012), those in care homes (JRF, 2016), Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups (Green America, 2015; FOE, 2020; Yassin, 2020), people on ‘cliff edges’ (Climate Just, 2017) and differences by gender (UNFCCC, 2021). Furthermore, research highlights the potential for so-called double vulnerability to emerge for those facing energy and transport poverty, with particular implications for people on low incomes, older people, households with children or dependence, people with preexisting health conditions or disabilities, women and people from ethnic 6

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Climate justice and the transition to net zero

minorities, as well as those that are geographically peripheral (Simcock et al, 2021). Many working in the field of climate change and social policy draw on the notion of climate justice to help conceptualise these issues. Climate justice is a multifarious concept that can be defined in different ways, and can refer to normative appeals to the necessary union of environmental and social justice as well as to grassroots struggles for social recognition and community participation in the formation of climate policy (Schlosberg, 2013). A useful departure point is, however, provided by Walker, who argues that with climate change we are confronted with evidence of patterns of inequality and claims of environmental justice that span the globe, that permeate daily life and which pose threats to the current and future health and wellbeing of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. (2012: 179) As Walker continues, climate justice means thinking clearly ‘about how things interconnect, about who benefits at the expense of others, and about the spatially and temporally distant impacts of patterns of consumption and production’ (Walker, 2012: 179). It is therefore fundamentally a concept and a movement that recognises the uneven impacts climate change will have on vulnerable groups and communities. This includes both recognising the role climate change has in exacerbating pre-existing situations for individuals and groups who are already vulnerable (including those who are marginalised, mis-recognised or not recognised at all), and recognising new groups who may become vulnerable either through the increasing impact of climate change or strategies to mitigate or adapt to it. This notion of climate justice – which at its core speaks for social justice in the face of climate change and climate action – is mobilised across local, national and international levels and across timescales, often including the consideration of future generations. It is an inherently political issue and one in which social policy can play a key and critical role in helping to understand how challenges relating to climate change can be faced and those most vulnerable protected.

Climate policy in the UK Since 2013, climate policy in the UK has mainly centred on the transition to a low carbon economy, a focus that intensified in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. The UK was the first major economy to legally commit to a target of net zero emissions by 2050 (BEIS, 2019), followed later by a corresponding target across EU countries. Decarbonising the economy is a multifarious challenge requiring cooperation and coordination across housing, transport, health, food and agriculture, energy, welfare and skills 7

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domains. Across these policy areas there is the potential to reduce carbon emissions and to deliver ‘green’ pandemic recovery (UNEP, 2021); however, as outlined earlier, there is also the risk of reinforcing existing inequalities, and introducing new ones. These challenges are recognised in both the name and the content of the UK Government’s Net Zero Strategy (2021a), which has the subtitle Build Back Greener. The Strategy is explicitly positioned as a roadmap not only for eliminating carbon emissions and reaching net zero by 2050, but also for protecting lives and livelihoods ‘while maximising the co-benefits for people, society, the environment, and the economy’ (UK Government, 2021a: 39). It contains proposals for decarbonising the largest drivers of the UK economy, especially transport, power, industry and buildings, although with some notable gaps, such as food, land and agriculture (CCC, 2021a), which reflects the progress made in some sectors relative to others. Accepting the net zero goal raises a series of ethical and justice questions about what the goal means and how to get there, especially how to rethink social policy and social action so that they are sustainable in the face of approaching climate and ecological breakdown. Furthermore, it raises the question of how to rethink climate policy and action so that they embrace the values of equality and wellbeing advocated by social policy. This section provides three case studies that consider three of the key domains of social policy that are being transformed as a result of policies supporting the transition to net zero. Scott considers changes to housing and home energy, focusing on the potential to decarbonise rural homes and the risks associated with this. Jenkins considers the transition away from oil and gas, outlining the changes that this is likely to bring to the labour market and highlighting what a ‘just transition’ might look like. Lastly, Kennedy considers food and agriculture policy. While decarbonisation of the food sector has been a stated goal for many years, the aggregated climate impact of agriculture, food processing, sale and consumption has proven difficult to view in its entirety. From a social policy perspective, the food sector and climate remains fragmented, woven with battles over personal choice and disconnected from food production and consumption. Case study 1: decarbonising rural homes The need to reduce carbon In the UK, reaching net zero will be impossible without a significant reduction of emissions from buildings, both domestic and non-domestic. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has stated that direct building emissions were 87 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019, and this must be reduced to effectively zero by 2050 if legally binding climate 8

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Climate justice and the transition to net zero

targets are to be met (CCC, 2020). This is a particular challenge in domestic homes, where approximately 80 per cent of energy use is for space and water heating (Eurostat, 2019). This demand is predominantly met by burning natural gas in fossil fuel boilers, especially in urban areas, but in rural, remote and island communities the use of higher emitting fuels such as oil, coal, wet wood, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biomass and similar forms of fuel are more common, largely due to the reduced reach of the gas network. Rural areas subsequently have unique transition pathways that shine a spotlight on the links between social policy, climate justice and socio-spatial inequalities. Issues of climate (in)justice While there are different ways of defining rurality, such as with reference to population density (UK Government, 2021b), recent research has highlighted that it can also be defined with reference to social, spatial and economic factors, which have implications for thinking about what a just transition for rural areas actually means both in the UK and beyond (Community Energy Plus, 2017). Research by National Energy Action (NEA, 2021a) has pinpointed at least six characteristics of rural, remote and island communities that shape their access to adequate energy services: low household incomes; limited connectivity (digital, transport and social); limited access to other essential services (eg banking, postal); old and hard-to-treat housing stock quality; socio-demographics, especially ageing populations; and the greater severity of extreme weather conditions, which can damage old dwellings. Research undertaken for the Scottish government noted that spatial and regulatory issues, such as regional differences in electricity distribution costs and a lack of regulation of oil, LPG and solid fuels, also shape the ability of rural communities to access the energy they require to keep their homes warm (Scottish Government, 2016). These characteristics are not ‘inherent’ to rural areas, rather they are continually forged and forged anew by the disadvantaged and ‘peripheralised’ position of rural communities relative to the larger spatial and economic organisation of the UK (O’Sullivan et al, 2020). However, they have two impacts worth considering from the perspective of climate justice and social policy. The first is that rural areas across the UK tend to have more significant barriers to accessing adequate energy services than urban areas (see Centre for Sustainable Energy, 2008; NEA, 2021a), and this is reflected in the fuel poverty statistics published by the central and devolved governments across the UK. In Northern Ireland, for example, one third of households living in small villages, hamlets or open country areas were in fuel poverty in 2016, compared with the national figure of 22 per cent (NIHE, 2016: 58), and in Scotland, rates of fuel poverty increased in remote rural areas from 33 per cent to 43 per cent between 2018 and 2019 (Scottish Government, 2019). 9

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This pattern is also evident across the wider EU, where statistics show that households located in sparsely populated rural areas are more severely affected by higher rates of energy expenditure, with a proportion of 21.1 per cent, compared with 16.5 per cent and 13.6 per cent for areas defined as intermediate and densely populated, respectively (Bouzarovski et al, 2020). A second, and increasingly related, key impact is that rural homes are hard to decarbonise in a way that improves (rather than exacerbates) their occupants’ ability to stay warm at home. Although the CCC have argued that rural areas away from the gas grid have more to gain from a switch to low carbon heating (CCC, 2020), the challenges of translating this envisioned gain into reality are extremely difficult (NEA, 2021b). Heat pumps are considered a primary technology for decarbonising rural homes, but the relatively high price of electricity, driven primarily by wholesale costs and environmental levies that disproportionately affect lower-income households, means that they can be costly to run for the poorest households (Owen and Barrett, 2020). Meanwhile, the substandard energy efficiency of many rural homes means that significant improvements to building fabric ideally have to be carried out before the heating supply can be decarbonised. The combined costs of insulation and a heat pump are therefore a large (and typically insurmountable) barrier for the poorest households (NEA, 2021b). Moreover, focusing purely on the heating supply and building fabric of rural homes often conveniently forgets that these homes are lived in by people with multifarious heating practices, energy needs and social relationships, and who as noted previously face challenges to accessing adequate energy services that are not reducible to cavity walls and hot water tanks. Addressing issues of injustice The challenges facing rural homes and communities are thus inextricably cocooned within the domains of social policy, climate justice, socio-spatial inequality and uneven economic development. Rural communities have much to gain but are also at significant risk of being left behind by policies to decarbonise domestic heat in the UK. The UK government’s Home Upgrade Grant (HUG), which funds energy efficiency and heating system improvements in homes off the gas grid, is a welcome step forward, but this funding is neither consistent with the amount promised in the Conservative Party Manifesto costings (Conservative Party, 2019: 8) nor sensitive enough to the multiple social, economic and spatial challenges that rural areas face in the energy transition. We are faced with the need for analysis that can look at rural areas through a kaleidoscope rather than a telescope, and which views the challenge of decarbonising rural homes as one part of a wider social imperative to harness the energy transition to improve the health, wellbeing and lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Social policy, with 10

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its core concern with the overlapping realms of social and political life, is well placed to take on this challenge. Case study 2: just transitions away from oil and gas The need to reduce carbon The latest climate science clearly presents the need for a transition away from further oil and gas exploration, explicitly and intractably linking climate policy and climate justice to energy policy domains. In May 2021, the International Energy Agency’s net zero 2050 roadmap (IEA, 2021) highlighted that Paris-aligned decarbonisation does not allow for investment in new oil and gas fields, and as much of the North Sea basin is in decline, the future of oil and gas in the UK, at least, is one of gradually decreasing investment and productivity. Nonetheless, while oil and gas contribute substantially to the economy, they are also a large and politically divisive contributor to the climate crisis, endangering decarbonisation and emissions targets. Issues of climate (in)justice The decline of North Sea oil and gas is both an opportunity and a threat. Previous UK transitions, including that from coal and steel, have been widely criticised for failing communities and creating significant negative social externalities, with legacies of deprivation still apparent across former coal communities, for instance (Beatty et al, 2019). The phase-out of oil and gas therefore must be carefully managed, particularly given its economic contributions to areas such as North East Scotland, the Shetland Isles and areas of the North of England, as well as all those linked by supply chains and members of the highly mobile workforce. Indeed, the scale of change in such areas should not be underestimated. There are currently approximately 118,400 workers in the sector (OGUK, 2021), with oil and gas contributing both to UK GDP and, as part of this, significantly to local and regional economies through primary, secondary and tertiary sectors including hospitality and entertainment. Put differently, if the transition is not managed with attention to social justice and social policy issues, myriad individuals and communities will face negative justice outcomes. Oil and gas workers face a particular challenge in retraining, upskilling and gaining new entrants. In the UK, skills policy is overseen by the oil and gas skills organisation OPITO, an industry-owned entity with representatives from industry, government and unions. OPITO support the development of ‘offshore passports’ or ‘skills passports’, designed to aid oil and gas workers to move to the renewables sector without the need for significant additional 11

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certification, a cost that is often borne personally by the worker (Platform et al, 2021). Moreover, evidence suggests that workers are often required to repeat existing training when starting a contract with a new employer, when starting a new contract with the same employer or when moving to jobs in other offshore sectors (Greenpeace, 2020). While Scotland operates the National Transition Training Fund (NTTF, 2021), such schemes are not present in other UK nations, showcasing opportunities for collaboration or knowledge exchange, particularly given the often diffuse nature of the oil and gas workforce. Addressing issues of injustice A ‘just transition’ is variously conceptualised in EU policy, national policy, academia and communities of practice and across oil and gas debates. The translation of the term and any principles that underpin it is also somewhat limited – with workers often not using the term ‘just transition’ and limited industry uptake. There is nonetheless significant progress. Despite the lack of UK leadership, the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales are working towards establishing legal frameworks to implement their respective just transition policies. Scotland has built just transition principles directly into its Climate Change (Emissions Reductions Targets) Act 2019. In section 35(22)(a), the Act requires Scottish ministers, when devising the ‘Climate Change Plan’, to demonstrate how the policies in the plan are expected to affect certain sectors of employment and the economy, and develop policies for supporting the affected workforce and communities. The direct relevance of social policy to this transition, the surrounding debates, the future of the workforce and the governance structures that will enable a just transition are clear given its concern for social justice and individual collective wellbeing. Moreover, such an example showcases the close overlaps with climate justice thinking as a driver of social policy issues. Case study 3: food and net zero The need to reduce carbon While the previous case studies have discussed established policy approaches to drive the transition to net zero, the UK food sector remains both underaddressed and contentious. Thirty-five per cent of total carbon emissions in the UK come from the food and drink sector, inclusive of related overseas emissions (WRAP, 2021). Between 2015 and 2019, 8 per cent of absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were cut from the UK food and drink sector, but it is estimated 80 per cent of this can be attributed to decarbonisation efforts in the energy sector (WRAP, 2021). More directly, 12

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there has been a stark hesitation in efforts to decarbonise the food sector – the UK’s food system has decarbonised at half the rate of the wider economy, with agriculture, in particular, making no movement on emissions from 2008 (Dimbleby, 2021: 21). The CCC’s 2021 policy recommendations addressed a number of issues relating to food, including addressing agriculture-based emissions by extending the ban on rotational burning of peat, but also enacting measures to change consumer behaviour, and it is this latter aspect that this case study focuses on. The CCC encouraged a 20 per cent shift away from meat and 20 per cent from dairy by 2030 (CCC, 2021b); going even further than this, the National Food Strategy recommended a 30 per cent reduction in meat consumption for the same period (Dimbleby, 2021). Recommendations often amalgamate health and climate goals for consumer behaviour, such as cutting back on red meat and sugar, potentially in a partial effort to nudge environmental behavioural change under the guise of healthcare. Issues of injustice On the UK level, the affordability of climate-friendly, healthy consumption is difficult. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data show the general price of food and drink that is purchased in supermarkets and shops increased 1.1 per cent in August 2021 – the sharpest rise since the 2008 financial crisis (ONS, 2021). CO2 shortages, lack of lorry drivers and COVID-related impacts on supply chains have all contributed to food price inflation, with public expectations, at the time of writing, for costs to remain heightened for the coming winter, in tandem with lack of stock (British Retail Consortium, 2021; Gross, 2021). Placing burdens on consumers to decipher and acquire healthy food that is also climate-friendly in a time when food costs and supplies are tempestuous is challenging, especially for those on lower incomes. For the poorest income quintile to afford the UK government’s Eatwell Guide outlining a healthy, balanced diet, they would need to spend 40 per cent of their disposable income after housing costs; this is compared with the highest income quintile who only must spend 7 per cent (The Food Foundation, 2021a). These costs do not even contribute towards ensuring all the foods within the diet are climate-friendly. As healthy foods in the UK are three times as expensive as less healthy foods by calorie (The Food Foundation, 2021a), moving consumers away from unhealthy foods and unsustainable diets, as advised for all, must include policy provisions that make this realistic and do not penalise those on low incomes. Furthermore, temptation to use policy to make food cheaper rather than affordable should be viewed with caution if the intent is for households to make healthy, climate-minded choices. The current model of ‘cheap food’ is structured so that externalities (eg climate change, poor wages and other key expenses) 13

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are often left off the consumer’s receipt and instead are supplemented or financed by society. The Sustainable Food Trust estimates that for every £1 spent on food, the consumer spends an additional 96.8p in ‘hidden costs’ via avenues such as water charges and environmental taxes (Fitzpatrick et al, 2019). The generally low retail cost is what allows some households to have enough food, but for many the current system remains unworkable. The Family Resources Survey found that between 2019 and 2020, 5 million people in the UK experienced food poverty (DWP, 2021), and the Food Foundation found this rose to 9 per cent of the population in 2021 (The Food Foundation, 2021b; ONS, 2021). Even for those within the food sector, the system is proving inadequate: 14  per cent of food workers experienced food poverty compared with 9 per cent of non-food workers from August 2020 to January 2021 (The Food Foundation, 2021b). As previously mentioned, working to make food cheaper rather than affordable is not a viable solution to food injustice, and in this case it would do little to address some of the primary causes of food poverty, such as low income, all while negatively affecting the environment and food producers (Coleman et al, 2021). Through a lens of social policy and climate justice, the food sector highlights issues of intersectionality, linking together broad issues such as colonialism, race, class and exploitation (Patel, 2021). There is a distinct lack of acknowledgement and action as to how the UK food system is fuelled by injustices: the exploitation of workers abroad to make food cheaper in the UK and deforestation to produce the desired products hides many of the resounding social issues the food system needs to account for. In line with a food justice approach, conflating climate issues, such as food waste, with food poverty issues – which is a symptom of wider poverty – and food justice issues, often eliminates critique as to how overproduction and other issues in our agriculture system occur. The normalisation of mixing poverty and climate approaches, such as food banks giving away excess foods, demonstrates how mainstream this concept has become. Addressing issues of injustice Any policies that are enacted to change consumers’ behaviour with their diets must ensure that costs are not debilitating for low-income households, especially given that sustainably produced food often comes at a premium cost (Coleman et  al, 2021). The Food Ethics Council (2020) visualises this evaluation process through their ‘Food Policy Compass’, measuring the acceptability of a policy by asking if it is environmentally sustainable, humane, healthy and fair to people in a way that positively contributes without harming any of the stated dimensions. 14

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Attempts to grapple with the issues of climate, food justice and poverty related to the food system are a growing trend in the UK. As we enact policies to move away from our current food and agricultural systems, which fuel the ‘cheap food model’, towards net zero goals, deliberate efforts must be made to ensure the new food model becomes a just one.

Discussion: the risks and rewards of UK climate policy The three case studies presented in the previous section have highlighted a number of key areas of social policy that are likely to change substantially as a result of the transition to net zero. While this review has only been able to provide a brief insight into these three areas, there are common threads cutting across the case studies that highlight potential risks to communities and individuals, and ways of addressing these. Firstly, the case studies have highlighted how spatial inequalities may be exacerbated during the transition to net zero. In some cases this may reinforce inequalities already entrenched during previous periods of economic decline and change. The risk to jobs across the supply chain must be recognised, and communities that are especially vulnerable to these changes, for example where there is heavy dependence on the oil and gas sector, need particular attention during the transition. Spatial inequalities also pervade issues of housing and home energy use, although the issues can be framed quite differently as they emphasise an opportunity to improve existing housing conditions in a low carbon and just way rather than manage changes that are occurring within the sector. Secondly, implicit within all three case studies is the concern that the direction of policy will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, with those unable to engage with policies designed to lessen the detrimental impacts of the transition – through retraining, being unable to access job retention schemes, accessing home energy efficiency measures and upgrades – left to face the negative consequences of this. Moreover, those unable to respond to calls for behavioural change associated with the drive to consume more healthy and sustainable food may find that they are further marginalised, and/or penalised, as they are unable to take part in the transition. In addition, the significance of the intersection of multiple forms of disadvantage must not be underestimated. For example, the relationship between food insecurity and fuel poverty has been well documented (Snell et al, 2018), as has the relationship between place and poverty (Ballas et al, 2017). Similarly, as described in the introduction, socio-economic and demographic characteristics can add further layers to an individual’s vulnerability to policy change and their ability to engage with positive policy measures (Gillard et al, 2017). Thirdly, the case studies make clear that climate policy is at different stages of development for different areas of social policy. Arguably, housing 15

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represents the most developed policy area, with the installation of energy efficiency measures being embedded in social and environmental policy for a number of decades. This began in the 1980s with energy efficiency programmes such as the Energy Grant of 1987 and continues to the present day with the Energy Company Obligation, which obligates energy suppliers to install energy efficiency measures in low-income homes. Similarly, rhetoric linking employment to notions of a just transition has been present since the 1970s (UNRISD, 2018: 6) but has gained traction within mainstream policy debate since the Paris Agreement in 2015. As a result, it is becoming a fixture in UK policy. In comparison with the first two case studies, food, justice and the net zero transition is a relatively new area of policy interest and this is reflected in the tentative policy direction that places an emphasis on changes in individual diets and behaviour rather than more widespread policy-driven change. For the food sector, clarifying policy direction towards suitable policy instruments within a field already negotiating numerous complexities is the most immediate challenge. This unevenness of policy development is reflected across climate policy more broadly with similar patterns across other sectors such as transport, leisure and health. Fourthly, there are clear opportunities identified across the three case studies. Addressing rural housing conditions and energy use has great potential in terms of reducing both carbon emissions and fuel poverty simultaneously, presenting a ‘win–win’ opportunity to marry climate policy objectives with those of social policy (Cahill, 2002). The relatively high carbon emissions associated with rural housing alongside long-standing, pervasive issues of fuel poverty make it ideally placed for intervention. The challenge for policymakers is to ensure that households in rural areas are able to access energy efficiency improvements in a way that is affordable, and to ensure that measures are appropriate for the household. In terms of skills and employment, the just transition work undertaken by the Scottish government is regarded as world leading, with only a few other countries – Canada, Germany and Spain – integrating the principles of just transition into policy (Robins et al, 2019: 8). This proactive approach at managing the transition in Scotland has been applauded with principles of justice being placed at the centre of climate policy. UK policy, meanwhile, has been criticised for lacking an emphasis on the just transition agreed at Paris in 2015 with no explicit ambition of placing justice at the centre of its work (IPPR, 2018; TUC, 2018). Arguably, there is space for policy learning across the devolved nations. In the context of climate change and climate justice, food policy is currently underdeveloped. Recent work (Kennedy and Snell, 2021) has highlighted the risks of conflating policy objectives and assuming that the same wins observed in terms of combining housing, climate and fuel poverty 16

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action can be achieved within the realm of food (eg by distributing food waste from supermarkets to food charities). In this sector, more research and analysis is needed to understand how best to lower emissions in a socially just way and to fully understand the opportunities and risks.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the links between social policy and climate justice. Following overviews of the concept of climate justice and the development of climate policy in the UK, the chapter has presented three case studies that, between them, highlight some of the key threads that are increasingly knotted between the domains of climate justice and social policy. By way of conclusion, it is worth looking forwards and dwelling on where we need to go next, which questions require posing (and answering) and finally what scholars working at the intersection of climate justice and social policy can do to meet some of the challenges discussed in this chapter. Firstly, there is a need to begin mapping the connections between social policy and climate justice to understand in more detail what work has already been undertaken and where the key gaps in scholarship are. This is important because climate change touches everything, including core domains of social policy such as healthcare, poverty, welfare, employment and housing, as well as more emergent areas of focus such as food, agriculture and sanitation. While some of these connections are beginning to be well understood, particularly with respect to housing and employment, we do not currently possess an in-depth understanding of how the various policy developments stemming from imperatives of climate adaptation, mitigation and transition are affecting the areas of study that social policy has typically concerned itself with. What does the growing dominance of climate in the policy landscape mean for social security and welfare? How might the considerable costs of paying for net zero filter through to reduced public expenditure on healthcare, or on crime? And how might we begin to scrutinise these connections: do existing data sets contain the information that might be needed to do so? Secondly, while this chapter has focused specifically on the UK, there is arguably a need to expand the analysis of the links between climate justice and social policy beyond the epistemological sphere of Anglophone academia. In other areas of the humanities and social sciences, climate justice debates are ever more inflected by matters of post-/anti-/decolonialism, proclamations of the arrival of the Anthropocene (and its many derivations) and also by more radical perspectives from ecological economics, such as post-growth theories. For example, advocates of degrowth such as Keyßer and Lenzen (2021) have long argued that deprioritising economic growth can remove some of the trickiest technological barriers to global decarbonisation, such 17

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as large-scale carbon dioxide removal, while simultaneously creating a planet that is indefinitely fit for human habitation. Such perspectives, among several others, frequently act to disrupt the frames of reference and key assumptions that policymakers and practitioners work with, meaning, unfortunately, that they are often discounted without consideration. Finally, there is a parallel need to examine more carefully how climate policies and strategies might (and do) impact disproportionately on different groups in society, especially people with disabilities, women, gypsies and traveller communities, refugees, care home residents, care leavers, Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and people on ‘cliff edges’. This chapter has looked specifically at rural communities and the oil and gas workforce as examples of groups that have much to gain but potentially more to lose from net zero policymaking, but more work is needed to unearth how the costs and benefits of climate policies will be distributed across society. References Ballas, D., Dorling, D. and Hennig, B. (2017) ‘Analysing the regional geography of poverty, austerity and inequality in Europe: a human cartographic perspective’, Regional Studies, 51(1): 174–85, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2016.1262019. Beatty, C., Fothergill, S. and Gore, T. (2019) ‘The state of the coalfields 2019: economic and social conditions in the former coalfields of England, Scotland and Wales’, Coalfields Regeneration Trust, available at: https://shura. shu.ac.uk/25272/1/state-of-the-coalfields-2019.pdf. BEIS (2019) ‘UK becomes first major economy to pass net zero emissions law’, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-becomesfirst-major-economy-to-pass-net-zero-emissions-law. Bouzarovski, S., Thomson, H., Cornelis, M., Varo, A. and Guyet, R. (2020) ‘Towards an inclusive energy transition in the European Union: confronting energy poverty amidst a global crisis’, available at: https:// op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4a440cf0-b5f5-11eabb7a-01aa75ed71a1/language-en. British Retail Consortium (2021) ‘Higher prices likely in run up to Christmas’, available at: https://brc.org.uk/news/corporate-affairs/higherprices-likely-in-run-up-to-christmas/. Cahill, M. (2002) The Environment and Social Policy, 1st  edn, London: Routledge, available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315060941 CCC (Climate Change Committee) (2020) ‘The sixth carbon budget’, available at: https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ The-Sixth-Carbon-Budget-The-UKs-path-to-Net-Zero.pdf.

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Fitzpatrick, I., Young, R., Barbour, R., Perry, M., Rose, E. and Marshall, A. (2019) The Hidden Cost of UK Food, Sustainable Food Trust, available at: https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WebsiteVersion-The-Hidden-Cost-of-UK-Food.pdf. FOE (Friends of the Earth) (2020) ‘Climate justice and anti-racism’, available at: https://friendsoftheearth.uk/about/climate-justice-and-antiracism. Food Ethics Council (2020) Food Policy Compass, available at: https://www. foodethicscouncil.org/app/uploads/2020/11/Food-Policy-Compass-aprompt-to-promote-in-the-round-policymaking.pdf. Food Foundation (2021a) The Broken Plate 2021: The State of the Nation’s Food System, available at: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/ files/2021-10/FF-Broken-Plate-2021.pdf. Food Foundation (2021b) A Crisis Within a Crisis: The Impact of Covid-19 on Household Food Security, available at: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/ default/files/2021-10/FF_Impact-of-Covid_FINAL.pdf. Gillard, R., Snell, C. J. and Bevan, M. A. (2017) ‘Advancing an energy justice perspective of fuel poverty: household vulnerability and domestic retrofit policy in the United Kingdom’, Energy Research and Social Science, 29: 53–61. Gough, I. (2013) ‘Carbon mitigation policies, distributional dilemmas and social policies’, Journal of Social Policy, 42(2): 191–213. Green America (2015) ‘Black Lives Matter in a changing climate’, available at: https://www.greenamerica.org/climate-justice-all/black-lives-matterchanging-climate. Greenpeace (2020) Offshore: Oil and Gas Workers’ Views on Industry Conditions and the Energy Transition, Greenpeace, Platform and Friends of the Earth Scotland, available at: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/09/Oil-Gas-Workers-Report-Final-Web.pdf. Gross, J. (2021) ‘Britain’s Christmas lament: meat shortages and delivery delays’, New York Times, 4  October, available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2021/10/04/world/europe/uk-christmas-turkey-shortage.html. IEA (International Energy Agency) (2021) Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/netzero-by-2050. IISD (International Institute for Sustainable Development) (2021) ‘Just transition’, available at https://www.iisd.org/topics/just-transition. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2021) Sixth Assessment Report: Working Group  I, available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/ wg1/#FullReport. IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) (2018) Prosperity and Justice: A Plan for the New Economy, Cambridge: Polity Press, available at: https:// www.ippr.org/research/publications/prosperity-and-justice.

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JRF (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) (2011) ‘Impacts of climate change on disadvantaged UK coastal communities’, available at: https://www. jrf.org.uk/report/impacts-climate-change-disadvantaged-uk-coastalcommunities. JRF (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) (2012) ‘Socially just adaptation to climate change’, available at: https://www.climatenorthernireland.co.uk/ cmsfiles/resources/files/Socially-Just-Adaptation-to-CC_JRF-July-2012. pdf. JRF (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) (2016) ‘Care provision fit for a climate future’, available at: https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/care-provision-fitfuture-climate. Kennedy, K. and Snell, C. (2021) ‘How can supermarkets help end food insecurity?’, available at: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/spsw/documents/ research-and-publications/How%20can%20Supermarkets%20help%20 end%20food%20insecurity%20Final%20Report.pdf. Keyßer, L. T. and Lenzen, M. (2021) ‘1.5 °C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways’, Nature Communications, 12: 2676. NEA (National Energy Action) (2021a) Low-Carbon Technology and Rural Energy Poverty: A Review of Policy and Practice in the NPA and EU, available at: https://www.handiheatproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ HANDIHEAT-MAY-2021-FINAL-Version.pdf. NEA (National Energy Action) (2021b) Fuel Poverty Monitor 2021, available at: https://www.nea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/0000_NEA_ Fuel-Poverty-Report-and-Exec-Summary_v2.pdf. NIHE (Northern Ireland Housing Executive) (2016) Housing Condition Survey: Main Report, available at: https://www.nihe.gov.uk/Documents/ Research/HCS-2016-Main-Reports/HCS-Main-Report-2016.aspx. NTTF (National Transition Training Fund) (2021) accessed at: https:// careers.myworldofwork.co.uk/national-transition-training-fund-landingpage. OGUK (Oil & Gas UK) (2021) Workforce & Employment Insight 2021 Report, available at: https://oguk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_ uploads/2021/08/OGUK_Workforce-Employment-Insight-2021-z07os0. pdf. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2021) ‘Consumer price inflation, UK: August 2021’, available at: ht​ t​ p​ s​ :​ /​ /​ w ​ w ​ w ​ .​ o ​ n ​ s​ .​ g​ o ​ v​ .​ u ​ k​ /​ e​ c​ o ​ n ​ o ​ m ​ y​ /​ i​ n ​ ​f​l​at​ i​ o ​ n ​ a​ n ​ d​ p​ r​ i​ c​ e​ i​ n ​ d​ i​ c​ e​ s​ /​ b​ u ​ l​ l​ e​ t​ i​ n ​ s​ /​ c​ o ​ n ​ s​ u ​ m ​ e​ r​ p​ r​ i​ c​ e​ i​ n ​ ​f​l​a​ti​ o ​ n ​ /​ a​ u ​ g​ u ​ s​ t​ 2​ 0​ 2​ 1​ # ​ c​ o ​ n ​ t​ r​ i​ b​ u ​ t​ i​ o ​ n ​ s​ -​ ​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​a​n​n​u​a​l​-​c​p​i​h​-​i​n​f​l​a​t​i​o​n​-​r​a​t​e​. Oreskes, N. (2004) ‘Beyond the ivory tower: the scientific consensus on climate change’, Science, 306: 1686. O’Sullivan, K., Golubchikov, O. and Mehmood, A. (2020) ‘Uneven energy transitions: understanding continued energy peripheralization in rural communities’, Energy Policy, 138: 111288. 21

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Owen, A. and Barrett, J. (2020) ‘Reducing inequality resulting from UK low-carbon policy’, Climate Policy, 20(10): 1193–208. Patel, R. (2021) Food to the rescue? [webinar] [online]. Sustain. Platform, Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace (2021) ‘Training and tickets: the hidden costs for offshore oil & gas workers’, available at: https://platformlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TrainingCosts-Survey-Results.pdf. Roberts, T. and Parks, B. (2006) A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Robins, N., Gouldson, A., Irwin, W., Sudmant, A. and Rydge, J. (2019) ‘Financing inclusive climate action in the UK: an investor roadmap for the just transition’, available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/ wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Financing-inclusive-climate-actionin-the-UK_An-investor-roadmap-for-the-just-transition_POLICYREPORT_56PP.pdf. Schlosberg, D. (2013) ‘Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse’, Environmental Politics, 22(1): 37–55, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.755387. Scottish Government (2016) ‘Delivering affordable warmth in rural Scotland: action plan’, available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/action-plandeliver-affordable-warmth-rural-scotland-proposed-scottish-rural/pages/3. Scottish Government (2019) ‘Scottish house condition survey: 2019 key findings’, available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-housecondition-survey-2019-key-findings/pages/6/. Simcock, N., Jenkins, K., Lacey-Barnacle, M., Martiskainen, M., Mattioli, G. and Hopkins, D. (2021) ‘Identifying double energy vulnerability: a systematic and narrative review of groups at-risk of energy and transport poverty in the global north’, Energy Research & Social Science, 82, no. 102351. Snell, C. (2022) ‘Global climate justice’, in N. Yeates and C. Holden (eds) Understanding Global Social Policy (3rd edn), Bristol: Policy Press, pp 135–58. Snell, C., Bevan, M. and Wade, J. (2018) Policy Pathways to Justice in Energy Efficiency, UK Energy Research Centre, available at: https:// d2e1qxpsswcpgz.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/03/ukerc-working-paper_ policy-pathways-to-justice-in-energy-efficiency.pdf. TUC (2018) ‘Low Carbon Task Force in Yorkshire and the Humber’, available at: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/low-carbon-task-forceyorkshire-and-humber. UK Government (2021a) Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener, available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/1033990/net-zero-strategy-beis.pdf. UK Government (2021b) Rural urban classification, available at: https:// www.gov.uk/government/collections/rural-urban-classification.

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UN (United Nations) (2015) Paris Agreement, available at: https://unfccc. int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_ agreement.pdf. UN (United Nations) (2019) ‘Climate justice – interview with Mary Robinson’, available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ blog/2019/05/climate-justice/. UN (United Nations) (2020) ‘Climate change’, available at: https://www. un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/. UN (United Nations) (2021) ‘Secretary-General’s remarks to the media following the Informal Leaders Roundtable on Climate Action’, available at: https://www.un.org/sg/en/node/259178. UNEP (2021) ‘Emissions Gap Report 2021’, available at: https://www. unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2021. UNFCCC (2021) ‘Gender and climate change’, available at: https://unfccc. int/gender. UNRISD (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development) (2018) ‘Mapping just transition(s) to a low-carbon world’, available at: http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpPublications)/9B3F 4F10301092C7C12583530035C2A5?OpenDocument. Walker, G. (2012) Environmental Justice: Concepts, Evidence, and Politics, London: Routledge. Wang, X. and Lo, K. (2021) ‘Just transition: a conceptual review’, Energy Research and Social Science, 82: 102291. WRAP (2021) Pathway 2030: delivering a 50% reduction in the GHG footprint of UK food and drink, available at: https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/ files/2021-10/WRAP-Pathway-2030-Delivering-a-50%25-reductionin-the-GHG-footprint-of-UK-food-and-drink-summary-report_0.pdf. Yassin, E. (2020) ‘Black Lives Matter and the struggle to centre racial justice in the climate movement’, available at: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/blm-andthe-struggle-to-centre-racial-justice-in-the-climate-movement.

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Localising employment policy: opportunities and challenges Anne Green, Ceri Hughes, Paul Sissons and Abigail Taylor

Introduction The United Kingdom is characterised by an uneven economic geography, with large and persistent regional disparities in economic activity (Gardiner et al, 2013; Martin et al, 2016). Labour market outcomes and conditions vary quite widely over space. Even set within the context of rising employment rates generally in recent years, concentrations of labour market disadvantage persist in a range of settings. This includes areas of deprivation in large urban areas and former industrial towns (Beatty and Fothergill, 2020a, 2020b), as well as in some seaside towns (Beatty et al, 2017). Areas with comparatively weak local economies suffered most in the 2008–09 recession (Lee, 2014) and also appear to have been most severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic (Houston, 2020). The characteristics of place shape labour market outcomes both through the types of jobs that are available locally, as well as through factors which influence the ability of local residents to benefit from the available employment opportunities (either in the immediate area or through commuting). This includes, for example, factors such as transport infrastructure, training opportunities and the availability of childcare which can enable or constrain residents’ ability to access employment opportunities (Green, 2020). In line with national trends, unemployment rates in the area types identified earlier have largely been on a long-term decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, although they tend to remain above the national average (Beatty and Fothergill, 2020a). However, since the 1990s there has also been a concern with rates of economic inactivity, in addition to unemployment. A major driver of this concern has been inactivity due to ill health and the comparatively large historic growth in the numbers of claimants of sickness-related benefits (Beatty et al, 2009; Barnes and Sissons, 2013). More recently, there has also been a shift to increasing concerns with 24

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issues of in-work poverty and poor job quality among those entering the labour force (Jung and Collings, 2021). From the perspective of the policy approach to active labour market policy (ALMP), this concern with job quality has primarily been articulated in terms of access to opportunities for labour market progression (Sissons, 2020). These disparities in labour market outcomes, in terms of unemployment, economic inactivity and job quality and wages, have driven increasing interest in greater local tailoring or ownership of ALMP interventions. Potential benefits of more localised approaches include local partnership structures being a means to integrate policy domains, pooling or aligning funding to specific local aims and the role of local knowledge in tailoring programme design to local needs. However, there are also a range of potential drawbacks to the localisation of employment policy – including issues relating to economies of scale, the availability of knowledge and capacity, short-term churn of programmes and initiatives and concerns about the local variability (postcode lottery) in the quality of service provision (as discussed later). Evidence for increasing interest in place-based policies is seen in the development of Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) approaches to ALMP, which have seen experimentation with different forms of localism of employment interventions. This chapter examines this evolution of approaches and the lessons that these approaches suggest for the role which greater localisation of employment support might play in improving outcomes. In this chapter we examine experiences across several iterations of employment policy. We start with an analysis of City Strategy, an early experimentation of devolving aspects of ALMP aimed at addressing concentrated areas of worklessness. We then examine more recent approaches to the development of ALMP in the context of devolution agreements with some areas, which have enabled greater local ownership of programme design and delivery. Finally, we examine new local approaches to employment charters which move beyond a focus on ALMP but which seek, through a voluntarist approach, to generate changes on the demand side in terms of aspects of local job quality. The chapter is structured as follows. ‘Background’ discusses the background to the focus on localising employment policies and the rationale for and challenges to localisation. It also introduces the three case examples. ‘Key innovations and thematic discussion of cases’ provides an appraisal of innovations in delivery and a thematic discussion of the case examples. ‘Discussion’ provides a discussion which reflects on policy learning and considers what the evidence suggests for the next steps in employment policy. ‘Conclusion’ provides some concluding thoughts.

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Background: localising employment policies Key rationales for localising The context for localising employment policies is the intractability and complexity of entrenched worklessness in certain local areas, even at times when the national picture is favourable. More recently, concerns about the poor quality of a tranche of jobs at the bottom end of the labour market, and obstacles to employment retention and in-work progression, have risen up the policy agenda (as outlined earlier). There has been a proliferation of activities and agencies involved in addressing these issues across a range of policy domains. Officials with responsibility for strategy and policy in local government and partner organisations, as well as think tanks, have been prominent advocates for localising employment policies. For example, the Local Government Association (2019) has launched a practical programme called Work Local to improve employment and skills services in England through local public–private collaborations. The contention is that through improving ‘how employment and skills services respond to local needs and how they are organised and delivered locally … [in a medium-sized combined authority]  … Work Local could result in 8,500 more people in work, additional fiscal benefits of £280 million and a benefit to the economy of £420 million each year’ (Local Government Association, 2019: 3). The case for localisation tends to be made particularly strongly for people facing complex disadvantage, as exemplified by New Local’s call for providers and commissioners who understand their local communities and ecosystems of support to develop local strategies that are holistic and community-led (Pollard and Tjoa, 2020).1 Table 2.1 provides a summary of key rationales for, and concerns regarding, localisation of employment policies. The left-hand panel identifies five interrelated key rationales for localising employment policies. The righthand panel presents associated questions and critiques of localisation. Addressing fragmentation of activities and agencies by enabling integration across related policy domains at local level is the first key reason for localising employment policies identified in the left-hand panel of Table 2.1. Such integration is predicated on identifying what core services need to be aligned and establishing and exercising effective partnership working across separate policy silos. Candidates for local integration include employment, skills, health, housing, debt advice and so forth. Whitworth and Murphy (2018: 8) define ‘locally integrated employment support’ as ‘the bringing together of the range of partner assets at the local level to create a local ecosystem of aligned, mutually reinforcing whole person support in order to better support individuals, make more effective use of scarce budgets and services, and improve outcomes for people and places’. 26

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Localising employment policy Table 2.1: Summary of key rationales for, and concerns regarding localisation of employment policies Rationales for localising

Criticisms and concerns regarding localisation

1) Integration across policy domains: – breaking down policy silos – aligning policies

• How easy is it to align goals across policy domains at local level? • Might an emphasis on horizontal integration at local level be detrimental for multi-scalar vertical alignment of policies at national and local scales if it results in a decoupling of local policy from national policy priorities and thwarts possibilities of success in local areas bidding for future ad hoc competitive funding pots?

2) Aligning and pooling funding to reduce duplication and address gaps in provision

• Is there sufficient financial resource available at the local scale? • Are there inter-organisational challenges in aligning policy goals and pooling budgets?

3) Greater sensitivity/flexibility to local circumstances: – addressing locally specific needs

• Is the local scale – and what ‘local’ scale is – the most appropriate scale for designing and delivering employment policies (see also ‘5’) regarding local expertise and capability)? • Will greater local sensitivity/flexibility undermine the standards and effectiveness of national services and lead to a ‘postcode lottery’ of variable provision (and gaps in provision) of employment policies? • How much scope is there for meaningful local flexibility given the role played by central government in employment policies?

4) Enhancing possibilities for co‑design with local stakeholders, service providers and employers: – leading to greater local buy-in – enhanced local credibility

• The time-limited, short-term ‘start and stop’ nature of many local initiatives raises questions about their sustainability and the longevity of local infrastructure built to support them, with negative implications for local credibility.

5) Enabling utilisation of local knowledge to develop more effective policy

• Is there capability/expertise and capacity at the local level to develop more effective policy? • Does greater local autonomy result in better outcomes?

The second reason set out in Table 2.1 is aligning – and, if possible, pooling – funding to reduce duplication and address gaps in provision. This, in turn, links to the third rationale: localisation allows greater sensitivity and flexibility to meet local needs. This rests on the notion that policy interventions can be more efficient and effective when they can tap into, and are responsive to, local contexts, which is the argument made by Work Local outlined previously. An important related question is what geographical scale ‘local’ relates to – and here the case can be made for neighbourhood-level delivery of basic skills, for example, but local authority or city-region scale 27

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for aligning funding, planning services and engaging employers. The fourth reason identified is enhanced possibilities for co-design of policy and service delivery with a range of local stakeholders, potentially leading to greater buy-in and enhanced local credibility. Analyses of local policy interventions, including across employment and health domains, conclude that co-location of service providers can help here (Beatty et al, 2020), since it eases the codesign process and cross-referral of beneficiaries between services. Fifthly, and underpinning each of the four justifications noted earlier – integration, alignment, greater local sensitivity and advantages of co-design – is the contention that local officials are likely to have superior knowledge to their national counterparts, thus making them more effective policymakers (Adams, 2016). Hence, enhanced utilisation of local knowledge in the policy formulation and delivery process is viewed by proponents of localisation as a positive feature. Criticisms and concerns around localising A key question for critiques of localising employment policies is whether a locally designed and delivered approach to employment support, complemented by integrated local services, necessarily achieves better long-term outcomes. A key challenge here is that there are fewer impact evaluations of locally designed policies than of national policies, and this is especially the case for time-limited local policies. Hence the available evidence base for local tailoring of initiatives is patchy. Assessing the effectiveness of local initiatives raises the issue of what the performance comparator should be, particularly when the outcomes of interest in local initiatives do not map directly onto national performance monitoring and/ or where initiatives are being implemented in very different conditions over time or between areas (see eg Green and Adam, 2011; Learning and Work Institute, 2018). A series of concerns regarding localisation of employment policies are listed in the right-hand panel of Table  2.1, alongside the rationales presented for localisation. Firstly, integration across policy domains is not straightforward. Moreover, in addition to horizontal integration at local level, to be effective local policy needs to be aligned vertically across a range of geographical scales, including upwards to the national level and downwards to the neighbourhood level. Secondly, there are practical challenges in aligning policies across local organisations, especially given that organisational goals and key performance indicators tend to take precedence over local partnership goals. Pooling budgets is more challenging than aligning them, and this is a pertinent issue given the limited amount of financial resource available at local level, especially in an overly centralised system such as the UK. 28

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Thirdly, critics of localisation question whether the local level is the most appropriate scale for designing and delivering employment policies. This in turn raises the issue of what is the most applicable geographical scale for the localisation of employment support policy. Here there is some consensus among commentators that the city-region scale is the appropriate scale for an integrated local employment support system (Whitworth and Carter, 2018). But given the role played by central government in a centralised system, as noted earlier, there are limits to how meaningful local flexibility can be in practice. For critics of localisation there is also a more fundamental concern regarding equity of treatment (see Finn, 2015), given that in a localised system differential resources, capability and capacity (discussed later) will likely result in differential service delivery, resulting in a so-called postcode lottery with the possibility of gaps in provision. Differences in local infrastructure, resources, and histories and maturity of local partnership working compound concerns about inequity. Fourthly, in practice to date local employment interventions have tended to be time-limited (Wilson et  al, 2017). Yet evidence suggests that it takes time to mobilise and engage partners locally (Beatty et  al, 2020), and increased responsibility for developing and implementing policy in a localised system can restrict the space available for policy and practice learning (Jansen et al, 2021). Local infrastructures for policy co-design and delivery can be difficult to maintain without successor interventions. A lack of sustainability and longevity of local partnership working and delivery can lead to a lack of trust and have negative implications for local credibility. Fifthly, many of the concerns outlined earlier relate to expertise, capability and capacity at local level to design and deliver local employment policies. While there is such expertise and capability in some city-regions, not all areas have such capacity. Moreover, there is a ‘tendency for devolution to unrealistically position city-regions as autonomous areas abstracted from broader macro-level structural patterns’ (Whitworth and Carter, 2018: 286) when their autonomy and resources are restricted by central government and so their capacity and scope to formulate locally sensitive policies is limited. Even where there is some capacity for local discretion within local initiatives, the ability to offer different forms of support may be constrained by wider factors, for example where the performance of support workers continues to be evaluated against narrow job entry outcomes (Johnson et al, 2021). Overview of the three broad cases The first broad case considered in this review is the City Strategy (CS) initiative. It is selected here because it was the first direct experiment in devolving aspects of DWP-related welfare to work policy to local government. Established in 2007, it was initially set to run for two years but 29

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was extended to run for a further two years. Fifteen CS pathfinders (CSPs), covering one or several local authorities, were established in 2007 in parts of England, Wales and Scotland characterised by entrenched worklessness. The CS initiative was designed to combat worklessness (encompassing the unemployed and the economically inactive) by empowering and mobilising local partnerships to combine and align their efforts behind shared priorities to develop locally sensitive solutions to improve economic regeneration through employment, skills and health-related initiatives, taking account of existing local partnership structures and patterns of deprivation (Crighton et al, 2009). The CSP local partnerships aimed to support disadvantaged individuals to better find and remain in work, including through an emphasis on skills development (Green and Adam, 2011). The second broad case concerns employment innovation pilots established by the DWP in 2017. Building on previous experience of devolution deals, six mayoral combined authorities (CAs) in England were commissioned to trial pilot innovative employment schemes to help disadvantaged people move into good jobs. The parameters for what could be done locally were set by central government (ie the scope and nature of the pilots had to be acceptable to the DWP), but each CA could design and commission a pilot scheme they considered appropriate to their local area. Three employment innovation pilots are considered here. The West Midlands CA designed the Connecting Communities (CC) pilot, supporting out-of-work and inwork individuals. It took a place-based approach to employment support aiming not just to help participants move into and progress in work but also to strengthen local communities by increasing their income from work and improving residents’ health and wellbeing. The Households into Work (HiW) programme in the Liverpool city-region had a household rather than individual focus and was designed to address systemic worklessness across generations. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (C&P) pilot adopted an in-work and sectoral focus encouraging employment entry and progression within the health and social care sector. The third case is local employment charter initiatives. These are ‘bottom up’ voluntary initiatives that emerge from, and are supported by, key local stakeholders. They have been the subject of considerable interest as issues of ‘good work’ including concerns about in-work poverty, precarity and flexible/atypical forms of working implications for worker rights and job quality have risen up the policy agenda (Taylor et al, 2017). Employment charters aim to define good employment practices, to recognise employers that meet those expectations and/or to support employers to improve their employment practices (Hughes et al, 2017). They can include commitments relating to pay and conditions (eg  adopting a real living wage policy), recruitment practices (eg targeting residents in priority areas), employee engagement and investment in training and development. 30

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Frameworks for analysing and understanding local employment initiatives In international comparative terms, traditionally the UK employment support system is characterised by central commissioning, lean spending and limited local connectivity (Whitworth and Murphy, 2018). Similarly, Wilson et al (2017) highlight the centralised nature of employment policy, with limited local input to design and implementation. In order to analyse the extent of localisation of different local employment initiatives it may be helpful to place them on a continuum from centralisation to localisation. Atkinson (2010) designed such a framework in a broad typology of approaches to the governance of employment policy. He identified seven types, from 1: centralised delivery to 7: full devolution of responsibilities (see Table  2.2). The types reflect extant governance Table 2.2: Typology of approaches to the governance of employment policy Type

Description

1. Centralised delivery

No local sensitivity or flexibility.

Central government permitting local offices within the national 2. Providing greater local discretion within the public public employment service to initiate different or additional activity aimed specifically at meeting local needs and enabling employment service active participation in local partnerships. 3. Market-based approaches

Area-based employment initiatives for employment are designed and managed nationally but delivered locally by a contractor appointed through an open tendering process. Contractors may have the freedom to build local delivery capacity, tailor provision to local needs and involve local partners as they see fit.

4. National initiatives owned locally

Programmes and initiatives are conceived, designed and funded at the national level, but they are managed and implemented locally. Local partnerships have some flexibility over priority objectives, activities and target groups, with a degree of freedom as to how these results are achieved and how progress is monitored.

5. Recognition, promotion and enabling of a national network of local partnerships

National recognition, practical support and funding for the work of local partnerships. Local partnerships can set their own objectives, with guidance and ‘monitoring by objectives’ rather than micro-management from the national level.

6. Locally initiated activity Local bodies take their own initiative in undertaking activity aimed at generating or influencing employment outcomes for individuals, often in partnership with others. This activity may be formally recognised and promoted. 7. Full devolution of responsibilities

National government fully devolves particular responsibilities for developing, implementing and managing employment programmes or initiatives to regional or local levels.

Source: Adapted from table 2.1 in Atkinson (2010)

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approaches and developments in employment policy at the time – including moves to market-based approaches and greater emphasis on local partnership working – so perhaps limiting its contemporary applicability. A different, and arguably more useful, approach for analysing and understanding local employment initiatives highlights five parameters for devolution (Wilson et  al, 2017) (see Table  2.3). Here the emphasis is wider than a primary emphasis on governance. This multidimensional framework embraces: (1)  service design and delivery: what services are then delivered and how; (2) budgets and financing: where funding sits, and with what decision-making powers and/or conditions; (3) determining policy: what policies are pursued for whom; (4) objective setting: who determines priorities and accompanying targets; and (5) governance and partnerships – how services are coordinated and led, including the roles of local partners, stakeholders and employers. While these are not necessarily the only parameters of interest, this more recent framework may have greater resonance for an appraisal including current examples of local employment policies. Table 2.3: Five-parameter framework for devolution of employment policies Type

Description

1. Service design and delivery

How services are organised at local scale

2. Budgets and financing

Who controls funding and conditions of funding

3. Determining policy

Extent of autonomy over what policies are pursued locally

Design and implementation of services: – locally commissioned services – tailoring of national policy to local needs Autonomy in shifting funding (eg between programmes, years, etc) Nature and extent of reinvestment in savings Deciding which groups are prioritised for support Nature of requirements

4. Objective setting

How priorities are determined locally: – what priorities are Translation of priorities into targets/agreements

5. Governance and partnerships

Arrangements for oversight of objectives, targets, financing, delivery Relationship between local and national government Relationship with key stakeholders Partnerships between services and with employers for: – planning – joint working – intelligence gathering – information sharing

Source: Adapted from figure 3.1 in Wilson et al (2017)

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Key innovations and thematic discussion of cases This section contrasts the three broad cases analysed in this chapter. It analyses changes in the types of support and types of partnership working and governance promoted in the cases before identifying key lessons across the pilots in terms of common challenges, concerns and successes. Table 2.4 summarises the focus, coverage, support offered and model adopted by the cases discussed. It analyses the cases in relation to key parameters in the Atkinson (2010) and Wilson et al (2017) frameworks. How does the focus of the initiatives vary? The focus of the initiatives varies, including among the three employment support pilots. The CS initiative and the employment support pilots focused on helping beneficiaries to move into or progress in good employment, while the local employment charters aim to promote good employment through working with employers. The rise of in-work poverty up the policy agenda is reflected in the emphasis in the CS initiative on out-of-work claimants (unemployed or economically inactive), whereas two of the three employment support pilots considered here either included (CC) or focused on (C&P) supporting individuals already in work. CS is one of the earlier examples of DWP recognising the importance of place in employment policy. CC was innovative in adopting a place-based neighbourhood approach. The C&P pilot brought in a sectoral focus encouraging employment entry and progression within the health and social care sector. How similar are they in terms of service design and delivery? While similar stakeholders were involved in the three broad cases, the initiatives demonstrate different types of service design and delivery options. CS involved a multi-agency approach. Local partners included local authorities, employers, Learning and Skills Councils, Regional Development Agencies, primary care trusts, Jobcentre Plus and other agencies. Learning and Skills Councils and Regional Development Agencies no longer exist but were key stakeholders at the time. This local partnership model was designed to address the intractability and complexity of issues to be tackled while orchestrating the proliferation of agencies and quasi-state agencies at a variety of scales with responsibilities in regeneration, employment, skills, education, training and so forth. The three employment support pilots were commissioned by DWP and then managed and implemented by the relevant mayoral combined authority through different local partnership models. The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) commissioned nine providers to deliver CC. Local 33

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partnership working varied significantly. Lead provider organisations differed in terms of size and expertise, ranging from further education colleges to national training providers and from national welfare to work organisations to local employment support providers. The pilot aimed to grow employer engagement as the pilot proceeded. The HiW pilot involved collaboration between the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA), six local authorities and the DWP. Unlike in CC, LCRCA directly employs the employment advocates delivering support to beneficiaries. Though the employment advocates connect clients to services, the process was designed to be organic leading to formation of informal partnerships rather than commissioning of services. The pilot – developed in collaboration between Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, the local NHS, private care provider representation, local authorities and Jobcentre Plus – was also distinctive due to the advocacy role pursued by the employment advisers (Amion Consulting, nd). Healthcare providers played a larger role in the C&P pilot. The integration of health and care employers into the programme is an important aspect of its delivery and shapes the ability of the pilot to respond to current and emerging sectoral skills and employment needs. Partnership working in the charters has varied between areas but has included consultation between policymakers, employer representatives, union representatives, and professional and public bodies. A key reason for this collaborative approach is to ensure that any definition of ‘good employment’ that is set out in a charter will be recognised by local actors. Another argument for local partnership and accreditation schemes of this sort is that they can help employers to navigate a fragmented support system (although they are also viewed by some as part of this system, with engagement creating an administrative burden for employers). How do the governance, partnership, budget and financing models in the initiatives differ? The CS initiative was premised on giving local partnerships flexibility to foster new ways of working and to tailor interventions to subgroups of clients in particular local areas. In the event, the degree of local flexibility which CSPs received was less than some expected at the outset of the initiative (and in some cases felt that they were promised). CSPs were typically at level 5 in the Atkinson framework (recognition, promotion and enabling of a national network of local partnerships) (see Table 2.2). This indicates that CSPs are positioned at a point on the spectrum between centralised and fully devolved delivery which is more towards the fully devolved end. The CSPs had considerable influence in setting their own objectives while having national support and being offered enabling flexibilities and a relatively hands-off 34

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approach to management. DWP contributed to CS financing directly in three ways: (1) providing ‘seedcorn’ to be used in a completely flexible way to kick-start consortia development; (2) devolving to CSPs control of the Deprived Areas Fund (DAF) – a flexible pot of money from DWP, intended to add value to current mainstream services offered by Jobcentre Plus; and (3) ‘reward’ funding. By contrast, the three employment support pilots resulted from locally initiated activity. The C&P pilot was locally driven in terms of selecting the sector focus and local employment needs around health and care. These sectors were also relevant locally given the geographically broad spread of employment in these within the context of the urban/non-urban geographies of the combined authority area. Within the WMCA, ‘inclusive growth’ was a central theme in the Strategic Economic Plan, the Regional Skills Plan and the Local Industrial Strategy, reflecting how the city-region performs relatively poorly on key skills indicators and has an employment rate lower than the national average. At the time the pilot was launched, Liverpool city-region had the highest rate of residents accessing out-of-work benefits and receiving sickness benefits of any economic area nationally (Tyrrell, 2020). However, although the pilots are locally owned (and in the case of Liverpool directly delivered by the LCRCA), the sense of devolved decision-making is constrained by the need for agreement (a ‘deal’) with central government on terms which are acceptable to them. So, while the pilots demonstrated local innovation and new approaches and involved CAs as commissioners, the extent to which they feature any significant deviation from the core wider national ALMP framework can be questioned. The pilot is arguably level  6 in the Atkinson framework, with the pilots being locally designed and embedded. However, as funding of the pilots remains centralised, they share some aspects of level 4 initiatives (national initiatives owned locally). Charters can be viewed as a ‘bottom up’ employment policy initiative in the sense that they emerge from, and are supported by, key local stakeholders. As such, they also fit most easily into type 6 in the Atkinson framework although they are quite different in governance to the employment support pilots. The charters could even be viewed as a reaction to a more laissez-faire national approach to employment policy, set in the context of a largely deregulated, flexible labour market. Their growing popularity may be partly linked to the process of city-region devolution in England and the governance changes that were pushed through in association with these, particularly the introduction of metro mayors. Several of the initiatives have been spearheaded by mayors and while local charter initiatives existed prior to the introduction of metro mayors, the voluntarist partnership model that charters rely on has proved attractive to local policymakers seeking to articulate economic and social policy ambitions that stretch beyond 35

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the formal and somewhat limited powers that were devolved through the city deals and formal agreements. Employment charters currently do not generally involve dedicated formal funding to support their development. Instead, initiatives have had to rely on wider support such as signposting funding options provided through existing partner programmes, in-kind contributions from partners and resources from other council programmes. The availability of such support varies by locality. The need to expand the availability of funding (in terms of both marketing the charters and incentivising employers to sign up) to support expansion of charter engagement among employers has been emphasised as an issue (Hurrell et al, 2017). What key challenges did the initiatives face? The initiatives have experienced various challenges which provide learning for future policies. Changing economic conditions (ie a worsening of the economic situation) posed a challenge early in the lifetime of the CSPs and impacted on their activities, while the lack of comprehensive monitoring systems made evaluation difficult. Some of the key learning from the CS initiative relates to the ‘governance and partnerships’ parameter in the Wilson framework. It offers learning regarding partnership working at local and subregional scales: ‘CS was a successful initiative in terms of building effective local/ sub-regional partnerships to address challenges of worklessness’ (Green and Adam, 2011: 68). Positive features of local/subregional partnership working were: • working together across policy domains, often with new providers and stakeholders; • more joined-up approaches to tackling worklessness; • greater ability to respond to new opportunities because of the foundations set by CS partnership working; • the sharing of information between local partners and between local partnerships; • nurturing new ways of working. A significant challenge for the employment support pilots was the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to switch from face-to-face to physical delivery models. While evaluations of the C&P and CC pilots are ongoing and not publicly available at the point of writing, evaluations of HiW identify important lessons for service design, partnerships and supporting people back into work in a post-COVID world. These include the benefits of placing users at the centre of service design and delivery; promoting 36

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holistic solutions to address long-term health, social and economic issues created and exacerbated by the pandemic; and crucially, in relation to the ‘determining policy’ and ‘objective setting’ parameters of the Wilson et al framework, investing in locally tailored solutions to prevent the potential widening of inequalities (Tyrrell, 2020). What have they achieved? CSPs struggled to meet their initial targets for benefit reductions and increases in employment rates set by DWP for the end of the first two years of the initiative. Attempts to do so were thrown off course by the global economic recession and the subsequent lack of demand across the economy. Comparing CSP areas in aggregate against Great Britain and a comparison area indicated that the gaps for employment rates and benefit claimants’ rates had remained stable (Green and Adam, 2011). Given that the CSPs covered areas with some of the highest and most entrenched levels of worklessness in Great Britain, this was interpreted as a favourable outcome. Overall, CS partnerships played an important role in orchestrating a multiplicity of agencies at a variety of spatial scales with responsibilities in fields relevant to tackling worklessness. Experience of partnership working in the CS initiative highlighted the importance of, firstly, a strong central team to lead and provide the secretariat for the partnership; secondly, representation on partnership boards and wider consortia from public, voluntary and private sectors; and thirdly, a division in responsibility whereby the partnership board focused on a strategic overview while delivery details were delegated to subgroups. The C&P and CC pilots are subject to impact evaluation, however given their ongoing nature this full information is not yet available. Both pilots experienced some delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The C&P pilot will provide important learning about the extent to which sectorfocused employment programmes can help to support progression outcomes. The international evidence base suggests there are some benefits to a sector-focused approach (Sissons et al, 2016), but this evidence base is still in development. The health and care sectors offer large numbers of job vacancies and experience labour and skills shortages at various levels. As such the pilot provides a good example of a ‘dual-customer’ approach which seeks to simultaneously meet and marry up the needs of job seekers and job changers (including for career development) with the needs of employers. The CC evaluation will offer insights into the opportunities and challenges offered by physical and virtual delivery models as well as strengths and challenges of adopting geographical saturation-based approaches. HiW is an example of a successful model of regional and local partnership working taking an innovative holistic-based approach to employment support. 37

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Evidence shows strong progress on outputs and outcomes: 1,062 households were recruited (above the target of 800), 851 achieved a progress measure and 722 made significant progress. The interim evaluation stresses the value of intensive long-term support, strong outreach and client-centred advocacy through the employment advisers (Amion Consulting, nd). There is little direct evaluation evidence of local charters at present. An interim evaluation has been produced for the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter (MMU, 2021) and is broadly positive about its design and implementation so far.

Discussion The localised employment policy cases considered in this chapter illustrate the potential to adopt alternative approaches to ALMP in the UK. CS aimed to empower local actors to build partnerships that could devise sensitive local approaches to a common concern – tackling concentrated worklessness – often by complementing mainstream services with local wrap-around provision and addressing gaps in mainstream provision. In practice local partnerships were given the opportunity to manage welfare to work services in their local areas, operating within nationally determined eligibility requirements and practices. There is some evidence for a positive evolution in localisation since CS. In the terms of the governance framework proposed by Atkinson (2010), the pilots afford greater space for local discretion within wider activation policy, while the employment charters emerge more directly from local policy agendas. The employment support pilots trialled more flexible and responsive approaches to addressing issues associated with poor health and worklessness. For example, rather than focusing on individuals in a particular benefit group, some of the pilots have worked with households and across areas; they have attempted to provide more tailored support and to bring together a range of services at local level; and they have also linked skills and employment support agendas locally and turned attention to the role of employers in securing positive outcomes for individuals and in delivering quality work opportunities. The sector focus in the C&P case reflected local employment needs around health and care, whereas the household focus in Liverpool City Region responded to high rates of residents accessing outof-work benefits and sickness benefits. Meanwhile, local good employment charters have been developed by local actors in several areas to promote better employment practices, rather than emerging directly from a national framework for promoting good employment. These initiatives are concerned with the quality of the work that is available, a concern that has been neglected in activation policy in the UK.

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Table 2.4: Overview of City Strategy, employment support pilots and local employment charters Name of initiative Focus of initiative

Beneficiary/ies

Coverage

Support offered

Model adopted

City Strategy

Disadvantaged individuals (unemployed and economically inactive on out-of-work benefits). In some areas there were also subgroup foci within this.

15 CS Pathfinder (CSP) areas across England, Wales and Scotland.

Some interventions were discrete and new, whereas others were concerned with making existing provision work better. Sometimes this involved developing local infrastructure to better support ongoing activities.

National funding with local delivery. Some instances of co‑commissioning.

Supporting unemployed individuals and those in low-paid jobs with limited opportunities for progression (including individuals on Universal Credit).

Aimed to train 2,100 people Support spanned recruitment, across Cambridgeshire and delivery, and progression. Peterborough. Pathway from healthcare assistants into health careers.

Linking employment entry to sustainable careers and progression in the health and care sectors with large-scale employment vacancies locally.

Clear variation in geographical size of CSP areas.

Client (in particular) and employer engagement. Many CSPs targeted their resources, either by area (the most disadvantaged wards) or by benefit subgroup. Strong partnership focus. Local design but central government funding agreement.

Sector specific skill training co‑designed with employers; basic skills training; apprenticeships; careers advice, including post-employment support; and wrap around childcare and transport support. (continued)

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Employment support pilot 1: Cambridgeshire and Peterborough – Health and Care Sector Work Academy

Empowering local institutions to come together in partnerships to develop locally sensitive solutions.

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Name of initiative Focus of initiative

Beneficiary/ies

Coverage

Support offered

Model adopted

Employment support pilot 2: Connecting Communities programme

Place-based employment support pilot to tackle unemployment and low pay within local communities.

All working-age residents in the nine areas, and workingage people with other connections to the locality.

Implemented in nine geographically predefined areas (‘communities’) across the West Midlands Combined Authority area.

Support designed to be flexible and responsive over the lifetime of the pilots, both to the needs of participants and to the locality.

Geographic saturation model.

Employment support pilot 3: Households into Work programme

Addressing longterm and entrenched worklessness among households (including generational worklessness).

Focus on households where more than one adult is unemployed and in receipt of benefits.

Aimed to support 800 households providing holistic support across the six local authority areas.

Tailored support is offered to each household via an employment advocate assigned to help the individual and household into work over a 12-month period.

Local design but central government funding agreement.

Local design but central government funding agreement; providers selected via a competitive Core elements of support: review of barriers to work, action bidding process. planning, job search support, and Designed to avoid in-work support. ‘cherry-picking’ the easiest to help.

Employment advocates are employed by the LCRCA and are structured into six teams, one for each authority area. Organic formation of informal partnerships. (continued)

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40 Table 2.4: Overview of City Strategy, employment support pilots and local employment charters (continued)

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Table 2.4: Overview of City Strategy, employment support pilots and local employment charters (continued) Name of initiative Focus of initiative Local employment charters, standards and accreditation schemes

Describing good employment practices, recognising employers that meet those expectations and/or supporting employers to improve employment practices.

Beneficiary/ies

Coverage

Support offered

Generally workers and employers in city/ city-region in which charters introduced.

Initiatives are being implemented or planned in London, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and the North of Tyne (among others).

What it means to engage with a charter can vary.

Locally initiated activity, not subject to formal negotiation The two more prominent with government initiatives (in London and departments but scope Greater Manchester) have for engagement and adopted a tiered design, which partnership building sets out principles of good therefore more employment that employers will dependent on local need to comply with to become resource and capacity. full members or be accredited by the scheme.

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Some national accreditation initiatives (eg the Living Wage Accreditation scheme, the Scottish Business Pledge, the TUC Great Jobs Charter), or have a sectoral focus (eg the UNISON ethical care charter).

Model adopted

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This chapter does not aim to determine the effectiveness of these individual cases, a task made more difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the limited evaluation evidence that is publicly available, but rather to consider their wider implications. While the frameworks discussed earlier aid us in describing the extent to which governance approaches and policy design have been or might be localised, they are less well suited to assessing the true scope for policy innovation at local level. For example, while a number of the pilots were delivered by external providers through a selective bidding process, new delivery models are emerging around some of the pilots. The employment advocates in the HiW pilot are employed directly by the CA, so they are delivered by city-regional government rather than the public employment service. The development of informal partnerships at local level brings added agility to the employment support provided. This set-up also allowed the pilot to rapidly respond to the challenges of the pandemic, including the ‘introduction of a new service “offer” for households that would not have been possible with a more traditional contracting model’ (Tyrrell, 2020: 2). There are also two other issues that the frameworks do not address. Firstly, it is unclear how far positive developments from localised employment policy will or can feed back to national policymaking, or whether their impact will also be localised. In 2017 the pilots were billed by the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government as a way of trialling new approaches to ‘help the most disadvantaged people in our society to get the security of a good job and a regular pay packet, helping to build a country that works for everyone’ (DWP, 2017). Learning from the pilots could take place on a number of levels, whether by building local capacity and improving local policy implementation, or through influencing provision and design elsewhere or nationally. But it is unclear what level of performance would be necessary to secure broader change, and whether the requisite evidence is being collected to support any future case for change. The value of local coordination and integration of services has been highlighted amid the economic and health crises wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and initiatives have also had to change to reflect this new context, including shifting to different forms of delivery. It is possible that the initial impact of the pilots will be more evident locally. They may embed local partnership working or help to clarify policy ambitions locally and lead to further devolution asks. It is possible to trace this kind of narrative for Working Well, which started as an employment support pilot in Greater Manchester, was extended and led to a local cocommissioning role for Greater Manchester (alongside London) in the Work and Health programme. In contrast, local employment charters provide an example of locally initiated employment policy that is not linked directly to national policy agendas, although there are shared concerns with low 42

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productivity and extending worker rights and increasing access to ‘good work’ (through the Government’s Good Work Plan). A second and related issue is the varied capacity of local areas to develop localised employment policy. The employment support pilots were not allocated based on need and extended only to mayoral combined authorities which had been through an opaque deal-making process entailing asymmetries in power and information. Local areas were required to bid to secure additional funding and flexibilities, with success subject to political discretion (Tomaney, 2016). Local employment charters are not subject to any competitive tendering process or prerequisite governance structures, but not all areas are equal in terms of the resource and profile that they will be able to draw on to promote good employment practices and enable employer engagement. Local actors may be able to access ad hoc funding or ‘bend’ other funding sources to support engagement, or they may embed good employment charters in local commissioning procedures, creating incentives to engage for some employers, but this will not be an option for all. The uneven impact of austerity measures will also act to shrink the capacity of the local state to devise locally sensitive solutions, particularly where this is contingent on marshalling increasingly limited local resources (Gray and Barford, 2018).

Conclusion This chapter has examined changing orientations towards localism in ALMP in the UK. In taking an early example of the approach to the local delivery of employment services – City Strategy – and comparing this to the most recent iteration of employment programmes – the employment innovation pilots – we find evidence of a shift towards some greater localism of design and delivery. This shift has been documented through the use of frameworks of decentralisation. Overall, this evidence suggests that the local, in terms of local tailoring, priority setting and delivery, has become more embedded in ALMP delivery frameworks. We also highlight the limits of this localisation. In particular, the employment innovation pilots are nested within a wider political devolution of powers which is heavily structured by the asymmetric power relationship between the national and local, whereby what can be negotiated is strongly framed by national priorities. This dynamic raises two issues. The first is the extent to which local areas have true scope for innovation in designing employment policy, given the constraints of national policy priorities. Secondly, by linking to a political process of devolution, there are concerns about the equity of provision and issues around the extent to which the current settlement is genuinely ‘needs-led’. This linking of devolution to ALMP also raises the question of ‘what next?’ in terms of the role which 43

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new evidence assembled through the pilots plays in subsequent policy development. It is as yet unclear how the evidence from the pilots will be used, how transferable the findings might be and, more fundamentally, whether they are seen as a test ground to extend the processes of devolving policy design of ALMP. The third group of case study examples we have discussed, employment charters, perhaps also demonstrates something significant in the limits of ALMP. In recent years there has been a successive shift in emphasis from work entry to employment sustainability, and most recently, in the context of Universal Credit, to include in-work progression (albeit the overarching design remains structured around a ‘work first’ approach). However, this shift to a concern with in-work experiences also necessitates changes on the demand side – addressing patterns of work which are unstable and offer limited opportunities for development. There has been a growing debate about the ideas around ‘good work’ and some policy development within this space. However, this dialogue is often disconnected from discussions around ALMP design and functioning. Considering the role which ALMP does, can and should play in a wider agenda around ‘good work’ is perhaps now the central challenge, and one where, in the absence of leadership from national government, local areas might play a role in taking forward this conversation. Note 1

New Local is an independent think tank and network of councils, with a mission to transform public services and unlock community power.

References Adams, B. E. (2016) ‘Assessing the merits of decentralization: a framework for identifying the causal mechanisms influencing policy outcomes’, Politics and Policy, 44(5): 820–49. Amion Consulting (nd) Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Impact Evaluation of the Households Into Work Pilot – Draft Final Report, available at: https://moderngov.merseytravel.gov.uk/documents/s50744/Enc.%20 5%20for%20Households%20into%20Work.pdf. Atkinson, I. (2010) ‘Governance structures and devolved delivery of employment outcomes’, Department for Work and Pensions Research Report 678. Barnes, H. and Sissons, P. (2013) ‘Redefining “fit for work”: welfare reform and the introduction of Employment Support Allowance’, in C. Lindsay and D. Houston (eds) Disability Benefits, Welfare Reform and Employment Policy, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 72–93.

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Beatty, C., Crisp, R. and Gore, T. (2020) ‘Co-design in the WorkingWin programme: good practice and learning’, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University. Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. (2020a) ‘The long shadow of job loss: Britain’s older industrial towns in the 21st century’, Frontiers in Sociology, 5: 54. Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. (2020b) ‘Recovery or stagnation? Britain’s older industrial towns since the recession’, Regional Studies, 54(9): 1238–49. Beatty, C., Fothergill, S. and Gore, T. (2017) ‘The real level of unemployment 2017’, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University. Beatty, C., Fothergill, S., Houston, D., Powell, R. and Sissons, P. (2009) ‘A gendered theory of employment, unemployment, and sickness’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 27(6): 958–74. Crighton, M., Turok, I. and Leleux, C. (2009) ‘Tensions in localising welfare to work in Britain’s cities’, Local Economy, 24(1): 46–67. DWP (2017) Press release: ‘£35 million of innovative employment schemes to benefit thousands of disadvantaged people’, 1  August, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/35-million-of-innovativeemployment-schemes-to-benefit-thousands-of-disadvantaged-people. Finn, D. (2015) Welfare to work devolution in England, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Gardiner, B., Martin, R., Sunley, P. and Tyler, P. (2013) ‘Spatially unbalanced growth in the British economy’, Journal of Economic Geography, 13(6): 889–928. Gray, M. and Barford, A. (2018) ‘The depths of the cuts: the uneven geography of local government austerity’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(3): 541–63. Green, A. (2020) Spatial inequalities in access to Good Work, London: The Work Foundation. Green, A. and Adam, D. (2011) ‘City Strategy: final evaluation’, Department for Work and Pensions Research Report 783. Houston, D. (2020) ‘Local resistance to rising unemployment in the context of the COVID-19 mitigation policies across Great Britain’, Regional Science Policy and Practice, 12: 1189–209. Hughes, C., Hurrell, D.-L., Ball, E. and Skinner, T. (2017) ‘Good jobs in Greater Manchester: the role of employment charters’, an IGAU report, Manchester: University of Manchester. Hurrell, D. L., Hughes, C. and Ball, E. (2017) ‘Local employment charters: case studies from the UK’, Manchester: University of Manchester, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Oxfam, available at: https://hummedia. manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/igau/briefings/IGAU-EmploymentCase-studies.pdf.

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Jansen, E., Javornik, J. and Brummel, A. (2021) ‘Central-local tensions in the decentralization of social policies: street-level bureaucrats and social practices in the Netherlands’, Social Policy & Administration, 55(7): 1262–75. Johnson, M., Martínez Lucio, M., Grimshaw, D. and Watt, L. (2021) ‘Swimming against the tide? Street-level bureaucrats and the limits to inclusive active labour market programmes in the UK’, Human Relations, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267211045037. Jung, C. and Collings, F. (2021) ‘Full employment and good jobs for all: why the UK is seeing a lopsided jobs recovery and what to do about it’, Institute for Public Policy Research. Learning and Work Institute (2018) Greater Manchester Working Well: Early Impact Assessment, London: Learning and Work Institute, available at: https://learningandwork.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/WorkingWell-Greater-Manchester-Early-impact-assessment.pdf. Lee, N. (2014) ’Grim down south? The determinants of unemployment increases in British cities in the 2008–2009 recession’, Regional Studies, 48(11): 1761–78. Local Government Association (2019) Work Local: Making Our Vision a Reality, London: Local Government Association. Martin, R., Pike, A., Tyler, P. and Gardiner, B. (2016) ‘Spatially rebalancing the UK economy: towards a new policy model?’, Regional Studies, 50(2): 342–57. MMU (2021) GM Charter Evaluation Interim Report, Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, available at: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/media/ mmuacuk/content/documents/business-school/decent-work-andproductivity/GM-Charter-Evaluation-Interim-Report-June-2021.pdf. Pollard, T. and Tjoa, P. (2020) ‘This isn’t working: reimagining employment support for people facing complex disadvantage’, London: New Local. Sissons, P. (2020) ‘Making progress? The challenges and opportunities for increasing wage and career progression’, London: The Work Foundation. Sissons, P., Green, A. and Lee, N. (2016) Supporting Progression in Growth Sectors: A Review of the International Evidence, Cardiff: PPIW, available at: PPIW-Report-ESRC-Evidence-Review-Paper-Progression.pdf. Taylor, M., Marsh, G., Nicol, D. and Broadbent, P. (2017) Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, available at: h​t​t​p​s​:​/​/​a​s​s​e​t​s​.​ p​ub​ l​ i​ s​ h ​ i​ n ​ g​ .​ s​ e​ r​ v​ i​ c​ e​ .​ g​ o ​ v​ .​ u ​ k​ /​ g​ o ​ v​ e​ r​ n ​ m ​ e​ n ​ t​ /​ u ​ p​ l​ o ​ a​ d​ s​ /​ s​ y​ s​ t​ e​ m ​ /​ u ​ p​ l​ o ​ a​ d​ s​ /​ a​ t​ t​ a​ c​ h ​ m ​ e​ n ​ t​ ​ _d​ a​ t​ a​ /​ ​f​i​l​e/​ 6​ 2​ 7​ 6​ 7​ 1​ /​ g​ o ​ o ​ d​ -​ w ​ o ​ r​ k​ -​ t​ a​ y​ l​ o ​ r​ -​ r​ e​ v​ i​ e​ w ​ -​ m ​ o ​ d​ e​ r​ n ​ -​ w ​ o ​ r​ k​ i​ n ​ g​ -​ p​ r​ a​ c​ t​ i​ c​ e​ s​ -​ r​ ​g​.​p​d​f ​. Tomaney, J. (2016) ‘Limits of devolution: localism, economics and postdemocracy’, The Political Quarterly, 87(4): 546–52.

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Tyrrell, B. (2020) ‘Households Into Work – interim evaluation of pilot programme’, University of Liverpool, available at: https://www.liverpool. ac.uk/media/livacuk/publicpolicyamppractice/reports/Households,Into, Work,Interim,Evaluation,of,Pilot,Programmme.pdf. Whitworth, A. and Carter, E. (2018) ‘Rescaling employment support accountability: from negative national neoliberalism to positively integrated city-region ecosystems’, Environment and Planning C, 36(2): 274–89. Whitworth, A. and Murphy, R. (2018) ‘Local integration: harnessing the potential for public policy’, University of Sheffield. Wilson, T., Crews, A. and Mirza, K. (2017) ‘Work local: report to the Local Government Association on developing a modern, local, public employment and skills service’, Learning and Work Institute.

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3

Getting in, being heard and influencing change: the labours of policy engagement in employment and social security research Hayley Bennett and Katy Jones The SPA Employment and Social Security Policy Group

Introduction Over the past decade, the UK social security system has undergone a period of unprecedented reform. Universal Credit (UC), the flagship policy of welfare reform introduced in 2013, brings together six existing working-age benefits and merges what were previously separate systems of out-of-work (eg Jobseeker’s Allowance) and in-work financial support (eg Working Tax Credits) (DWP, 2010). In a ‘ground-breaking’ move with ‘no comparable precedents’ (SSAC, 2017), UC brings workers in receipt of Tax Credits within the scope of the UK’s conditionality regime. Here, the government expects low-income workers to either try to increase their hours or pay in their current workplace, search for additional work with a different employer (take on multiple jobs) or take up alternative work elsewhere (DWP, 2018). After repeated delays, the government now expects full implementation of UC by 2024 – at which point it is estimated that approximately one million households will be subject to in-work conditionality (SSAC, 2017). This significant policy shift not only resituates those who are in work and on a low income within the social security system, but also makes the tripartite relationship between employers, workers and the welfare state more explicit. Researchers and policymakers are yet to cement and understand the exact parameters of this policy shift, made more complicated by the changing labour market conditions associated with both Brexit and the 2020/21 COVID-19 lockdowns. In-work conditionality attracts concerns and, although on face value it is ideologically suited to the Conservative welfare reform agenda, it is a politically ambiguous development with the potential to deter Conservative Party voters with dependent children (Abbas and Chrisp, 2021). In-work conditionality is also ‘without precedent internationally’ 48

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(Monaghan and Ingold, 2019: 355) and lacks a robust evidence base as an effective active labour market policy (ALMP). Early trialling through randomised control trials (RCTs) involved the extension of varying levels of conditionality to those in work (DWP, 2018), that is, a Work First, then Work More approach (Jones, 2021). A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commissioned evaluation found limited positive impacts: participants in a ‘Frequent Support’ group, whom Jobcentre Plus mandated to engage in job-search activities and fortnightly Work Search Review meetings with work coaches while in work, earned an average of just over £5 more per week (DWP, 2018). Furthermore, work coaches, practitioners responsible for implementing conditionality, did not feel adequately equipped to support people to progress in work. Academic research with working UC claimants exposed the challenges of balancing the demands of work coaches and employers (Wright and Dwyer, 2021), and research with Working Tax Credit claimants aged 50+ highlights specific concerns for the transition to UC and in-work conditionality for the older workforce (Fitzpatrick and Chapman, 2021). An evidence review and ‘call to action’ commissioned by the DWP has argued for supportive rather than sanctions-based approaches to progression and has emphasised the importance of broader policy including transport and childcare (McGregor-Smith, 2021). Evidence on the employers’ role is, however, very limited, despite the extension to their employees (Jones et al, 2019). The government’s good work and welfare reform agendas (eg Taylor, 2017) are frustratingly disconnected, and the extension of conditionality to workers occurs alongside waning progress in labour market regulation and enforcement by the current administration (Clegg et al, 2021). This includes a lack of progress on the enactment of the Employment Bill, originally announced in the 2019 Queen’s speech, which pledged new rights to request predictable and stable contracts. Similarly, the Bill included the planned creation of a single labour market enforcement agency to address a situation where, in 2019, more than 20 per cent of workers covered by minimum wage rates were actually underpaid (Low Pay Commission, 2021). Such reforms have the potential to assist working UC recipients to better navigate their relationships with employers and the state. The weight of evidence generated by social policy, employment and labour market scholars raises question about the continuation and expansion of work-first ALMPs that push low-income workers into insecure, low-paid and poorly regulated work as an effective labour market policy (Briken and Taylor, 2018; Wright et al, 2018; Haapanala, 2021). Where are the barriers to evidence use in this context? Whom might researchers engage with and how? In this chapter we discuss these issues and argue that social policy researchers may benefit from adopting a ‘pragmatic realist’ approach to influence change. 49

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Evidence, knowledge and policy change Initially linked to evidence-based medicine and promoted under New Labour, there is a well-developed and ever-growing literature on practices of evidence use, evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) and the policy–science interface (see Nutley et al, 2013; Boswell and Smith, 2017; Cairney and Oliver, 2020). While researchers, practitioners and policymakers associated with health-related policies have contributed much of this work, as Oliver et  al (2014: 2) note, ‘evidence-based policy and practice, knowledge translation, and related concepts have become touchstones across a vast range of disciplines – almost sub-disciplines in their own right, with canons and conceptual toolkits of their own’. At times different disciplines have approached evidence use and academics’ role in working with policymakers in diverse ways, leading to varying concepts, language and debates around boundary spanning (de  Leeuw et  al, 2018), pracademics (Powell et  al, 2018), engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007) or activist scholarship (Rouse and Woolnough, 2018). There are many technical, personal and epistemological reasons why researchers may want their research to lead to policy, practice or societal changes. However, reforms to higher education including the UK government’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Knowledge Exchange Framework, alongside policy tools that govern UK funding allocations, incentivise all researchers to demonstrate the broader value of their work (Smith et al, 2020). Likewise, the inclusion of impact case studies (ICS), where researchers must evidence the effect of research on society and non-academic beneficiaries, forms part of a process of ‘quantified accountability’ in higher education (Bandola-Gill and Smith, 2021: 3). Combined with institutional pressures, funding bodies’ promotion of detailed impact strategies and the inclusion of ‘non-academic’ partners in applications have reshaped expectations that social policy research can and should influence policy or society. While ‘social policy is explicitly founded on the pursuit of real world improvements’ (Smith and Stewart, 2017: 110), the impact agenda and rewarding of policy engagement does not necessarily mean that all social policy research thrives in this context. The evidence-use literature has long outlined inequalities in access to policymakers and has identified how some policy issues are more open to evidence-based reforms than others (Cairney and Oliver, 2020). It also finds that elite institutions and high-profile researchers have more opportunities to be involved in influential policy communities than others (see Geddes, 2016). It also highlights gendered disparities in engaging with the impact agenda (Davies et al, 2020). As such, ‘instrumental’ (Weiss, 1979) and simple linear conceptualisations of evidence use in policymaking should be disregarded in favour of those which incorporate complexity and acknowledge the 50

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political nature of policy engagement and evidence use (see Cairney and Oliver, 2020). Awareness of the politics of policymaking and evidence use are particularly pertinent for social policy scholars because ‘while social policy often seeks to change the world around us, this can involve critique and opposition’ (Smith and Stewart, 2017: 109–10). The development of welfare reform policies post 2010 has involved highly politicised and debated reforms to social security and labour market programmes. Researchers are aware that ‘in contentious areas of policy development, there are often significant socially structural, as well as politically tactical, barriers to evidence use’ (Monaghan and Ingold, 2019: 353, referencing Stevens, 2007). This is because in such contexts the ‘policy process itself is a contested arena of negotiation’ (Oliver et al, 2014: 4) where valid knowledge is context-dependent (Stewart et al, 2020). The policymaking process shaping the development of ALMP and social security reforms in the UK can be problematic for researchers seeking influence, where ‘the kinds of evidence that are deemed useful to policy makers tend to survive, whereas critical evidence falls by the wayside’ (Monaghan and Ingold, 2019: 355). There are, therefore, calls for impact agendas and knowledge exchange guidance to ‘consider the wider policymaking system in which academics must make political choices and exercise power’ (Cairney and Oliver, 2020: 230). As a discipline, Social Policy has also offered limited debate on the impact agenda and the associated developments of studies exploring evidence-based policy change. Smith and Stewart’s (2017) article offers an explicit focus on social policy and REF impact, identifying narrow engagement in the impact agenda, despite the discipline being ‘most obviously policy-oriented’ (2017: 109). We agree and note that the authors make no specific mention of the differences between policy domains that fall within the social policy discipline and community. Yet social policy is a diverse community, covering a range of institutions and policymaking contexts underpinning criminal justice, health, education and a variety of welfare state-related policies. The nature of engagement in impact work for policy change requires greater attention than social policy scholars have given to date, particularly outside of health policy. Are ALMP researchers and those interested in the intersections between social security and employment contributing their experiences to knowledge and practice in regard to evidence use and policy engagement?

REF impact case studies To answer this question we undertook a brief analysis of the REF ICS 2014 database for the Social Work and Social Policy Unit of Assessment (UOA). This analysis reveals how policy engagement and impact relating to employment support, social security and ALMPs feature relatively 51

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little (just four ICS out of 186), although, unsurprisingly, researchers also submitted ICS relating to ALMPs and social security in other UOAs, including Sociology (two ICS), Economics and Econometrics (three ICS) and Business and Management Studies (three ICS). An analysis of the listed ‘impacts’ within the ICS shows that researchers established the necessary political and civil service relationships to engage in policy reform under the former Labour government (pre-2010). Some demonstrated continued interactions with the Conservative-led coalition, with frequent reference to Lord Freud in particular, a chief architect of welfare reform and welfareto-work markets under both the Labour government and the subsequent Conservative-led coalition. The limited number of ICS submissions relating to ALMPs does not necessarily mean research with policy impact was not occurring. Institutional control of production of REF ICS ‘restrict[s] the “plot line” and belie[s] the far more complex accounts held by those working to achieve research impact … [as] higher education institutions become impact gatekeepers, filtering out narratives that are deemed overly complex or insufficiently persuasive’ (Bandola-Gill and Smith, 2021: 1). Some institutions may have chosen not to explore ALMP-related research during their internal REF processes and within REF’s artificial timelines. Some may have also pursued case studies that clearly demonstrate measurable outcomes and the alignment of research and political agendas. As Smith and Stewart (2017: 123) found, ‘institutions were more likely to be able to demonstrate, and/or be rewarded for, influencing high-level government policy than for achieving other kinds of (local level or advocacy-orientated) impact’. Therefore, higher education institutions may limit their ICS submissions related to ALMPs’ policy impact occurring at the local level, at a time when ALMP researchers may have had limited opportunity for their research to shape austeritydriven Conservative-led welfare reform policies at the national level post 2010 (Monaghan and Ingold, 2019). A focus on national-level policy influence is also problematic in the context of ALMPs given increased devolution over design and delivery (eg the Working Well programme in Greater Manchester).

Evidence use and ALMPs Key stakeholders involved in ALMP evidence use and policymaking include high-level politicians (such as the Secretary of State for Department for Work and Pensions or the Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work) and civil servants employed by the DWP, including Jobcentre Plus. Monaghan and Ingold’s (2019) research into DWP evidence use provides the most detailed and relevant discussions of evidence use for ALMP researchers. Using DWP insider accounts and focus groups to examine policymaking 52

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during the development of UC, they found that evidence selection within the DWP was constrained by the overarching austerity paradigm, and the primacy of quantitative evidence when advising Ministers. They also identified how methodological preferences (or an ‘evidence hierarchy’) affected evidence selection, and a somewhat associated issue relating to practitioners’ perceived capabilities to handle and develop evidence for policy. Departmental structures and political feasibility feature as significant ‘filtration mechanisms’ determining the kinds of evidence that were selected for policy development. Monaghan and Ingold’s work provides essential context for the DWP approach to evidence use based on experimentation, a spectrum of evidence sources and ‘alignment with political imperatives under austerity, such as large-scale expenditure cuts to central government departments and drives for greater efficiency’ (2019: 357). The DWP is a large and complex organisation offering various routes for engagement with policy or operational processes. Its most visible engagement with academic researchers occurs through the publication of departmental ‘Areas of Research Interest’ and a series of associated outreach workshops aimed at initiating collaborations with universities across the UK. In addition, researchers who employ the preferred improvement methodologies supported by the dominant Behavioural Insights Team may experience successful engagement leading to policy or operational change (Monaghan and Ingold, 2019). Academic researchers using these favoured research methods may be able to collaborate with the DWP through commissioned studies, evaluations or placements. For example, Adam Coutts (University of Cambridge) undertook a research placement with the DWP’s Work and Health Unit to conduct an RCT evaluation to test an ALMP (Group Work/JOBS II) and examine implementation challenges. With a related focus on implementation practicalities, the DWP in Scotland collaborated (with researchers involved in Scottish government, NHS Scotland, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, What Works Scotland and Glasgow Centre for Population Health) in a project exploring operational practices and co-locating advice services within Jobcentre Plus offices. The project’s focus on using quality improvement methodologies to implement small, practical and operational changes aligned with DWP interest in ‘nudging’ service users (see Sinclair, 2017). However, research and access arrangements that are too closely related to departmental aims ‘may compromise (rather than aid) researchers’ ability to independently assess and critically analyse policy’ (Smith and Stewart, 2017: 121). The ability to engage in critical analysis and evaluation of government policy is an important feature of social policy research. Social policy researchers must question whether adherence to departmental research priorities or policy relevance constrains the ability of academics to undertake critical research (Stewart et  al, 2020). This is particularly important given that ALMP researchers who have sought to involve DWP in their 53

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research projects (which may adopt a more critical approach to examining national government policies or practices) note difficulties securing DWP ‘buy-in’, or accessing Jobcentre Plus offices, and thus influencing the research conducted and potential evidence use. The ability to critically examine policies and services while also having the opportunity to access policymakers and government departments is essential. However, a recent Cabinet Office memo suggests that ‘cross-government networks must … avoid any invitations being issued to individuals and/or organisation that have provided commentary on government policy, political decisions, approaches or individuals in government that could be deemed political’ (Malnick, 2021). How might researchers, who engage in critical research, offer alternative ways of addressing social issues or identify negative effects on disadvantaged groups, be able to undertake policy engagement if they are formally excluded from significant policymaking spaces and opportunities? If the policy under examination is itself politically driven, is all research that identifies limitations or negative outcomes equally political? Illustrating the politics of evidence use in ALMPs, Monaghan and Ingold (2019: 354) state that ‘evidence selection in policy making is an unequal competition as the framing of the policy in question often determines the kinds of evidence that are deemed permissible’. This may help explain why the body of evidence produced by social policy scholars examining welfare reform, UC and benefit conditionality has had limited influence on UK government policies. This is despite the weight of social policy and third sector evidence on the negative impacts of benefit sanctioning and other modes of conditionality (see Mehta et al, 2020; Williams, 2021) and the effective knowledge exchange outputs and activities of key research projects and academics (eg  Welfare Conditionality, see Dwyer, 2018). However, where there may be limited opportunities to engage with UK government officials, there are various devolved and subnational governance arrangements and alternative policymaking forums offering collaborative research and policy engagement opportunities. For example, the Scottish government are developing social security policies which are shaped by an active anti-poverty policy community focused on alternative forms of social security and employment support commissioning. Similarly, academic researchers regularly undertake ALMP research and policy engagement at the city or subnational level, for example Adam Whitworth (University of Sheffield) at Sheffield City Region level and Sioned Pearce (Cardiff University) across devolved nations.

A pragmatic realist approach to policy engagement Drawing on the evidence-use literature and our own experience as early career researchers (ECRs) who have engaged in multiple policy-focused and 54

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applied research projects, we reflect on diverse ways that social policy scholars could engage with policymakers and influence ALMPs. This may include the direct use of evidence or the ‘broader concept of enlightening (indirect) use’ (Oliver et al, 2014: 4). Borrowing from developments in the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature, we see such engagement being possible by adopting a pragmatic realist approach to research on activation and labour markets. This involves adopting a ‘commitment to theoretical pluralism’ (O’Mahoney and Vincent, 2014: 18), drawing from insights from aligned fields such as Industrial Relations, HRM and Sociology of Work. Research and debates in these fields are increasingly useful for social policy researchers (and vice versa) interested in the welfare–work interface. More practically, at least some degree of pragmatism is required if researchers wish to engage effectively with the diverse and sometimes conflicting interests of those who are developing policy or those who are affected by policy developments. As noted earlier, welfare reform and ALMP are contentious policy areas, but it is important to understand the experiences and views of the diverse range of actors who shape, develop or are affected by these policies. This includes (but is not limited to) social security claimants, multilevel policy officers, elected politicians, employers, unions, Jobcentres and other employment support providers working in the private and third sectors. Pragmatic realists see value in creating a ‘pragmatically worthwhile piece of knowledge [which] has the potential to be helpful to anyone who reads it’ (Watson, 2010: 926) – and, we would add, engages with it – so understanding the priorities/constraints and so forth of different actors is important to inform the development of research projects. At the same time, it is important to recognise that different groups come from different standpoints, vary hugely in terms of the power they hold over policy and its outcomes, and are affected by it in different, and unequal, ways. On this, we call on Rouse and Woolnough’s (2018: 429) notion of engaged-activist scholarship, which advocates ‘partisan accountability to the marginalised … but retaining the possibility of change by engaging power holders’. The remainder of this chapter reflects on what we consider to be our ‘pragmatic realist’ experiences seeking to influence change.

Engaging through qualitative longitudinal research: military veterans and welfare reform The Sanctions, Support and Service Leavers (SSSL) project, funded by the Forces in Mind Trust and led by Professor Lisa Scullion at the University of Salford, was the first substantive piece of qualitative research to focus on the experiences of veterans within the UK social security system (Scullion et al, 2019). The research bridges two policy worlds: on the one hand, an increasing focus from UK policymakers on the support provided to the 55

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armed forces community, and on the other, the unprecedented reforms to ALMPs and UC outlined previously. Research focused on veterans’ interactions with the social security system was, however, a gap that this research sought to address. The original project involved qualitative longitudinal research with 68 veterans claiming social security, alongside interviews and focus groups with key policy and practice stakeholders. The SSSL project uncovered some of the difficulties veterans experience in their interactions with the UK’s social security system, including concerns around how the work capability assessment addresses servicerelated impairment. It also identified inconsistencies in experiences between different geographical areas and in relation to interactions with work coaches and/or armed forces champions, as well as more positively highlighting the value that DWP armed forces champions can bring when working effectively. Drawing on these new insights, the project made a series of practical policy and practice recommendations, which policymakers accepted. In relation to policy and practice impact, it helped to support the case for substantial new financial investment, which saw an increase in the number of armed forces champions to support veterans. Additionally, the DWP and Ministry of Defence (MoD) committed to working collaboratively to improve guidance on the benefits system to armed forces service leavers (FiMT, 2020). In relation to concerns raised by the research around benefits assessment processes, the DWP committed to develop training on the specific mental and physical health issues related to service in the armed forces. The research team felt that several aspects of this research project contributed to such high-level policy engagement (explored in detail in Scullion et al, 2021). In line with Van de Ven’s (2007) concept of ‘engaged scholarship’, the research team embedded engagement with key stakeholders throughout the project. From project inception, an expert advisory group (EAG) included representatives from armed forces charities, the MoD, statutory organisations and academics. Several EAG members were serving personnel or veterans. While initially reluctant to engage, a more regular constructive dialogue with the DWP developed following publication of an interim report. Here, the qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) design was vital in enabling positive policymaker engagement. As noted by Corden and Nice (2007), publishing emerging interim findings can be helpful to engender policymakers’ interest. Following discussions about interim findings, DWP officials drew on their expertise and policy concerns to contribute questions to the second wave interview schedule. They also facilitated access to Jobcentre Plus staff to take part in a series of focus groups. The QLR design therefore nurtured relationships with key policy stakeholders, which evolved during the course of the project. The research team also felt that a commitment to constructive dialogue and identifying good practice in supporting veterans and practical 56

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recommendations for improving policy and practice led to positive engagement with policymakers. Although we recognised the contentious nature of welfare reform, and that the views and interests of individual veterans, those supporting them and policymakers may differ greatly, we aimed to conduct research that uncovered the reality of veterans’ experiences of engaging with the UK’s social security system. While the research may have proved uncomfortable reading for policymakers, as several negative aspects of veterans’ experiences were exposed, it was also helpful to policymakers and other stakeholders by equipping them with insights into user experience to inform better policy and service development.

Engaging through participatory research: benefit sanctions at the local level While some researchers may see policy engagement as a final stage of a research project or as distinct activities for knowledge exchange with professional service colleagues, this is not the case for researchers situated within the participatory tradition. A broad range of research approaches fall within the participatory tradition, often sharing a common aim to transform power relations, challenge conventional processes of knowledge production and maintain a standpoint of researching with, rather than researching on, communities (Bennett and Brunner, 2020). Participatory researchers often conduct research in collaboration with others, typically ‘non-academic partners’, often disadvantaged groups, but also policymakers and public service partners (Boser, 2006; Bergold and Thomas, 2012; Vindrola-Padros et al, 2018). As a discipline, Social Policy is experiencing a participatory revival, especially in the context of social security research, with numerous researchers adopting various participatory approaches, including action research models, appreciative inquiry and community-led research (eg Covid Realities; UC:US; The Commission on Social Security led by Experts by Experience). Similarly, employment studies scholars and others working in management schools are working with models of co-production (see Lindsay et al, 2018). These models offer researchers ways to establish relationships with practitioners and policymakers, as well as the opportunity to create space and support people with lived experience to share their experiential knowledge and views. As part of What Works Scotland (an Economic and Social Research Council- and Scottish government-funded applied research programme; see Bennett and Brunner, 2020), Bennett (2017a) established a collaborative action research (CAR) inquiry with practitioners in a low-income locality in Scotland to explore benefit sanctioning, an issue the practitioners identified as problematic and requiring situated research. CAR seeks to integrate collaboration, action and research to co-produce knowledge in pursuit of social change (Greenwood and Levin, 2007). Action researchers believe it 57

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is the undertaking of research that creates new social structures to address real world problems (Dickens and Watkins, 1999), classically following a reflective ‘action research cycle’, involving close exchanges with practitioners or citizens, an acknowledgement of experiential knowledge and reflexivity (Cullen, 1998). Such a model involves intense relational work for researchers (Avgitidou, 2009), a prolonged commitment from practitioners to engage in knowledge generation, and an openness from managers and policymakers to accept recommendations and embed changes. The CAR inquiry into benefit sanctioning was situated within the Community Planning Partnerships context in Scotland (mandatory public service partnerships involving local government, health, police and fire). Over 90  weeks, coinciding with the ‘great sanctions drive’ (Webster, 2018), Bennett (2017a) supported and engaged in action research to critically examine benefit sanctioning in a specific town in Scotland. The work involved the deliberate and facilitated development of a multiagency and multi-professional practitioner inquiry group (including advice workers, local government housing and community development workers, managers, policy officers and DWP practitioners), involving numerous meetings, workshops, engagement tools and difficult conversations around conditionality implications for local areas and other services. It also involved exploration of experiential evidence and practitioner knowledge, relational work to build trust and hold meaningful conversations, and data collection on the costs and experiences associated with benefit sanctioning. Crucially, the process supported critical reflections on the role of street-level practitioners, service managers and policy leaders on benefit sanctioning. Key to CAR in this context was the facilitation of tense conversations around very raw and emotional human stories and experiences of destitution, alongside operational and technical discussions about service demands, responsibility and organisational discretion. The focus on the multi-agency environment supported DWP workers to engage and continue to interact with the group; the inquiry did not position DWP workers as the sole focus of criticism nor treat individual DWP employees as the responsible and accessible face of a problematic UK-wide policy diktat. Bennett (2017a) undertook advanced facilitation training, and the inquiry group experimented with producing vignettes about experiences of benefit conditionality to use as tools to focus difficult multi-organisational conversations. Policy impact and change took the form of changing perceptions; altering tense local dynamics; building confidence in street-level and managerial practitioners to challenge and collaborate across organisational boundaries; and awareness raising among a wide range of professionals, elected members and senior leaders about benefit conditionality and availability of local anti-poverty services. While the research co-created localised policy and practice change, ALMP researchers should be aware of the limitations of participatory research as 58

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a means to engage in high-level policy engagement and change. Firstly, this CAR research was rooted in the subnational community planning policy context rather than ALMP. National-level policymaking for ALMPs (including in Scotland) is dominated by contractualism, payments by results and work-first top-down policymaking that arguably leaves little room for local discretion in regard to service design and delivery, or the participation of people experiencing unemployment. Participatory research approaches that seek to develop and share experiential knowledge between different stakeholders and jobseekers may face challenges in implementing systems change in organisations with little local discretion or tightly contracted delivery models. ALMP ideas of procurement and contracted services continue to dominate this policy area and such path dependency restricts the accessibility and feasibility of participatory inquiry work. For example, despite a body of work raising concerns about the limits of contractualism (see Bennett, 2017b; Lindsay et al, 2018), the UK government announced in 2021 a new round of contracting worth £2 billion for the assessment of disabled people from 2023–28 for personal independence payment (PIP) and work capability assessments (WCA). Secondly, in the aforementioned EBPM context, analysts and policymakers may dismiss participatory research on methodological grounds due to opposition to ‘small N, qualitative, and creative work’ (Pallett, 2020). As Stewart et al (2020: 203) state, ‘when put into conversation with “rigour” – as EBPM has often gone through its focus on scientific knowledge – this has often devalued the role of experiential knowledge’. Combined with payments-by-results and quantitative stories of success based on reduced claimant count, EBPM can overshadow localised participatory research approaches, especially those that produce rich and place-specific qualitative data about organisational practices and street-level work. Finally, while much participatory research has a direct impact on those involved in the projects (eg people with lived experience, practitioners or decision-makers), the wider impact of participatory research projects in the context of EBPM is much less clear.

Engaging through parliamentary committees Our first two examples focus on policy engagement during the research process and within the lifetime of a research project, emphasising the ways in which researchers can nurture relationships and engage in critical work in order to influence policymakers and practitioners. There are other opportunities for engagement during a research career, including engaging in parliamentary processes and democratic scrutiny functions. These policymaking spaces offer opportunities for social policy researchers to raise awareness of research evidence and shape policy ideas. By drawing 59

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on witnesses from within government alongside a range of external witnesses and evidence to examine expenditure, administration and policy of associated departments, House of Commons select committees scrutinise evidence and policy as part of their accountability role. As select committees are free to choose the topics they wish to examine, they are increasingly capable of ‘shaping political opinions and exerting pressure on government to change course if the direction of policy is wrong’ (Berry and Kippin, 2014: 14). They can ‘initiate debate rather than merely respond to policy proposed by the executive’ (Nutley et al, 2008: 255), and as such, parliamentary select committees are increasingly important, including in terms of attracting media attention (Berry and Kippin, 2014). Committee inquiries offer opportunities for social policy researchers to submit written evidence, appear as witnesses or work backstage to shape the inquiry scope or support the interpretation of evidence. Social policy scholars appear well versed and experienced in contributing to ALMP, social security and welfare reform inquiries; engagement in parliamentary debates and contributions to parliamentary committees feature as key evidence of impact for most of the REF 2014 case studies relating to social security and employment-related policies. This includes, for example, the University of York’s ICS ‘Development of the “single working age benefit” and impact on welfare reform’ (ie Universal Credit), and the University of Portsmouth’s ‘Shaping the design and implementation of payment by results contracts in the delivery of Welfare to Work programmes’ based on work by Professor Dan Finn. A large and insightful body of research explores how parliamentary committees operate, the ways that policymakers use evidence and the type of witnesses that provide evidence (see Geddes, 2018, 2020; Beswick and Elstub, 2019; Bochel and Berthier, 2020), including how academics contribute as ‘independent expert’ witnesses. The Commission on Parliamentary Reform (2017) found that people often valued their involvement with committees and that for many the experience encouraged them to learn more about and become involved in the work of Parliament. Nevertheless, Beswick and Geddes (2020: 3), found that ‘legislature staff wanted to increase Knowledge Exchange with academic researchers [as] … academic research is less present in legislatures and less likely to “cut through” than, for example, research from think tanks or civil society’. Studies also show inequalities in academic engagement, with London universities overrepresented among academic witnesses at UK Parliament, and a study found that 83 per cent of academic experts are men (Berry and Kippin, 2014). For their report Opening Up Parliament, the Universities Policy Engagement Network heard from hundreds of academics and knowledge brokers about how they engage (or do not engage) and what can be improved to ensure Parliamentarians are hearing from more academics. This work has led to 60

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increased effort to engage academics in UK Parliament including via UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit (KEU) and the Scottish Policy and Research Exchange (SPRE), which collate and circulate opportunities for academics to submit evidence to inquiries at UK Parliament and all devolved parliaments and assemblies. How well do social policy researchers make use of these mechanisms for policy engagement? For this chapter we briefly explored two recent key committees relevant to social policy scholars interested in ALMPs, social security and employment policy. The first was the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, who have in recent years held inquiries such as ‘Universal Credit: the wait for a first payment’ (2020–21). Our analysis of the written submission database for this inquiry found that of the 91  pieces of written evidence submitted to this particular inquiry, academics submitted 11 responses (of which, encouragingly, PhD students led five responses). The majority of academic submissions were from social policy scholars but there were also submissions from academics based in health, digital justice, economic geography and housing studies (see WPC, 2021). Furthermore, while civil society/third sector organisations submitted the majority of written and oral evidence submissions drawing from their own data and experiences, many also included references to academic research and collaborations with academics. For example, Poverty Alliance’s submission draws extensively on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded project ‘How well is Universal Credit supporting people in Glasgow?’, a research collaboration between Poverty Alliance and Sharon Wright and Alasdair B. R. Stewart (Glasgow University) (see Robertson et al, 2020). The second relevant committee was the Economic Affairs Committee, a House of Lords select committee, and their recent inquiry “The economics of Universal Credit’ (2020–21), which investigates the economic impacts of Universal Credit. It asks whether UC is meeting its original objectives, whether its policy assumptions are appropriate for different groups of claimants, and the extent to which it meets the needs of claimants in today’s labour market and changing world of work. Of the 132 written evidence submissions, only 13 were from academics, including scholars based in social policy, management, health, peace studies and mathematics departments. Again, while civil society/ third sector organisations submitted the majority of written responses for this inquiry (possibly reflecting the capacity of dedicated policy officers), people with various lived experiences of UC submitted an impressive 19 written responses (see Economic Affairs Committee, 2021). Submitting a one-off written response or appearing as an independent expert witness giving oral evidence ensures that committee clerks and committee chairs can include these research findings or a body of evidence in the official committee records for consideration. 61

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Social policy scholars can also act as Specialist Advisers throughout the lifetime of an inquiry, working for a prolonged period backstage with parliamentary staff and committee chairs to support the development of an inquiry, identify witnesses and explain specialist information to committee members (MPs). For example, social policy titans Fran Bennett (Oxford University) and Jane Millar (University of Bath) are Specialist Advisers to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s inquiry on Universal Credit (2020). As outlined in an aforementioned REF ICS, Roy Sainsbury acted as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into Decision making and Appeals in the Benefits System (2009–10). In a recent blog post, ECRs Hayley Bennett and Sarah Weakley (2021) reflect on their experience as Specialist Advisers to the Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry ‘Welfare policy in Scotland’ (2020–21). The inquiry examined the effect of welfare policies on the lives of claimants and poverty and inequality levels more broadly in Scotland, including a specific focus on UC, Jobcentre Plus and the interaction between reserved and devolved benefits. They highlight how the official role of a Specialist Adviser is to provide an ‘objective’ voice to the committee and serve as the subject matter expert, drawing on a wide range of knowledge on the academic and grey evidence and beyond their own direct research findings. The inquiry process and adviser role involves an ‘evidence-first’ approach, yet by the nature of the parliamentary environment, it also involves engaging in political work and discussing policy issues with MPs from across the political spectrum who possess different ideological positions. As cross-party agreement for report recommendations is highly important (Geddes, 2020), Specialist Advisers communicate across political party positions in private meetings in order to craft recommendations and, in doing so, gain a deeper understanding of specific tensions between ideological and political policies, and the available evidence or counter-arguments from committee witnesses. Committee members, clerks and Specialist Advisers deliberate the existing evidence, consider debated issues and gain awareness on technical details. The role of a Specialist Adviser is an opportunity for social policy scholars to draw attention to key social policy research and ensure such work is better understood alongside the various other knowledge sources shaping parliamentary work (such as news articles, attitude surveys, existing government statements and constituency experiences). It also provides a window for social policy researchers to identify barriers to evidence use in relation to ALMPs and social security, important knowledge gaps and future research opportunities.

Reflections as two early career researchers Throughout this chapter we have reflected on policy engagement and evidence use in relation to ALMPs in the UK and our own experiences. 62

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Our purpose is to better understand the opportunities and barriers for social policy researchers interested in ALMPs and social security and contribute to disciplinary conversation about how we might collectively contribute to policy change. Our interests in these issues have developed over a numbers of years engaging with researchers working in other policy domains, developing REF impact case studies and institutional impact activities, and listening to international ALMP researchers who share close research and policy engagement experiences with their public organisations and highlevel policymakers. As others have outlined before, social policy researchers are primarily interested in the development and effects of particular policies and undertake research in order to influence and improve the effectiveness of policies, especially for disadvantaged populations. ECRs are motivated to engage in knowledge exchange and research impact activities, yet they can face particular challenges. We offer five key reflections: 1. Simple explanations of knowledge transfer processes are unrealistic, especially in highly politicised policymaking contexts. Instead, we note that academic research, combined with third sector activism and lobbying, has the potential to influence policy change relating to ALMPs and social security, although this may be more akin to a slow process of ‘knowledge creep’ and influencing change over longer periods of time (Boswell and Smith, 2017). This may involve working with DWP, but also with unions, UC recipients, employers, academic and third sector researchers, various types of policy teams and officers, street-level workers (eg work coaches), think tanks and political parties. 2. Engaging with policymakers, practitioners and politicians has become a fundamental practice for many researchers. Participatory researchers have long reflected on the demanding and consuming nature of research collaborations, the importance of developing rapport and trust, and the need to understand contextual features (Bergold and Thomas, 2012). However, as Bennett and Brunner (2020) argue, these activities require practices and competencies that rarely feature in social research training or in discipline-specific skills training. To be able to undertake such work effectively, ECRs require a wider range of training and support. Some argue that a more explicit focus on policy engagement and knowledge exchange in institutional reward systems could lead to such developments (Davies et al, 2020). However, we would also argue that ECRs (and established academics) require training and support about policy engagement that is shaped by social policy scholarly perspectives, rather than just generic advice provided by knowledge transfer professions (see Cairney and Oliver, 2020). 3. In the context of welfare reform, ALMPs and social security, nurturing and forming relationships with key figures takes time and involves a range 63

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of conversations and small projects, work which can be logistically and often emotionally difficult. Data collection around poverty, inequality and experiences of unemployment can be intense and emotive. It can lead to frustrations and ethical concerns for researchers and participants when the evidence produced does not have a clear path to influencing policy change. We find that peer support, conferences and research conversations help individual researchers process these issues and support project teams to talk through experiences, identify possible solutions and contribute to advancing collective social research practice. 4. We also note specific difficulties for ECRs and precariously employed scholars to establish themselves and engage in policy communities over long periods. Short-term academic research and employment contracts hamper the necessary long-term, trusting relationships that have the opportunity to produce real policy change. Universities and funding bodies’ ‘projectification’ (Ylijoki, 2016) creates employment that is often ‘organised in a hasty and informal manner … heavily shaped by project conditions  … and dominated by short-term thinking’ (Herschberg et al, 2018: 308). Such project structures shape not just the quality of employment and working conditions for ECRs, but also approaches to knowledge production and ethical considerations around collaborations, and they limit the potential long-term engagement in policy communities.

Conclusion This chapter focuses on policy engagement and evidence use in the context of ALMPs, employment and social security in the UK. We explore the issues facing social policy researchers and reflect on our experiences as ECRs utilising different approaches to engaging with policymakers. Due to the political context that shapes ALMP and social security policymaking, we suggest a pragmatic realist approach as a way forward for social policy researchers in an effort to increase the use of research during the ongoing roll-out of Universal Credit, the impact of the COVID-19 measures on the labour market, and Brexit. Evidence-use researchers identify sustained connections, policy engagement and knowledge exchange resources, and the necessary time to nurture and develop cross-sector relationships. We agree but note the difficulties in the context of welfare reform and austerity for social policy researchers engaged in critical policy research. We also highlight tensions for ECRs created by predetermined research funding structures and precarious employment practices. While many social policy scholars are actively engaged in evidence use or policy engagement, we believe that more research and discussion across social policy researchers would be beneficial and help to unearth structural 64

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barriers, useful engagement models and approaches, and to nurture a collective long-term applied research community. For ALMP researchers this may also involve working proactively across disciplinary boundaries and uniting somewhat separate discussions and activities taking place in management and HRM schools alongside think tanks and research centres based outside academia. It is our hope that writing this chapter helps contribute to such developments. References Abbas, J. and Chrisp, J. (2021) ‘Working hard or hardly working? Examining the politics of in-work conditionality in the UK’, Social Policy and Society, 1–22, available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746421000294. Avgitidou, S. (2009) ‘Participation, roles and processes in a collaborative action research project: a reflexive account of the facilitator’, Educational Action Research, 17(4): 585–600. Bandola-Gill, J. and Smith, K. E. (2021) ‘Governing by narratives: REF impact case studies and restrictive storytelling in performance measurement’, Studies in Higher Education (early online view). Bennett, H. (2017a) Collaborative Inquiry Exploring Data and Knowledge-sharing Practices in Responses to Welfare Sanctions, What Works Scotland Report. Bennett, H. (2017b) ‘Re-examining British welfare-to-work contracting using a transaction cost perspective’, Journal of Social Policy, 46(1): 129–48. Bennett, H. and Brunner, R. (2020) ‘Nurturing the buffer zone: conducting collaborative action research in contemporary contexts’, Qualitative Research Journal (early online view). Bennett, H. and Weakley, S. (2021) ‘Probing the patchwork of welfare services in Scotland: the experience as specialist advisors to a UK parliamentary committee’, Policy Scotland, 14 July 2021 [blog], available at: https://policyscotland.gla.ac.uk/welfare-services-in-scotland-theexperience-as-specialist-advisors-to-uk-parliamentary-committee/. Bergold, J. and Thomas, S. (2012) ‘Participatory research methods: a methodological approach in motion’, Qualitative Social Research, 13(1): Art. 30. Berry, R. and Kippin, S. (2014) ‘Parliamentary select committees: who gives evidence?’, Democratic Audit UK, available at: https://www. democraticaudit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Democratic-Audit_ Who-gives-evidence_January-2014_final.pdf. Beswick, D. and Elstub, S. (2019) ‘Between diversity, representation and ‘best evidence’: rethinking select committee evidence-gathering practices’, Parliamentary Affairs, 72(4): 945–64.

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Beswick, D. and Geddes, M. (2020) ‘Evaluating academic engagement with UK legislatures: exchanging knowledge on knowledge exchange’, available at: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/152957569/ MAIN_REPORT_FINAL.pdf. Bochel, H. and Berthier, A. (2020) ‘A place at the table? Parliamentary committees, witnesses and the scrutiny of government actions and legislation’, Social Policy and Society, 19(1): 1–17. Boser, S. (2006) ‘Ethics and power in community-campus partnerships for research’, Action Research, 4(1): 9–21. Boswell, C. and Smith, K. (2017) ‘Rethinking policy “impact”: four models of research-policy relations’, Palgrave Communication, 3: Art. 44. Briken, K. and Taylor, P. (2018) ‘Fulfilling the “British way”: beyond constrained choice – Amazon workers’ lived experiences of workfare’, Industrial Relations Journal, 49(5–6): 438–58. Cairney, P. and Oliver, K. (2020) ‘How should academics engage in policymaking to achieve impact?’, Political Studies Review, 18(2): 228–44. Clegg, D., Bennett, H., Heins, E. and Eichhorn, J. (2021) ‘Leaving the old broken model behind? An alternative approach to work and welfare’, IPPR Progressive Review (early online view). Commission on Parliamentary Reform (2017) ‘Report on the Scottish Parliament’, 20  June, available at: https://test123582.files.wordpress. com/2016/10/commissiononparliamentaryreformreport-june20171.pdf. Corden, A. and Nice, K. (2007) ‘Qualitative longitudinal analysis for policy: incapacity benefits recipients taking part in Pathways to Work’, Social Policy and Society, 6(4): 557–69. Cullen, J. (1998) ‘The needle and the damage done: research, action research and the organizational and social construction of health in the “information society”’, Human Relations, 51(12): 1543–64. Davies, J., Yarrow, E. and Syed, J. (2020) ‘The curious under-representation of women impact case leaders: can we disengender inequality regimes?’, Gender, Work & Organization, 27(2): 129–48. de Leeuw, E., Browne, J. and Gleeson, D. (2018) ‘Overlaying structure and frames in policy networks to enable effective boundary spanning’, Evidence & Policy, 14(3): 537–47. Dickens, L. and Watkins, K. E. (1999) ‘Action research: rethinking Lewin’, Management Learning, 30(2): 127–40. DWP (2018) Universal Credit: In-Work Progression Randomised Controlled Trial, London: Department for Work and Pensions. DWP (2010) ‘Universal credit: welfare that works’, available at: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/48897/universal-credit-full-document.pdf.

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Dwyer, P. (2018) ‘Final findings report: the Welfare Conditionality Project 2013–2018’, York: University of York, available at: https://pure.york. ac.uk/portal/services/downloadRegister/63046570/1._FINAL_Welfare_ Conditionality_Report_complete.pdf. Economic Affairs Committee (2021) Webpage: Written evidence. The economics of Universal Credit, available at: https://committees.parliament. uk/work/31/the-economics-of-universal-credit/publications/writtenevidence/. FiMT (2020) Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) 2019 Impact Report, available at: https://s31949.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/20200717-FiMTElectronic-Impact-Report-2019.pdf. Fitzpatrick, C. and Chapman, A. (2021) ‘From Working Tax Credit to Universal Credit: is the older workforce ready? Perspectives from employees and employers in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 29(3): 297–315. Geddes, M. (2016) ‘Interpreting Parliamentary scrutiny: an enquiry concerning everyday practices of parliamentary actors in select committees of the House of Commons’, PhD Thesis: University of Sheffield. Geddes, M. (2018) ‘Committee hearings of the UK Parliament: who gives evidence and does this matter?’, Parliamentary Affairs, 71(2): 283–304. Geddes, M. (2020) ‘The webs of belief around “evidence” in legislatures: the case of select committees in the UK House of Commons’, Public Admin, 99: 40–54. Greenwood, D. J. and Levin, M. (2007) Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change (2nd edn), London: SAGE. Haapanala, H. (2021) ‘Carrots or sticks? A multilevel analysis of active labour market policies and non-standard employment in Europe’, Social Policy & Administration (early online view). Herschberg, C., Benschop, Y. and van den Brink, M. (2018) ‘Precarious postdocs: a comparative study on recruitment and selection of early-career researchers’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 34(4): 303–10. Jones, K. (2021) ‘Active labour market policy in a post-Covid UK: moving beyond a “Work First” approach’, in P. McCann and T. Vorley (eds) Productivity and the Pandemic: The Way Forward, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 263–76. Jones, K., Berry, C., Rouse, J. and Whittle, R. (2019) ‘Universal Credit and in-work conditionality – a productive turn?’, Productivity Insights Network. Lindsay, C., Pearson, S., Batty, E., Cullen, A. M. and Eadson, W. (2018) ‘Co-production as a route to employability: lessons from services with lone parents’, Public Administration, 96: 318–32.

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Low Pay Commission (2021) ‘Non-compliance and enforcement of the National Minimum Wage: a report by the Low Pay Commission’, available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/978383/2021_LPC_non-compliance_ report.pdf. Malnick, E. (2021) ‘“Woke” speakers critical of Boris Johnson banned from Whitehall’, The Telegraph [Online], 27 November (abbreviated), available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/27/woke-speakerscritical-boris-johnson-banned-whitehall/. McGregor-Smith, R. (2021) Supporting Progression Out of Low Pay: A Call to Action, London: Department for Work and Pensions. Mehta, J., Taggart, D., Clifford, E. and Speed, E. (2020) ‘“They say jump, we say how high?” Conditionality, sanctioning and incentivising disabled people into the UK labour market’, Disability & Society, 36(5): 1–21. Monaghan, M. and Ingold, J. (2019) ‘Policy practitioners’ accounts of evidence-based policy making: the case of Universal Credit’, Journal of Social Policy, 48(2): 351–68. Nutley, S., Powell, A. and Davies, H. (2013) ‘What counts as good evidence?’, Alliance for Useful Evidence, London. Nutley, S., Walter, I. and Davies, H. (2008) Using Evidence: How Research Can Inform Public Services, Bristol: Policy Press. Oliver, K., Lorenc, T. and Innvær, S. (2014) ‘New directions in evidencebased policy research: a critical analysis of the literature’, Health Research Policy and Systems, 12(34): 1–11. O’Mahoney, J. and Vincent, S. (2014) ‘Critical realism as an empirical project: a beginner’s guide’, in P. Edwards, J. O’Mahoney and S. Wright (eds) Studying Organizations Using Critical Realism: A Practical Guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 1–20. Pallett, H. (2020) ‘The new evidence-based policy: public participation between “hard evidence” and democracy in practice’, Evidence and Policy, 16(2): 209–77. Powell, E., Winfield, G., Schatteman, A. M. and Trusty, K. (2018) ‘Collaboration between practitioners and academics: defining the pracademic experience’, The Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, 8(1): 62–79. Robertson, L., Wright, S. and Stewart, A. B. R. (2020) ‘How well is Universal Credit supporting people in Glasgow?’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, available at: https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/how-welluniversal-credit-supporting-people-glasgow. Rouse, J. and Woolnough, H. (2018) ‘Engaged or activist scholarship? Feminist reflections on philosophy, accountability and transformational potential’, International Small Business Journal, 36(4): 429–48.

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Scullion, L., Dwyer, P., Jones, K., Martin, P. and Hynes, C. (2019) ‘Sanctions, support and service leavers: social security benefits, welfare conditionality and transitions from military to civilian life: final report’, Forces in Mind Trust. Scullion, L., Jones, K., Dwyer, P., Hynes, C. and Martin, P. (2021) ‘Military veterans and welfare reform: bridging two policy worlds through qualitative longitudinal research’, Social Policy and Society, 20(4): 670–83. Sinclair, J. (2017) ‘Building connections: co-locating advice services in general practices and job centres’, Glasgow Centre for Population Health, available at: https://www.gcph.co.uk/assets/0000/6478/Building_ Connections_report_final.pdf. Smith, K., Bandola-Gill, J. and Meer, N. (2020) The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences, and Challenges, London: Policy Press. Smith, K. and Stewart, E. (2017) ‘We need to talk about impact: why social policy academics need to engage with the UK’s research impact agenda’, Journal of Social Policy, 46(1): 109–27 SSAC (2017) ‘In-work progression and Universal Credit: a study by the Social Security Advisory Committee’, Occasional Paper No. 19. Stevens, A. (2007) ‘Survival of the ideas that fit: an evolutionary analogy for the use of evidence in policy’, Social Policy and Society, 6(1): 25–35. Stewart, E., Smith-Merry, J., Geddes, M. and Bandola-Gill, J. (2020) ‘Opening up evidence-based policy: exploring citizen and service user expertise’, Evidence & Policy, 16(2): 199–208. Taylor, M. (2017) The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, London: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Van de Ven, A. H. (2007) Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research, Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand. Vindrola-Padros, C., Eyre, L., Baxter, H., Cramer, H., George, B., Wye, L., Fulop, N., Utley, M., Phillips, N., Brindle, P. and Marshall, M. (2018) ‘Addressing the challenges of knowledge coproduction in quality improvement: learning from the implementation of the researcher-inresidence model’, BMJ Quality and Safety, 28(1): 67–73. Watson, T. J. (2010) ‘Critical social science, pragmatism and the realities of HRM’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(6): 915–31. Webster, D. (2018) ‘The great benefit sanctions drive 2010–16 in historical perspective. Welfare conditionality: principles, practices and perspectives’, York: The University of York. Weiss, C. (1979) ‘The many meanings of research utilization’, Public Administration Review, 39: 426–31. Williams, E. (2021) ‘Punitive welfare reform and claimant mental health: the impact of benefit sanctions on anxiety and depression’, Social Policy & Administration, 55(1): 157–72. 69

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WPC (Work and Pensions Committee) (2021) Webpage: Universal Credit: the wait for the first payment. Written Evidence submissions, available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/135/universal-credit-the-waitfor-a-first-payment/publications/written-evidence/?page=5. Wright, S. and Dwyer, P. (2021) ‘In-work Universal Credit: claimant experiences of conditionality mismatches and counterproductive benefit sanctions’, Journal of Social Policy, 51(1): 1–19. Wright, S., Dwyer, D., Jones, K., McNeill, J., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. B. R. (2018) ‘Final findings: Universal Credit’, available at: http:// www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/40414Universal-Credit-web.pdf. Ylijoki, O. H. (2016) ‘Projectification and conflicting temporalities in academic knowledge production’, Theory of Science, 38(1): 7–26.

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4

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK housing policy: how do we rebuild the foundations of the ‘wobbly pillar’? Vikki McCall, Steve Rolfe, Peter Matthews, Andrew Wallace, Grace Manyika, Steve Iafrati, Colin Clark and Moira Munro

Introduction: COVID-19 putting ‘the home’ and neighbourhoods into the spotlight Housing policy has often been regarded as a ‘wobbly pillar’ of the welfare state, described also as ‘special’, ‘awkward’, ‘peculiar’ and indeed ‘a sore thumb’ (Torgersen, 1987). This is due to housing being both in the realms of the welfare state but also a commodity linked to tenure (eg home ownership, social or private renting), wealth and market value. The place of housing within social policy is therefore complex due to its disjointed position between the public and private realms and the intractability of some housing challenges to policy solutions. However, Malpass (2003, 2008) challenges the idea of the ‘wobbly pillar’ and argues that housing is a ‘cornerstone’ due to the assets, investment, infrastructure and goods and services that the housing sector supports. This chapter considers the extent to which the impact of the COVID-19 crisis reveals the ‘wobbly’ and more solid foundations of UK housing policy. The COVID-19 pandemic has put ‘the home’ and neighbourhoods into the spotlight and refocused on the significance of housing – as both a safe and an unsafe space (Gurney, 2020). This chapter aims to outline and offer a positioning paper on the impact of COVID-19 on several high-level housing-related topics, including financialisaton, welfare reform, health, homelessness and housing inequality. Through this analysis, both negative and positive impacts of COVID-19 are explored within the English, Scottish and Welsh housing sectors. Key COVID-19 housing-related policy responses are then examined in the context of emerging evidence that the pandemic is reinforcing inequalities in housing. 71

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The first section, ‘Financialisation, affordability and market failure within the housing sector’, considers financialisation, housing market failure and the inequalities in accessing, maintaining and living well in a house (Blakeley, 2019; Jacobs and Manzi, 2020). Blakeley (2021) highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate these issues, where the UK is ‘sleepwalking’ into a new financial and homelessness crisis around housing. The second section, ‘Impact of UK welfare reforms’, considers the wider picture in the light of welfare reform, as after experiencing a recession far exceeding the ‘great recession’ of 2008, the government now finds itself with record levels of debt of over £2 trillion, equivalent to over 100 per cent of GDP and 13 per cent higher than the European Union average (ONS, 2021b). Growth in unemployment has resulted in reduced tax income for the government and increased social security expenditure (HM Treasury, 2021). Additionally, furlough payments and the Universal Credit (UC) uplift signified new territory for a government committed to small government and welfare retrenchment, though these measures are relatively shortterm interventions. The third section, ‘Homelessness’, considers homelessness as one of the most pressing housing challenges due to the sheer extent of homelessness and housing precarity across the country (eg Fitzpatrick et al, 2021). Within the COVID-19 pandemic response, homelessness policy and intervention included some of the quickest and most impactful changes to have been introduced. Innovative interventions are highlighted and compared across Scotland, England and Wales. The fourth section, ‘Health and social care impacts’, considers the health impacts at individual household and neighbourhood level, as poor-quality homes have also contributed to virus spread during the pandemic (Centre for Ageing Better, 2020), and the link between housing and health is of increasing concern as the ‘home’ and community become more centred in virus control. ‘Home’ has become both a place of refuge and safety and, for many, a place of greater risk and danger. Over four million people live in homes that do not meet the UK government’s minimum definition of a ‘decent home’ with a high degree of overcrowding (MHCLG, 2020). Insufficient floorspace, dangerously cladded tower blocks, polluted urban districts and inadequate public spaces are just some of the characteristics of typical housing landscapes in the UK that helped further unnerve and destabilise locked-down populations in highly variable ways (Gurney, 2021). All these issues together have an unequal impact on different groups, and this chapter considers the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in increasing the existing inequalities within the UK housing sector. When the pandemic hit the UK, viral loads were unevenly spread across housing tenures and built environments and there were disparities in access to green space, while gross inequalities in housing quality and tenure security reinforced 72

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the marginalisation of some social groups and their susceptibility to evictions, isolation, mental health crises, violence and financial stress (Health Foundation, 2020; National Housing Federation, 2020). Given the central role of housing assets to household economies in the UK, the pandemic is said to have actually worsened already unpalatable wealth inequalities (Birch, 2021), and this is considered further in the section ‘Intersecting inequalities’. The complexity of the housing sector and its role in UK social policy is further challenged by the ‘spatial nuance’ of housing policy and policy divergence throughout the UK (McKee et al, 2017). Devolution around housing policy has been challenged by the negotiation of powers and the impact of UK welfare reform (Gibb, 2015) alongside the messy and contested realities of governing housing in local contexts (McKee, 2011). Despite this complexity, housing is becoming more significant to the welfare state (Malpass, 2008), and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlights the importance of housing policy for moving from a ‘wobbly pillar’ to a cornerstone of social policy delivery.

Financialisation, affordability and market failure within the housing sector Looking to understand the impacts of this change in the shadow of COVID-19 as well as how to characterise changing access to housing, there have been growing discussions regarding the financialisation of housing (Jacobs and Manzi, 2020). Reflecting the relationship of housing policy as the ‘poor cousin’ to the post-war welfare state, the perceived ‘wobbly’ element of housing policy is directly linked to the weaknesses brought about by the financialisation of the housing sector. The central argument of financialisation is that access to housing is increasingly allocated through financial resources such as income and savings, rather than social need, which would position housing as a public good. Furthermore, structural impacts of financialisation highlight the liberalised financial market (mortgages and other instruments) and the role they have in supporting the idea of housing as an investment and asset, through buyto-let landlords and institutions buying properties purely as investments. The growing financialisation of housing has, therefore, exacerbated economic inequalities (Blakeley, 2021). This increasingly situates housing not as a key area of welfare, wobbly or otherwise, but instead as a marketdriven commodity. Alongside the growing financialisation of housing lie increasing economic barriers such as welfare retrenchment and precarious employment that limit the ability of a growing number of vulnerable and low-income families from accessing such a commodity. This creates a housing market where ‘business risks for poorly managing … accommodation are outweighed 73

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by the financial rewards’ (DCLG, 2017: 4) amid growth in the private rented sector (PRS) from 10.1 per cent to 19.9 per cent of UK housing (MHCLG, 2018; ONS, 2018; Wilson and Barton, 2019), accommodating growing numbers of vulnerable households. COVID-19, in both health and economic terms, has increased the numbers of households experiencing vulnerability. Problematically, this creates greater opportunity for market failure, which is the outcome of the private sector not taking on the financial burden of meeting the public good or broader social benefit of housing. However, at a time when public good is increasingly important amid a COVID-19 crisis, financialisation of housing has contributed to market failure characterised by ‘suboptimal market performance’ (Clegg and Farstad, 2021) alongside policy failures in ‘market shaping’ (Kattell et al, 2018). However, herein lies something of a COVID-19 housing policy paradox. The increasing commodification of housing that uses financialisation rather than public good as a driver of allocation alongside persistent economic barriers has increasingly broken connections between housing, vulnerability and welfare (CMO, 2021; Machin, 2021). The clearest example of this is homelessness, but it is not only the visible rough sleepers that are affected by the financialisation and market failure of housing. Homelessness should not be understood in binary opposition to those with secure housing. Less visible are those living in the grey area of housing vulnerability such as those in temporary accommodation, households accommodated out of area, sofasurfers and those with growing levels of housing debt (Iafrati, 2021). It is likely that a combination of poor housing policy and the economic impacts of COVID-19 will, at a minimum, add to this grey area. Reflecting on the role of financialisation and housing in the emerging post-COVID-19 era, it should be recognised that there are potentially three elements to the current housing crisis. The first is the under-supply of affordable housing as an illustration of market failure, the second is the unaffordability of housing and the third is the increasingly financialised relationship between the two elements of supply and demand. While it might be the case that housing supply was interrupted due to COVID-19 impacts in the construction industry, what we see is that unaffordability of demand has also been significantly affected by COVID-19. This is of course also linked to wider welfare reform, which is explored in the next section.

Impact of UK welfare reforms As COVID-19 restrictions were imposed in spring 2020, the UK welfare system was still in a state of flux, with the economic restraints highlighted in the previous section resulting in a decade of real-term cuts to benefits. The long roll-out of Universal Credit (a means-tested benefit in the UK) to those who had been receiving benefits under the previous system 74

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(claimants of ‘legacy benefits’) was still ongoing – each previous target for roll-out having proved dramatically over-optimistic. This was because of the administrative complexity of switching claimants over to the new system, the deliberately cautious and incremental implementation, and widespread claimant resistance to UC. Recent data (DWP, 2021) predict that the full roll-out of UC will finally be completed by September 2024, while in 2021 a little under two-thirds (64 per cent) of out-of-work claimants were in receipt of UC. The welfare system had borne the major burden of cuts following the financial crash of 2008 (with the main target being housing and out-of-work benefits, with pensions being better protected). Thus, at the start of the pandemic a decade of frozen benefit rates and systematic cuts to housing support (through reduced Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates and the ‘bedroom tax’) resulted in claimants’ incomes having fallen systematically behind those of working households and their housing costs being less fully covered. The significant restrictions on economic activity imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created immediate and profound income shocks for many households. In May 2020, 8.9  million people were furloughed from their jobs (Resolution Foundation, 2020). While this swift implementation undoubtedly helped many workers avoid crisis, it did not constitute a complete safety net: unemployment rose to 5 per cent in mid2020 (ONS, 2021a), and some groups were not eligible for support, such as recently self-employed people. Households could still face significant reductions in income, for example when one partner lost work, but be ineligible to claim benefits. However, there was a dramatic spike in numbers of UC claimants in the two months after lockdown (ten times higher than in previous months). In September 2021 there were about double the number of UC recipients (5.83 million) compared with 2.7 million at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 (DWP, 2021). Owners have had little available support for mortgage costs for decades, with mortgagors being expected to provide for themselves via insurance cover. The government asked lenders to show forbearance to owneroccupiers in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic – to offer threemonth then six-month mortgage holidays to those that requested them (although interest would continue to accrue) – and imposed a moratorium on house repossession from households in financial difficulties. At its peak in June 2021, 1.8 million households were taking a mortgage holiday. These temporary actions by lenders avoided immediate major housing market fallout (Barton et al, 2021). Similarly, in the private rented sector, there had been a long period of reductions in benefit-eligible rents, through reductions to LHA effectively limiting rents covered to the cheapest and worst segment of local housing markets. Again, as private renters faced difficulty with housing costs, it was 75

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the landlords who were asked to show forbearance, with moratoria being imposed on evictions, including for rent arrears (scheme details differed in the devolved countries). As ownership in the sector is highly dispersed and tenants are a relatively disempowered group, it is hard to evaluate the success of these temporary measures. Only the declining minority of households in the social rented sector had faced no systematic cutback to the coverage of rent payments in UC (the bedroom tax applies to all housing benefit payments). There were fears that even here rent arrears would increase systematically (partly because the design of UC bundles housing benefit and living costs into one payment – making it more difficult for households to budget for their rent). Despite these measures, rapidly reduced income and uncertain coverage of housing costs inevitably increased the sense of household precarity. Seven hundred thousand renters were estimated to be in arrears by the end of 2020 and many more were anxious about their housing becoming less affordable in the future (Earwaker et al, 2020). During the pandemic, the adverse impacts of uncertainty and anxiety were widely recognised (not only in relation to financial security but also to illness, anxiety about health and isolation and loneliness, for example). As is noted elsewhere, these ill effects are experienced intensely in and in relation to the ‘home’ (Gurney, 2021). There are fundamental design issues in UC which add to the stresses caused by the inadequate coverage of housing costs, most notably the fiveweek wait for the first payment of UC after a claim is made (reduced from six weeks). Although advance loans are available, recipients can find themselves in deeper debt and with reduced income (ie  less than the supposed minimum living allowance) because of the overhang of debt repayments once payments are received. The imposition of sanctions, which are imposed where recipients are judged to have failed to fulfil their obligations under their work search requirements, is another source of insecurity for households. These are set down in a contract, requiring proof of having applied for sufficient jobs per week and keeping appointments with advisers at Jobcentres or other activities. Prior to the pandemic, these sanctions rules were applied relatively harshly, and the financial penalties were very significant (Wright and Dwyer, 2021). With lockdown effectively closing much of the economy, legislative changes were enacted in March 2020 to disapply work search and work availability requirements from claimants (thus reducing the threat of sanctions being imposed). This was a temporary measure, but the number of sanctions reduced dramatically from nearly 2 per cent of UC recipients in March 2020 to 0.11 per cent into 2021 (DWP, 2021). Overall, COVID-19 severely strained many household budgets, and many turned to the welfare system for support. Housing was immediately treated as a ‘cornerstone’ for welfare, in the sense that wide-ranging action was swiftly 76

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implemented through social security and imposed on private sector lenders and landlords to mitigate potential adverse housing effects. Looking to the future, the partial coverage of housing costs has potentially severe impacts (especially increased evictions/house repossessions and homelessness), which are likely to become more manifest over time as the economy re-establishes a post-pandemic trajectory. The private sector will not be asked to continue to forbear and suffer/accumulate the consequent debts and balance sheet losses. The determination to reverse the general uplift in UC (October 2020), and the increasingly expressed concern to prioritise reductions in public spending and public debt, suggest that there is unlikely to be a more generous treatment of housing costs in the welfare system in the future. Thus, while COVID-19 showed that it is possible to shore up the ‘wobbly pillar’, it is likely to revert to its more precarious state once the perceived immediate crisis is past. A similar picture is seen within the policy changes surrounding homelessness, which is explored in the next section.

Homelessness As with many other aspects of welfare reform as well as social and public policy in the UK, the impact of COVID-19 on housing policy has underlined already existing fault lines and deep-rooted vulnerabilities that have been caused by underlying and existing issues, such as a long-term lack of investment in social housing, the socio-economic hardships caused by austerity and the entirely avoidable consequences of Brexit (Morgan, 2021). For a range of groups experiencing homelessness, the pandemic has had a notable impact on their experiences of insecurity and ill health, especially those who are rough sleepers or in insecure housing. For individuals who are in hostel accommodation and other forms of emergency housing, often cramped and lacking space, it has been very difficult to follow government guidance on track and trace, vaccinations (McCann, 2021), self-isolation and other measures to counter the spread of the virus. Such issues have also been felt most sharply by often ‘hidden communities’, such as refugees, ex-prisoners, Gypsies and Travellers, migrants and trafficked people, who often fall between the cracks in public/voluntary services and are most at risk of insecure accommodation (Lewer et al, 2020). Against this backdrop, it is evident that a range of UK government guidance and support packages have been broadly welcomed, if commonly regarded as not going nearly far enough to prevent further homelessness. The ‘Everyone In’ initiative in England and Wales saw a determined campaign to ensure that as many rough sleepers and homeless people as possible were given a place to live in some form of emergency/hostel accommodation that was ‘COVID secure’ (Rotolo, 2021). This was appreciated by charities and other organisations working across the housing sector, but to label ‘Everyone 77

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In’ as a complete success story is inaccurate. For example, there has also been a recognition that while the numbers of rough sleepers decreased – some reports suggest by as much as 37 per cent during 2020 (Murray, 2021) – the numbers facing homelessness were rising sharply as a direct result of the economic crisis the pandemic emphasised, even though the UK government stated that ‘no one should lose their home as a result of the coronavirus’ (Jayanetti, 2021). Despite such reassurances from the UK government, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into immediate focus the vulnerable and precarious nature of the housing sector, especially in relation to private rental markets, vis-à-vis issues of access, equity and affordability. With the ending of furlough support – on 30  September 2021 – it is estimated that many families and individuals with private rental arrears will face eviction, often with just two weeks’ notice. Recent figures suggest that 686,000 furloughed workers who rent privately, and 445,000 with rental arrears, could lose their homes (Spratt, 2021). This is a situation causing some of the main UK housing charities, such as CRISIS, Generation Rent and Shelter, to call for an extension of the furlough scheme, not proceeding with the £20 a week cut to Universal Credit, and a new moratorium on evictions due to the current hardships being faced by many families (Generation Rent, 2021). It is uncertain, at the time of writing, to what extent the UK government will pay attention to such renewed calls for further support. It is also important to note some national distinctions across the UK in relation to COVID-19 action plans on housing due to the processes of devolution. Regarding homelessness, as of late September 2021, the Scottish government, for example, had made nearly £40 million available to local councils to try and prevent families from being evicted during the pandemic, via grants for tenants in arrears (Scottish Government, 2021a). The schemes falling under these financial packages have been designed to get landlords to work constructively with both private and social rented sector tenants with arrears on realistic repayment plans and the use of grants to assist in this process (either via paying off arrears completely or reducing the amount owed). In North Lanarkshire, as a local example and it being the largest local authority in Scotland, it has been reported that there was a ‘substantial reduction’ – nearly 22 per cent – in people presenting as homeless to the council for accommodation during 2020–21. This is in part due to the measures introduced to try and tackle the impact and predicted aftermath of COVID-19 (Scottish Housing News, 2021). In a similar manner, in Wales, a report by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales (2021) found ‘beacons of good practice’ in terms of how some Welsh councils have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with regard to services for people who are homeless. However, the report also identified ‘systematic failures’ that led to individuals experiencing situations of 78

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‘injustice’ – such as delays in receiving support and assistance, council processes that didn’t work as they should, poor communications and unsuitable accommodation being offered. Such ‘injustice’ was especially noted in rural areas, where mobile telephone signals were often difficult to secure and face-to-face contact in council offices wasn’t possible due to COVID-19 restrictions. One of the main recommendations from the Ombudsman’s report (Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, 2021) is the establishment of a new Housing Regulator for Wales, to try and assist with ensuring that systems, processes and communications are nationally guaranteed and as they should be. In Wrexham, as an example, numbers reporting to the council as homeless increased sharply during the pandemic – approximately 505 people as of December 2020, with a notable percentage of this figure coming from the ex-prison population (Randall, 2021). Prior to the pandemic it was evident, through the annual Welsh government rough sleeper count, that numbers were less than 100 in Wrexham and actually going down, rather than up (Welsh Government, 2020). However, despite some good examples and evidence of best practice from across the UK, it is also clear that such ‘sticking plaster’ and ‘silo’ approaches to alleviating immediate ‘crisis’ situations of housing and accommodation will not work as effective medium- to longer-term solutions to visible accommodation shortages and ongoing affordability issues. The pandemic has clearly illustrated that far too many families across the UK are in very precarious positions regarding their tenancies and mortgages. A toxic combination of socio-economic and political factors, not just COVID-19, has ensured that homelessness continues to be a blight on the UK public policy landscape. Perhaps most of all, the pandemic has visibly demonstrated the connections and links between health inequalities and their intersection with housing and homelessness, demanding that a ‘complex systems approach’ is taken to try and minimise the devastating consequences being faced by vulnerable populations and families (Ranmal et al, 2021). The most devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have also shone a light on the important connections between health and housing, which the next section explores in more detail.

Health and social care impacts The interaction of housing, social care and COVID-19 was starkly highlighted by the tragic level of mortality in care homes that emerged in the early months of the pandemic. As older patients were cleared from hospitals to protect the NHS and problems arose around protective equipment shortages, infection control became exceptionally difficult among the vulnerable care home population. More than a quarter of recorded COVID-19 deaths in the first year of the pandemic were among care 79

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home residents, and this is likely an underestimate given the lack of testing in the early phases (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees, 2021). Moreover, there is evidence that the lamentable nexus of social care services and the unwitting spread of COVID-19 reached into many homes via domiciliary care services, with the death rate of service users more than doubling in the first few months (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees, 2021). Looking beyond the immediate impacts of the pandemic, we need to consider two interrelated elements in order to understand how the ‘wobbly’ nature of housing within the welfare state impacts upon health and social care. Firstly, housing needs to be understood as a key social determinant of health (Dahlgren and Whitehead, 1991; WHO, 2018). Hence, the impacts of financialisation, welfare reform and the longer-term residualisation and ghettoisation of social housing stock have direct and indirect impacts on public health. As discussed earlier, the health effects of inadequate housing became starkly apparent during lockdown, but these are effects which are not restricted to the pandemic. The financialisation of housing in the UK alongside the continuing under-supply of social housing has pushed significant numbers of vulnerable and low-income households into the expanded PRS (Bailey, 2020), exposing increasing numbers of households to insecure tenancies, poor-quality housing and the vicissitudes of profitfocused landlords. Moreover, these shifts are not just a ‘Generation Rent’ phenomenon but increasingly include older households and involve households staying in the PRS for longer periods (Rugg and Rhodes, 2018). These sectoral shifts compound the financial stress of welfare reforms such as the bedroom tax, housing benefit cap and local housing allowance freeze, exacerbating affordability challenges for low-income households. This combination of insecurity, unaffordability and often problematic landlord relationships has been clearly shown to generate negative impacts on health and wellbeing (Rolfe et al, 2020; Garnham et al, 2021), creating wider implications for health service demand. Again, the degree of policy divergence between the nations of the UK needs to be recognised. In particular, the Scottish government has largely abolished ‘no-fault’ evictions in the PRS, abolished Right to Buy, invested in new social housing and mitigated the bedroom tax. Hence there may be significant differences in the health impacts of housing policy across the UK, which would merit detailed investigation. Secondly, there is a recognition of the central importance of housing in relation to health and social care policy. Thus, while there is some policy divergence in the broad policy drive towards integration of health and social care across the nations of the UK (Kaehne et al, 2017), there is a general trend towards engagement of housing providers and services as key partners (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, 2016; Parkin, 2019), 80

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including specific requirements such as Housing Contribution Statements in Scotland (Healthcare Improvement Scotland, 2016) and the shift towards Place-Based Partnerships in England (Charles et al, 2021). However, the evidence suggests that collaboration between housing, health and social care services is making slow progress (Brown, 2018) and references to housing often seem somewhat peripheral, even in radical overhauls such as the Scottish government’s proposed National Care Service (Scottish Government, 2021b). At a more practical level, housing clearly plays a central role in social care in terms of accessibility for disabled people and an ageing population. More than 90 per cent of older people live in mainstream housing, whether as owner-occupiers, social tenants or private rented tenants (Communities and Local Government Select Committee, 2018) and mostly wish to remain in their homes as long as possible. The desire for ‘ageing in place’ seems like a win–win for the social care system, since providing domiciliary care is generally much cheaper than residential care, but the evidence thus far suggests that the foundations of quality housing, appropriate and affordable care, and provision of necessary adaptations are difficult to build (Adams, 2008; Stewart et al, 2014). The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG, 2020) has shown that 18 per cent of the 23.5 million homes in England are in a ‘non-decent’ condition. There are further challenges around low replacement rates, older stock, divergent local policies around adaptations, fragmented grant delivery and lack of specialised housing (Mackintosh, 2020). Moreover, there are substantial challenges to be addressed in terms of allocating accessible housing for disabled people of all ages (Anderson et al, 2019), while the growing number of people experiencing dementia raises another set of issues around the fitness of UK housing stock for an ageing population (APPG on Housing and Care for Older People, 2021). Across both of these core interactions, there is also a need to recognise the differential impacts of inadequate or inappropriate housing on different groups within society. The adequacy of current stock is also a wider challenge for certain groups, such as disabled people. In Scotland, for example, there is a projected 19 per cent of unmet housing need for disabled people by 2024 (Fitzpatrick et al, 2018). Therefore, the UK went into the COVID-19 pandemic already with a high level of older stock, non-decent housing and unmet housing need. Poor-quality homes have further contributed to virus spread during the pandemic, as in the UK a person’s home has been the predominant site for transmission of the virus. The impact on health for people living in poor housing has been ‘amplified’ by COVID-19 and deepened health inequalities (Centre for Ageing Better, 2020). The National Housing Federation (2020) analysed evidence from the English Housing Survey to 81

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show that in lockdown a lack of space or bad housing conditions was linked to mental or physical health problems for a third of adults (31 per cent, 15.9 million people). This included 3.7 million people (1.6 million children) living in overcrowded homes, with lack of space being connected to health problems during lockdown (52 per cent), depression (11 per cent) and lack of sleep (19 per cent). Patel et al (2020) highlight the impact of this on those living with co-morbidities in the UK, describing them as the ‘forgotten vulnerable’. Housing challenges such as overcrowding, lack of outdoor spaces and poor housing conditions have affected those in poverty and on lower incomes the most. The stark reality of this is that ‘overcrowding, which has been increasing in the years prior to the pandemic, makes it harder to self-isolate and shield, and may have contributed to higher death rates in poorer areas’ (Tinson and Clair, 2020: 19). The state of current housing stock, therefore, highlights the importance of increasing the quality of current and future housing stock and placing people in appropriate homes. This clearly shows that the impacts of COVID-19 are disproportionately felt in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where the lack of indoor and outdoor space helped to spread the virus, compounding existing inequalities in underlying physical and mental health and quality of homes. In considering the interplay between housing, health and social care, therefore, it is essential to consider the inequalities baked in to housing policy, considering other dimensions of inequality beyond the obvious focus on disability and age, explored in the next section.

Intersecting inequalities As we have noted, the financialisation of housing in the UK has dramatically changed the state’s role in providing it as a public good and exacerbated existing economic inequalities (primarily income inequalities). We must also recognise that further social inequalities have structured housing provision in the UK, and again the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified these. We address some of these inequalities in turn, while acknowledging the multifaceted and intersectional nature of the inequalities, and privileges, individuals and groups face. An immediate issue highlighted as lockdowns hit in 2020 as a policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the risk of intimate partner and domestic violence, primarily by men towards women. As Gurney (2021) highlighted, much housing scholarship and policy had presumed home was always a place of safety and ontological security. Now that people were forced to stay in their homes, for some they became a place of great danger. The gendered aspects of this must be emphasised. We live in societies where home is constructed as the feminine, domestic sphere. As 82

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highlighted by McCarthy (2018) in her research on women’s homelessness, the unheimlich caused by disruption to the domestic sphere compounds the psychological trauma and distress of being homeless, or being at ‘home’ in dangerous and unsettled circumstances. Reported domestic abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions is a complex picture. For example, in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics showed that reports to all police forces (excluding Greater Manchester) increased by 7 per cent from March–June 2019 to the same period in 2020; however, this was part of an ongoing increase in reporting due to greater awareness and more police work to encourage reporting. In London, there was an increase in reports of domestic abuse and violence from third parties, likely driven by more people staying at home and hearing incidents in neighbours’ homes. Services outside the criminal justice system saw increases in people accessing them with, for example, the English national charity Refuge experiencing a 65 per cent increase in calls to its hotline. However, services to respond to the most serious cases were hampered, with a substantial decline in MultiAgency Risk Assessment Conferences, as those at greatest risk struggled to access services that might help ensure their safety (ONS, 2020). In terms of race and ethnicity, it has been recognised within housing research in the UK for over 50 years how long-term structural racism has impacted access to housing in both the public and private sectors. Insecure immigration status intertwined with constrained access to healthcare, exclusion from the social safety net, inequitable bargaining power and discriminatory labour practices have had stark consequences in the COVID-19 context (Hobbs, 2021). In addition to the stress of contracting the virus and caring for their loved ones, existing barriers such as accessing healthcare services, surcharges for certain treatments, racialised medical perceptions, gendered cultural norms, digital poverty to enable communication and access to information, language, stigma related to seeking health services and specific legal barriers, all had a negative impact on the mental health of ethnic minorities and migrant women (O’Donnell et al, 2007; Germain and Yong, 2020). Similarly, discriminatory rental legislation and social welfare policies are among the drivers of unequal housing issues, poverty, destitution and homelessness for mostly Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, including those with settled status (Rogaly et  al, 2021). The tiering of housing, dispersing forced migrants (ie refugees, asylum seekers, those with humanitarian protection status and failed asylum seekers) on a no-choice basis to a variety of locations across the UK under the Immigration and Asylum Act (1999), also has its role in rendering migrants susceptible to homelessness (Dwyer, 2008; Mitton, 2021) alongside new immigration rules and policies targeting rough sleeping non-UK nationals for deportation (Morgan, 2021). When provided, the accommodation is often unsuitable and inadequate. For example, a high court ruling found that precautions taken on housing 83

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400 asylum seekers in dormitory accommodation at Napier Barracks did not meet the required minimum standards (Department of Health and Social Care, 2021; Taylor, 2021). Contrary to advice from Public Health England (PHE) that the barracks were not safe during the COVID-19 pandemic (Grierson, 2021), up to 265 residents were housed in dormitories suitable for 12 people and 200 people tested positive for COVID-19. Through freedom of information requests, Scottish Refugee Council and Liberty Investigates found that between 2016 and August 2021, 95 asylum seekers died while in Home Office accommodation. During the pandemic, figures rose from four in 2019 to 36 in 2020 and 33 in 2021 (Purkiss et al, 2021). It was quickly recognised in the United States and the UK that COVID-19 was having a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities (eg Millet et al (2020) noted that 20 per cent of US counties are disproportionately Black and accounted for 52 per cent of COVID-19 diagnoses and 58 per cent of national COVID-19 deaths). However, as Platt (2021: 4) argues, ‘the ways in which analysis has attempted to take into account housing and household circumstances—and health risks—does not sufficiently acknowledge how mutually implicated these factors are’. Lack of accessible housing has led to disabled people being particularly concentrated within social housing. Excluded from work, and thus private finance, many disabled people cannot access market housing, and what housing is available is not suitable or not sufficiently adapted (Satsangi et al, 2018; Anderson et al, 2020). This inevitably limits the housing choices available to disabled people in terms of type, location and amenities. Matching suitable housing to prospective tenants is an ongoing challenge, with disabled people experiencing many barriers to accessing housing (Anderson et  al, 2020). Within the private rented sector, and among owner-occupiers, although funding is available for adaptations, again this requires knowledge, skills and persistence on the part of residents to access it (Satsangi et  al, 2018). Disabled people were at higher risk of serious COVID-19 infection and death, with many spending large parts of 2020 and 2021 ‘shielding’ at home. The aforementioned problems with disinvestment in social housing disproportionately impacted on disabled people. Considering the experience of women highlights the heteronormativity and cisnormativity of housing and how we understand house and home (Gorman-Murray, 2008; Matthews et al, 2019). The policy of ‘lockdown’ implicitly presumed a home with a nuclear family to return to. While many groups, as we have already discussed, did not fit into such neat classifications, for people who identified as LGBTQ+ this was more likely, with many living in ‘logical’ or ‘chosen’ families of non-kin social networks (Valentine et al, 2003; Maupin, 2017). A stark example of the inequalities resulting from this was highlighted by the autumn 2021 lockdown in New South Wales, Australia. Under the rules of this lockdown, people in a romantic 84

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relationship with someone who did not live with them were allowed to visit their lover. However, people who lived alone and relied on others for care support or emotional support could not have visitors in their home. The negative impact of this on LGBTQ+ people, who are more likely to live alone, was quickly highlighted by activist organisations (Treweek, 2021). On the flip side, and somewhat problematically, some people saw the COVID-19 lockdowns as a means to break chains of transmission for HIV as well as SARS-CoV-2 (Ledin and Weil, 2021). Although available information and data on LGBTQ+ people are limited, it has long been recognised that people who identify as LGBTQ+ are at higher risk of domestic abuse, or familial rejection that would lead to housing precarity or homelessness. Thus, we can assume the problems that affected women, noted earlier, also affected LGBTQ+ people, with anecdotal reports of people having to return to ‘the closet’ due to being locked down with people who would threaten their safety if people were out (Hunte, 2020). This occurred in a context within the UK of almost daily transphobic, and increasing homophobic, attacks in the press and a rapid growth in reported violent attacks against LGBTQ+ people (for example, a 7 per cent increase in reported attacks on LGB people England and a 5 per cent increase in Scotland) (COPFS, 2021; Home Office, 2021; PSNI, 2021). While we have addressed specific equalities in turn, we must of course recognise that people experience intersectional identities – the experiences of a Black homeless woman as a victim of domestic abuse, and how this affects their housing situation, will be different from that of a White woman (Crenshaw, 1991). Such intersectionality compounds, and interacts with, the basic economic equalities that have framed the experience of housing in the UK, and which have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusion Returning to the idea that housing is ‘wobbly’, ‘special’, ‘awkward’, ‘peculiar’ and a ‘sore thumb’ of the welfare state (Torgersen, 1987), we can see that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has solidified housing as a ‘cornerstone’. Indeed, the centralised role of home, housing and community as the main mechanism in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has perhaps promoted housing to being a much more visible and integral part of the welfare state. Returning to the post-war model of government and the development of the welfare state, the goal, put simply, was that government intervention would protect people from the rigours of the free market where there was a recognised public good. However, in the economic aftermath of COVID-19, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated might last for the rest of his lifetime, there may well be further welfare retrenchment that will 85

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contribute to growing financialisation. Even if Johnson’s claim of the impact lasting for the rest of his lifetime is somewhat vague in terms of length, it is worth remembering that the legacy of the 2008 ‘great recession’ is still being felt in some areas more than a decade after its occurrence, so it can reasonably be expected that the legacy of the COVID-19 recession, which was much deeper, will last far in excess of 20 years. As such, the political economy of late neoliberalism coupled with record levels of government debt are likely to herald a further distancing of policymakers from recognising the public good of housing. On the positive side, the pandemic and its associated lockdowns should serve as salutary reminders of the vital role safe and secure housing and ‘liveable’ neighbourhoods can (and for some do) play as infrastructures for enhancing individual and collective wellbeing, as housing and social policy scholars have long argued. There is an opportunity to reiterate and reinforce the emphasis on the importance of ‘housing’ within a broader post-pandemic social policy strategy, one that works beyond conveniently simplistic metrics of ‘bricks and mortar’ and housing ‘units’ and renders thinkable the ontological, psychosocial and locational dynamics of housing justice. Crucially, however, we need a full and honest appraisal of the barriers that lie in the path of this strategy, not least the entirely dysfunctional ‘markets’ and policy mechanisms shaping and structuring who gets to live where in the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought focus to the vulnerable and precarious nature of the housing sector and its links with wider inequalities. Yet the experience of COVID-19 shows that it is possible to mitigate hardship quite rapidly, such as in the welfare system and homelessness. Investment in housing policy solutions and interventions has been shown to have positive impacts within the COVID-19 pandemic at a variety of levels. However, the examples given also highlight policy reversals that limit longer-term solutions to addressing housing issues in the welfare system in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity to showcase radical policy options and highlight the importance of future-proofing housing to be more flexible, dynamic and better quality. Looking to the future, placing housing at the core of the welfare state would be a clear way to establish an ongoing focus on the important areas of home, housing and community and bring divergent areas of social policy together to embed those longerterm solutions. References Adams, S. (2008) ‘What role for housing in health and social care provision?’, Journal of Integrated Care, 16: 30–6.

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Kattell, R., Mazzucato, M., Ryan-Collins, J. and Sharpe, S. (2018) ‘The economics of change: policy and appraisal for missions, market shaping and public purpose’, Working Paper Series: IIPP WP 2018-06, London: UCL. Ledin, C. and Weil, B. (2021) ‘Test now, stop HIV’: COVID-19 and the idealisation of quarantine as the “end of HIV”’, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 23(11): 1470–84. Lewer, D., Braithwaite, I., Bullock, M., Eyre, M. T., White, P. J., Aldridge, R. W., Story, A. and Hayward, A. C. (2020) ‘COVID-19 among people experiencing homelessness in England: a modelling study’, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 8(12): 1181–91. Machin, R. (2021) ‘COVID-19 and the temporary transformation of the UK social security system’, Critical Social Policy, 41(1): 1–12. Mackintosh, S. (2020) ‘Putting home adaptations on the policy agenda in England’, Journal of Aging and Environment, 34(2): 126–40. Malpass, P. (2003) ‘The wobbly pillar? Housing policy and the British postwar welfare state’, Journal of Social Policy, 32(4): 589–606. Malpass, P. (2008) ‘Housing and the new welfare state: wobbly pillar or cornerstone?’, Housing Studies, 23(1): 1–19. Matthews, P., Poyner, C. and Kjellgren, R. (2019) ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer experiences of homelessness and identity: insecurity and home(o)normativity’, International Journal of Housing Policy, 19(2): 232–53. Maupin, A. (2017) Logical Family: A Memoir, Harmondsworth: Penguin. McCann, L. J. (2021) ‘Vaccinating the vulnerable: how do we protect those experiencing homelessness?’, Journal of Primary Care and Community Health, online first, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/21501327211041211. McCarthy, L. (2018) ‘(Re)conceptualising the boundaries between home and homelessness: the unheimlich’, Housing Studies, 33(6): 960–85. McKee, K. (2011) ‘Sceptical, disorderly and paradoxical subjects: problematizing the “will to empower” in social housing governance’, Housing, Theory and Society, 28(1): 1–18. McKee, K., Muir, J. and Moore, T. (2017) ‘Housing policy in the UK: the importance of spatial nuance’, Housing Studies, 32(1): 60–72. MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) (2018) Dwelling stock estimates in England: 2018, available at: https://www.gov. uk/government/statistics/dwelling-stock-estimates-in-england-2018. MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) (2020) English Housing Survey: Headline Report 2018–19, London: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Millet, G. A., Jones, A. T., Benkeser, D., Baral, S., Mercer, L., Beyrer, C., Honermann, B., Lankiewicz, E., Mena, L., Crowley, J. S., Sherwood, J. and Sullivan, P. S. (2020) ‘Assessing differential impacts of COVID-19 on black communities’, Annals of Epidemiology, 47: 37–44 90

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Mitton, L. (2021) ‘The newly-recognised refugees most at risk of homelessness in England’, Journal of Social Policy, 50(1): 59–78. Morgan, B. (2021) ‘What fresh hell? UK policies targeting homeless migrants for deportation after Brexit and COVID-19’, Critical Social Policy, online first, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183211015621. Murray, J. (2021) ‘Rough sleeper numbers down 37% in England during Covid pandemic’, The Guardian, 25 February, available at: https://www. theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/25/rough-sleepers-england-covidpandemic-homelessness. National Housing Federation (2020) ‘Poor housing causing health problems for nearly a third of Brits during lockdown’, available at: https://www. housing.org.uk/news-and-blogs/news/ poor-housing-causing-healthproblems-for-nearly-a-third-of-brits-during-lockdown/. O’Donnell, C. A., Higgins, M., Chauhan, R. and Mullen, K. (2007) ‘“They think we’re OK and we know we’re not”: A qualitative study of asylum seekers’ access, knowledge and views to health care in the UK’, BMC Health Services Research, 7: 75. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2018) ‘UK private rented sector: 2018’, London: ONS. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2020) ‘Domestic abuse during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, England and Wales: November 2020’, available at: h​t​t​p​s​:​/​/​w​w​w​.​o​n​s​.​g​o​v​.​u​k​/​p​e​o​p​l​e​p​o​p​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​a​n​d​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​t​y​/​ c​r ​i​m​e​a​n​d​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​/​a​r ​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​a​b​u​s​e​d​u​r ​i​n​g​t​h​e​c​o​r​o​n​a​v​i​r ​u​s​c​o​v​i​d​1​9​ p​a​n​d​e​m​i​c​e​n​g​l​a​n​d​a​n​d​w​a​l​e​s​/​n​o​v​e​m​b​e​r​2​0​2​0​#​t​e​l​e​p​h​o​n​e​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​e​d​-​c​r ​i​m​e​-​ s​u​rv​ e​ ​y​-​f​o​r​-​e​n​g​l​a​n​d​-​a​n​d​-​wa​ ​l​e​s​-​t​c​s​e​w.​ ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2021a) ‘Labour market overview’, available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplein work/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/october 2021. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2021b) ‘UK government debt and deficit: March 2021’, London: ONS. Parkin, E. (2019) ‘Health and social care integration’, House of Commons Briefing paper no. 7902. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (2016) Integrating Health and Social Care, London: Houses of Parliament. Patel, J. A., Nielsen, F., Badiani, A. A., Assi, S., Unadkat, V. A., Patel, B., Ravindrane, R. and Wardle, H. (2020) ‘Poverty, inequality and COVID-19: the forgotten vulnerable’, Public Health, 183: 110–11. Platt, L. (2021) ‘COVID-19 and ethnic inequalities in England’, LSE Public Policy Review, 1(4): 4, available at: http://doi.org/10.31389/lseppr.33. PSNI (Police Service in Northern Ireland) (2021) Incidents and Crimes with a Hate Motivation Recorded by the Police in Northern Ireland, Belfast: Police Service in Northern Ireland. 91

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Public Services Ombudsman for Wales (2021) A Report about Homelessness in Wales, Pencoed: PSOfW, available at: https://www.ombudsman.wales/ wp-content/uploads/2021/10/OI-Executive-Summary-Easy-Read.pdf. Purkiss, J., Gidda, M. and Walawalkar, A. (2021) ‘95 died in asylum seeker accommodation in five years amid fears Home Office downplayed toll’, Liberty Investigates, 24 October, available at: https://libertyinvestigates. org.uk/articles/95-died-in-asylum-seeker-accommodation-in-five-yearsamid-fears-home-office-downplayed-toll/. Randall, L. (2021) ‘Report reveals issues faced by Wrexham’s homeless during pandemic’, The Leader, 7  October, available at: https://www. leaderlive.co.uk/news/19632847.report-reveals-issues-faced-wrexhamshomeless-pandemic/. Ranmal, R., Tinson, A. and Marshall, L. (2021) ‘How do health inequalities intersect with housing and homelessness?’, European Journal of Homelessness, 15(3): 113–21. Resolution Foundation (2020) ‘The final furlough’, available at: https:// www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/final-furlough/. Rogaly, K., Elliot, J. and Baxter, D. (2021) What’s Causing Structural Racism In Housing?, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Rolfe, S., Garnham, L., Godwin, J., Anderson, I., Seaman, P. and Donaldson, C. (2020) ‘Housing as a social determinant of health and wellbeing: developing an empirically-informed realist theoretical framework’, BMC Public Health, 20: 1138. Rotolo, M. (2021) ‘Everyone In: the numbers’, LSE Blog, 10 May, available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lselondon/everyone-in-the-numbers/. Rugg, J. and Rhodes, D. (2018) The Evolving Private Rented Sector: Its Contribution and Potential, York: Centre for Housing Policy. Satsangi, M., Theakstone, D., Matthews, P., Lawrence, J., Rummery, K., Mackintosh, S. and Boniface, G. (2018) ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission research report 114: the housing experiences of disabled people in Britain’, London: Equality and Human Rights Commission. Scottish Government (2021a) ‘Grants for tenants in rent arrears’, Scottish Government Press Release (Housing), 27 September, available at: https:// www.gov.scot/news/grants-for-tenants-in-rent-arrears/. Scottish Government (2021b) A National Care Service for Scotland: Consultation, Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Housing News (2021) ‘North Lanarkshire Council sees “substantial reduction” in homelessness presentations’, Scottish Housing News, 23 September, available at: https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/article/ north-lanarkshire-council-sees-substantial-reduction-in-homelessnesspresentations.

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Spratt, V. (2021) ‘UK faces eviction crisis as thousands of renters on furlough or behind on bills have support taken away’, iNews, 9 August, available at: https://inews.co.uk/news/evictions-furlough-rent-arrearspandemic-1141823. Stewart, J., Crockett, R., Gritton, J., Stubbs, B. and Pascoe, A. (2014) ‘Ageing at home? Meeting housing, health and social needs’, Journal of Integrated Care, 22: 242–52. Taylor, D. (2021) ‘Calls to close Napier barracks after asylum seekers win legal case’, The Guardian, 3 June, available at: https://www.theguardian. com/uk-news/2021/jun/03/napier-barracks-asylum-seekers-win-legalchallenge-against-government. Tinson, A. and Clair, A. (2020) ‘Better housing is crucial for our health and the COVID-19 recovery’, The Health Foundation, available at: https:// www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-01/2020%20-%20Better%20 housing%20is%20crucial.pdf. Torgersen, U. (1987) ‘Housing: the wobbly pillar under the welfare state’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 4(Supp. 1): 116–26, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02815737.1987.10801428. Treweek, D. (2021) ‘Intimacy in a time of pandemic’, ABC Religion & Ethics, 19  July, available at: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/danielletreweek-intimacy-in-a-time-of-pandemic/13450580. Valentine, G., Skelton, T. and Butler, R. (2003) ‘Coming out and outcomes: negotiating lesbian and gay identities with, and in, the family’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21(4): 479–99. Welsh Government (2020) National Rough Sleeper Count, November 2019, Cardiff: Welsh Government, available at: https://gov.wales/sites/default/ files/statistics-and-research/2020-02/national-rough-sleeper-countnovember-2019-814.pdf. WHO (World Health Organization) (2018) WHO Housing and Health Guidelines, Geneva: World Health Organization. Wilson, W. and Barton, C. (2019) ‘What is affordable housing?’, House of Commons Briefing paper no. 07747. Wright, S. and Dwyer, P. (2021) ‘In-work Universal Credit: claimant experiences of conditionality mismatches and counterproductive benefit sanctions’, Journal of Social Policy, online first, available at: https://doi. org/10.1017/S0047279420000562.

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Part II

Wider developments in social policy

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5

The faceless researcher: the implications of carrying out research using digital methods during a global pandemic Emma Partlow

Introduction During 2020 the opportunity to reimagine how we carry out ethical and inclusive research arose as a result of COVID-19 (Partlow, 2020); this discussion continues, and it feels like a pivotal moment to pause and critically reflect upon research practice during this time as we look towards the future. At the height of the pandemic, restrictions and lockdowns became (and remain to some extent) a part of daily life. During this period, research endeavours continued to take place and the process of collecting data moved quickly to predominantly digital and online methods. There is an additional underpinning question about whether the continuation of research was appropriate or ethical given the circumstances of living through a global pandemic. However, the ways in which digital methods have enabled and constrained good research practice during the pandemic are beginning to be explored and assessed (Kara and Khoo, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; Howlett, 2021). Furthermore, there is recognition that reflections and considerations about how research processes have been enacted during the pandemic will be of critical importance in understanding how ‘fieldwork’ is carried out in the future (Howlett, 2021). This chapter wishes to draw attention to the ways in which people and experiences can still be excluded and ostracised through the ways in which digital methods are utilised by researchers, despite them being underpinned by ethical and inclusive intentions. There is the potential for the misconception that face-to-face nuances and methods of interacting with participants can be directly applied to online and digital methods; this chapter argues that is not the case. There will be a close focus upon the role of the researcher, who often remains ‘faceless’ when carrying out research within online spaces (and arguably within some face-to-face 97

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research settings too). There is also the potential for power imbalances to be exacerbated due to the researcher being able to remain faceless with the use of digital technologies for research. These issues run deeper than the ethics of conducting digital research, which has become the predominant means by which to carry out research as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter will highlight that people are frequently cautious of online research, often due to the ways in which researchers are presented or remain faceless through digital platforms. Practical examples of ways to ensure that an authentic relationship can be built with participants through digital methods will be provided. This will ensure that participants feel engaged with rather than ‘visited’ by academic tourists who take their souvenirs (data) with little regard for participants, treating them as objects of their research. The reflections that will be used are based upon researching disability and engaging with disabled participants during two research projects that took place at key moments during the global COVID-19 pandemic. There is a recognition that for many disabled participants engaging in research through digital technologies, a sense of autonomy and control is provided over how and when they can respond, and for this reason it is often seen as advantageous. However, this chapter carries an important message and a warning for researchers to be mindful about how digital methods can be and are exclusionary in ways that stretch far beyond the sole (albeit important) issue of digital exclusion and exist beyond material and access means. Exclusion can occur despite participants being included digitally (this can occur in the same way within face-to-face settings). The exclusion of participants, despite them being included, may manifest as participants not feeling able to share thoughts or able to question the research process due to power imbalances that may be exacerbated through a faceless researcher presence. This is problematic for the future of research and the ways in which this is shaping research interactions and spaces. Through a series of reflections and analysis, the wider implications for participants, researchers and research findings will be explored. At the onset of the pandemic, the way in which research was designed and carried out had to change immediately; however, that does not mean that the knowledge underpinning digital research was developed enough or that thinking surrounding digital methods had been sufficient up to that point (Howlett, 2021: 2) to account for the challenges that have been faced and continue to exist. While this chapter will draw upon reflections from research interactions that took place during the pandemic, these lessons and practical considerations can apply to a wide range of settings and will be useful where interactions must take place online, including but not limited to practitioner work and a wide range of teaching sessions. This chapter introduces the two projects that have influenced the chapter, including pandemic reflections and practical points to consider, and provides an introduction to digital 98

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methods, some of the barriers to online research, alongside the implications of carrying out research in this manner, and concludes with some practical suggestions to improve rapport and communication online as a researcher.

Reflections from two digital research projects This chapter draws upon experiences from carrying out two digital research projects during the pandemic.1 Both projects explored the experiences of accessing and retaining work and employment from a disabled perspective. The first project was originally designed to be an ethnographic project whereby face-to-face conversations and workplace observations took place. However, as nationwide restrictions were implemented and the researcher was included within the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ category, the decision was made to redesign the project to be digital. It must be noted at this point that while this was not the original research design, it is thought that this was an effective way of seeking to understand the experiences of disabled people and one that will be purposefully designed in future projects (and in fact has been identified as the methodology of choice for a future project as a result of the ways in which it has enabled people to engage in more depth, detail and with more autonomy than traditional face-to-face research settings allow for). Conducting digital research was an unfamiliar process at the point of having to redesign the first project, and one of the first steps in redesigning the first project involved a naïve online search for the words ‘digital ethnography’, which led towards netnographic literature, notably Kozinets’ (2015) work. Following in-depth research of the various advantages and disadvantages of varying approaches to carrying out online research, the change from faceto-face ethnography to digital research was made. Within the two projects, observing people online and covertly collecting data did not feel aligned to the aims of the project (to understand the experiences of disability and work). Elements of a netnographic approach, one example being the act of ‘lurking’ (Costello et al, 2017) online to see what conversations were being had, was adopted. This ensured that the researcher developed a sensitivity to these issues but could then guide people and conversations away from a public space. The practicalities of using digital methods focus heavily upon ethics, which is an important process to ensure research that is being carried out is not harmful or exploitative. However, this chapter seeks to argue that online research has the potential to be just this in unintended ways. The move to a digital design was supported by the ethical review process: there were additional considerations to undertake such as the storage of data, use of online platforms and ensuring that sharing informed and gaining informed consent was possible. However, this process and the additional considerations 99

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should not dissuade any aspiring digital researchers from undertaking this type of research. Using these techniques and utilising a digital approach is not something to fear in terms of ethical review processes. There is an emerging field of discussion around ethical review processes and the complexities of online methodologies (Lehner-Mear, 2020; Gerrard, 2021). With that in mind, ensuring that sufficient reading and research around these issues and implications has been carried out is advocated for. Digital methods should not be adopted as the ‘easy’ option or as a ‘last resort’ methodology – which is potentially what is happening with the use of digital methods because of pandemic-related restrictions. Therefore, this chapter has been designed to share insights and experiences of going through these thought processes and practical endeavours towards creating a digital design. The thought process behind how to carry out inclusive and ethical research while being behind a screen continued to develop. The two research designs encompassed synchronous and asynchronous methods, which meant that people could choose to take part in a ‘live’ conversation in real time via an online messaging system or engage in written narrative asynchronously whereby they could reflect upon responses and take time to engage with questions or further prompts according to their own time frames. Being influenced by a netnographic approach meant that people were recruited from online spaces such as social media groups and communities (permission was needed to enter some of these, while the researcher was already a member of others through an insider status of also being disabled). However, these conversations were guided away from the public eye of social media towards more traditional digital methods such as online video conversation or written exchanges via email or messaging technologies. No data were ever collected without the permission of participants as transparency was a key ethical underpinning to both of these projects and only overt methods of collection were utilised. Concerns have been raised about people’s views and thoughts being ‘collected’ and used within research projects by a faceless researcher who carries out overt data collection in online spaces, which raises considerable ethical questions (Lehner-Mear, 2020: 126). There are recognised concerns about the risk of netnography and these methods becoming impersonal with a faceless researcher. It is asked ‘How can netnography remain personal when all that may seem to be required is the download, coding, analysis and reportage of the publicly available data?’ (Kozinets, 2015: 95). The two research projects prioritised conversation and interaction with participants in a way that promoted the building of a rapport. It was felt that this would not have been possible with covert data collection. There was the possibility that this could have prevented the richness of the data that did follow due to a lack of participant input and response. 100

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Pandemic reflections Many reflections and lessons have stemmed from undertaking two pieces of research during a global pandemic; some of the key thoughts are shared within this section. Conversations that take place digitally are different: nuances such as body language and subtle idiosyncratic actions are lost, which needs to be accounted for, and the ways in which researchers communicate with participants need to be more nuanced and adapted dependent upon context and research topic. It has been recognised that for many people who identify as impaired, chronically ill or disabled, a digital approach could be empowering because of the researcher being faceless as opposed to research settings in which they may feel scrutinised. Therefore, there are recognisable advantages to a researcher being faceless. However, with this in mind, caution should be exercised. Critical reflection upon researchers’ actions and intentions when carrying out research online become of paramount importance to avoid being exploitative or disrespectful of the time and stories of participants, particularly within qualitative studies whereby key principles of rapport building, ethicality and transparency should be key features and values demonstrated by the researcher. One of the key lessons that has stemmed from conducting research in this manner is the importance of reflecting upon our role as researchers. This is something that is often spoken about in relation to research but seldom undertaken authentically. During the process of collecting data during the pandemic it became clear that further interrogation about researcher power and privilege was needed. An example of the way in which digital exclusion can result in participants feeling excluded from the research conversation as a whole can be demonstrated with an example surrounding information and consent sheets sent digitally to participants. There was an assumption that participants would have access to a computer or device in which word processing software was present to open the document; this was an additional hurdle to overcome. However, this was effectively adapted, and this barrier was broken down through sending information and consent statements for participants to respond to in the body of an email or messaging box rather than tick boxes. During this time period this thought process felt isolating as there was no rule book or guidance about how to overcome these practical hurdles; these reflections have inspired this chapter. Overlooking a key part of the research process such as negotiating informed consent and providing information about the research in this inaccessible manner may have potentially hindered or prevented the research conversation from being as rich or insightful as it could have been. As researchers we must pay attention to our privileges and the power we hold in arranging research spaces online and the ways in which our assumptions can produce a range of outcomes and participant experiences of engaging in research interactions. 101

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Digital methods The predominant researcher response to COVID-19 has been to move research endeavours to online spaces and utilise a range of technologies, including asynchronous and synchronous methods. This increase in the use of remote methods could have been seen as a way for research to be reimagined and redesigned (Partlow, 2020). However, there is an argument and fear that researchers have sought to apply face-to-face research techniques to digital methodologies, which has left both participants and researchers at risk of over-disclosure, increased demand for emotional labour and exacerbated power imbalances. Digital methods have enabled good research practice in a range of ways, particularly for disabled people (the reflections within this chapter are based upon two research projects focusing upon disabled people’s experiences of employment). Transport and access issues are not a key focus when using online technologies for research, which has potentially meant the inclusion of experiences that could ordinarily have been excluded, particularly as flexibility means that engagement can take place at a time that suits the participant. Digital research can be made up of synchronous or asynchronous methods, or a combination of both. This is beneficial as these methods provide a way for disabled participants to have increased autonomy through the ability to respond in their own time (as opposed to the potential pressure of face-to-face research settings) (Seymour, 2001). It is documented that utilising asynchronous research methods within qualitative projects is beneficial to both participant and researcher as the ability to reflect upon data is possible as a result of the omission of live conversations, making it possible to think about responses in more depth and detail (Williams et al, 2012). Furthermore, there is recognition that an effective rapport and relationship can be built up using online technologies, as is indicated in the rich responses that are often gained from carrying out online research (Williams et al, 2012: 373). It is thought that online technologies play a part in reducing power differentials as participants may be more confident in contributing responses (Williams et al, 2012). While it is recognised that this can be the case, there is also the possibility that this thought is somewhat naïve in the light of the pandemic. Digital exclusion has persisted, and a ‘digital divide’ (Seymour, 2001: 149) remains and has arguably been exacerbated as a result of the pandemic – this needs further consideration when undertaking decisionmaking about sampling and recruitment. The phrase ‘desk-based’ research was previously used to mean the reviewing of literature and not empirical work (Robson and McCartan, 2016: 82); however, due to the pandemic, many empirical projects are now ‘desk-based’, with researchers carrying out research from their own homes or offices. As a result of the pandemic 102

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many people have had their homes exposed through digital ways of working (Campbell, 2021). People’s working lives have infiltrated their homes; there is no shortage of examples where young children have entered the room of news presenters in which an interview is taking place. It is recognised that the dynamics that come from digital research could be particularly empowering for participants as they are in control of deciding whether to answer a call or click on a link to enter a research conversation (Howlett, 2021: 6). The exposure of home environments is a key consideration and acts as a potential layer of power imbalance between researcher and participant that needs to be considered when carrying out research using digital technologies that utilise a video element. The space in which research is taking place could potentially be indicative of the lives of participants and researchers. One of the key reflections underpinning this chapter is that of the portrayal of space and place through digital research. As an example of this, some participants were interviewed in spaces such as bathrooms or corridors while the researcher sat in a fully equipped office (visible on camera to the participants). While space may not indicate anything about the participant and may merely be a place of convenience for them to carry out the research conversation, this is still a key consideration and reflection for researchers to undertake (this is potentially a more sensitive consideration dependent upon the type of research being carried out). However, reflections about the ways in which researchers’ homes and lives are presented through research conversations should be given further thought as this is a key issue when considering the relationship between participant and researcher. This is not a consideration that has to take place within face-to-face settings, as participants would never be present within a researcher’s home; however, due to the use of digital methodologies, this is now the case. It is thought that a blank background has the potential to be much more inclusive than a potential show of prosperity with household items, including but not limited to expensive houseplants, and masses of literature on display in the background of research conversations. These considerations are similar to ones that have been undertaken by ethnographers about what clothing and props to wear during fieldwork (Coffey, 1999) in order to ‘fit in’ with participants and ‘promote trust and reciprocity’ (Coffey, 1999: 71). Within online or netnographic-inspired (Kozinets, 2015) methodologies, the premise is the same; if spaces and places of participants and researchers feel and look sharply juxtaposed, this is likely to harm the research relationship and potential findings. There are risks associated with participants over-identifying with researchers, which will be discussed later in the chapter. The need to balance over-identification and alienation is one researchers must seek to navigate, which can result in research stress, anxiety and increased demands for emotional labour. 103

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The indication of research ‘space’ with video technology is one way for the researcher not to remain faceless; however, this still does not inform participants about who the researcher is and has the potential for participants to ‘fill in the gaps’ if an appropriate introduction is not given in a transparent way. This opens up a much wider question: do participants need to know who the researcher is? There are methods whereby researchers remain faceless for the purpose of carrying out covert research (Lehner-Mear, 2020: 127), but this chapter is reflecting upon research situations whereby the researcher is not intentionally remaining faceless but may appear and be responded to in this way. One of the ways in which researchers may seek to avoid becoming ‘faceless’ is to create brands for their research projects, with matching logos, social media pages and an online image that is used to capitalise upon a research idea and consequently upon participants. The ways in which these corporate branding endeavours can be exclusionary to participants is not given enough thought, and aside from academic credentials and a sense of grandeur, this information often does very little to provide participants or prospective participants with information about the researcher or project, particularly as these advertisements can sometimes be laden with complex theoretical insight and jargon, thus ostracising participants from the very spaces in which one wishes to include them. Researchers often remain faceless while their branding enters the research conversation and attempts to give insight about the research project, which can be problematic. While there are considerations about conducting research from home, this has been overwhelmingly advantageous to research conversations, particularly for disabled participants, as conversations can take place from participants’ homes digitally. Furthermore, following up on or requesting information is easier and quicker than rearranging a face-to-face interaction due to the flexibility that online technologies provide. However, this advantage also comes with a caveat: there is the potential for research to feel constantly ‘on’ for both participants and researchers. This is particularly the case if social media is used for research purposes or if notifications are sent to the researcher’s devices; in this sense, research can become invasive for both participants and researchers. Furthermore, the ways in which participants are ‘returned’ to in order to request additional information or clarification is also of critical importance. There is a recognition that many researchers were working flexibly during the pandemic (and continue to do so as a result of COVID-19-related disruption), which often means that research work is being carried out late at night. This may lead to the temptation to contact participants outside of what would be deemed appropriate working hours. With that in mind, it must be noted that within the two projects informing this chapter this flexibility was beneficial, as was being open to participants contacting the researcher outside of ‘expected’ hours. Further considerations about power dynamics and the potential to be invasive 104

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are required. However, the way this was approached with an ethical and inclusive underpinning was by being as clear as possible with participants about their desires and expectations surrounding research conversations, for example, asking if a particular time was convenient and asking if there was a preferred time or day for a conversation; this was valued and there were occasions when participants thanked the researcher for this choice. Many participants requested conversations late in the evening, so there was a requirement for researcher flexibility too. Overall, the flexibility that digital technology provided in the sense of being able to carry out conversations late into the evening was beneficial, particularly with disabled participants, and often asynchronous methods enabled people to have the time and space to respond accordingly if they had been experiencing a period of ill health or impairment effects that had prevented their immediate commitment. Therefore, flexibility ensured that inclusion was made possible in this way. At the same time, digital methodologies have also had the potential to constrain good research practice, and key issues of digital exclusion and the ‘digital divide’ (Seymour, 2001: 149) which have been previously recognised have been brought to the fore. There is a continued caution that as researchers we need to be mindful about who is excluded as a result of using digital technologies for research endeavours and who does not have ‘digital citizenship’ (Goggin, 2016), particularly as much of the praise surrounding digital technologies for research practice has ignored the ways in which people can be excluded. Digital exclusion is often cited as exclusion as a result of not being able to access technology for financial and accessibility reasons. However, within this chapter, the argument is made that exclusion and unethical practice can occur as a result of the digital methods themselves and not just the direct exclusion from digital technologies. There is recognition that recruiting participants online runs the risk of ‘fraud’ (Teitcher et al, 2015); however, this chapter draws attention to the ways in which researchers can also be complicit in ‘fraud’ through the ease of some digital research methods making academic tourism easier than ever before and the ways in which people are being convinced to part with their stories as part of data collection methods in settings which are not as supportive as they could be. It is recognised that research can leave participants feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable: ‘most research studies exact a cost on time and energy from their participants, but some studies also inflict discomfort or pain’ (Dennis, 2014: 407). This is enabled as the relationship between participant and researcher is often formed upon the assumption that researchers will remain within a position of power and participants will adopt the category of vulnerability (Bashir, 2020). These ideas, which remain dominant within research endeavours, are problematic, particularly as research that occurs online is more susceptible to falling into the trap of perceiving participants as objects of research to study and extract 105

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data from. In addition to digital exclusion there is the risk that research has changed in a way that positions participants unavoidably as ‘objects’ of interest rather than subjects who can engage with researchers in a transparent and authentic manner. There is also a wider concern here about how much we as researchers share with participants about our identities. The pandemic has been a lens in which to critically reflect upon the ways in which our research practices are perpetuating academic tourism or are part of creating authentically invested, inclusive and supported spaces whereby conversations between researcher and participant can occur. The way in which participants are perceived by researchers can impact upon the way in which they are treated as part of the research process. Treating participants as objects can lead to ‘academic tourism’ whereby researchers enter into interactions with participants purely to extract data quickly. With digital methods researchers have become ‘faceless’ in that research is being carried out online and the potential for authentic rapport, trust and mutual understanding is potentially lost and being replaced with a ‘grab’ ideology where people are contacted, data are grabbed and then conversations are closed down; this is enabled and, problematically, can be carried out with ease utilising digital technologies. With this in mind, this may lend itself to the ways in which potential and actual participants were suspicious about being contacted and about research advertisements online. The ways in which this ‘dash and grab’ tourism can be counteracted can be seen in attempts to ensure participants feel supported and comfortable during the research but also, as the research draws to a close, employing exit strategies and the closing of conversations. It is recognised that participants are often not in receipt of finalised reports or even the findings from studies (Dennis, 2014). Within the two reflective research projects, most participants wished to know where their ‘words’ would be going and what the wider aims of the research were. Therefore, sharing findings on a semi-regular basis or negotiating the communication of final reports and write-ups could go a long way in ensuring participants do not feel like exploited victims of academic tourism.

Suspicion and mistrust This chapter proposes that alongside digital exclusion there is a potential for the exclusion of experiences based upon the ways in which potential research participants are engaged with. Online research involves a certain level of suspicion about faceless researchers wishing to engage with people in the name of ‘research’; the very word itself evokes a particular feeling of mistrust for some people. Throughout this chapter the phrasing ‘research conversation’ has been used to indicate the nature of how research has had to change during the 106

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pandemic, particularly around language and traditional ways of forming relationships with and sampling participants. Formalised language such as ‘interview’ or ‘research agenda’ appeared to be off-putting to participants online, and positioning research as a conversation was beneficial. Positioning research as simply a conversation could in itself be misleading; however, when this was followed up with research information and informed consent was sought from participants, this enabled a more open process to occur. Furthermore, using the phrase ‘research conversation’ seemed to limit, and in most cases prevent, people questioning what they were saying, such as ‘is this ok?’, ‘is this what you are looking for?’ or ‘I’m not sure how useful this will be’. As researchers we must be attuned to the ways in which participants are potentially aware of the power dynamic at play and wish to ‘perform’ with their responses. Situating research as a ‘conversation’ online helped to reduce some of these power differentials and placed participants more at ease than they would have felt under the spotlight of ‘research’ or ‘interview’. Research agendas and wider aims are often more hidden in online research than in person. While it is recognised that the consideration of clothing is not required with digital methodologies, additional work is required by researchers in order to earn the trust of participants. People who have previously engaged in ethnographic work may be more than familiar with the process of seeking to gain a participant’s trust. However, it is recognised that there are ‘blood, sweat and tears’ to be experienced as part of a netnographic ‘slog’ (Costello et al, 2017). This could be problematic if these processes and techniques are unfamiliar to researchers, as the transference of face-to-face techniques to online settings is not possible in the absence of utterances, body language and other in-person privileges. When reflecting upon empirical work carried out during the pandemic, it is clear that many people who were interested in the wider aims of the research, and initially the participants themselves, were suspicious about the research process. This suspicion towards research and the researcher’s motives is not something that had previously been faced in face-to-face settings. However, this does not mean that the suspicion was not previously present; it is possible that using online platforms empowered participants to display and discuss this suspicion in ways that would potentially be limited in a physical setting. Questions were raised despite ‘research information’ being presented in online spaces, such as ‘who are you?’ ‘Why are you doing this work?’ ‘What is the purpose of this?’ There is a reflection here about whether people feel more able to ask these questions due to the recognised increased confidence and comfortability of online research settings, or whether these questions come from a place of suspicion and mistrust about a faceless researcher asking questions about potentially the most sensitive and intimate areas of their lives via a screen. When using digital methods, the researcher’s identity is potentially never clear unless this is portrayed through 107

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corporate branding or institutional advertisements, which arguably convey a particular message, often an inauthentic one.

Showing your face Through the use of digital methods, researchers have become ‘faceless’ in that research is being carried out online and the potential for authentic rapport, trust and mutual understanding is potentially lost. One way in which to combat this is through the continuation of the ‘faceless researcher’ metaphor whereby this chapter advocates for the researcher to ‘show’ their face. Showing one’s face can simply mean not trying to conceal one’s identity behind corporate disguises, being flexible in one’s approach to research and adopting tones and language that would not traditionally be used in face-to-face settings. The argument here is that ‘showing your face’ as a researcher is one of the key principles in conducting ethical and inclusive research which stretches far beyond simply showing your face within a video setting or being physically present within an interview: ‘the increased use of digital methodologies must be accompanied by the purposeful creation of transparent and open ethical dialogues between researcher and participant’ (Partlow, 2020: 119). Through previous research conversations it is recognised that participants often want to know more about the researcher beyond the ‘aims’ of the project. This is often an uncomfortable part of conducting research for researchers, and questions about how much to reveal may arise. Within qualitative research projects participants often share a great deal of information (often sensitive) about their lives and experiences, therefore it is only natural that they would want to understand the purpose of the research, including the background and motives of the researcher. We must critically reflect upon our roles as researchers and how much we are willing to share in order to gain the stories of others. There is a broader question here about whether we should be engaging in research conversations if we are not willing to share part of our selves with people who are potentially sharing intimate parts of their lives: are we being research tourists looking to take what we can without revealing much about ourselves and then remove ourselves from the research situation as quickly as possible with our data in hand? Whether researchers are aware of the complexities of ‘showing’ their face or not, it is clear that research during the pandemic has blurred the boundaries between therapy and research. The emotional labour on the part of the researcher cannot be understated as participants often seek comfort or support, particularly during research conversations that take place late at night. While these boundaries may blur for participants, the role that signposting has within research settings is of central importance. While we need to recognise that online conversations can lead to the sharing of 108

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emotional issues, researchers are not therapists, legal advisers or job coaches. Of course, researchers can play all these roles, but within research endeavours they should seek not to cross boundaries to ensure that the research is ethical and that relationships are appropriate as part of research projects.

Building a rapport online Researchers play a key role in determining who is included within research conversations. Inclusion within online research is not as simple as who has access to digital technologies but also the rapport and relationships that can be built with participants online. This is key in ensuring that researchers avoid adopting the role of academic tourists ‘visiting’ for ‘quick data’. There is a ‘notion of research-experts moving between projects like “academic tourists,” and using disability as a commodity to exchange for advancing their own status interests’ (Barnes and Mercer, 2002: 5). Engaging with people through technology often requires a much more nuanced response than do traditional methods. Language is a key way in which a flexible, informal approach can benefit a research relationship and conversation. Reflecting upon two research projects carried out during the pandemic, it was found that people do not respond well to formalised approaches when using digital methods. A conversational and friendly, bordering on informal, approach was most effective when seeking to recruit participants and engage them in research conversations. People did not seemingly favour a formalised introduction to the project; what worked within these two projects was introducing the researcher first, then providing a quick sentence about the project followed by information for further reading. This was enabled via online platforms and situated participants in a position of power and control as they could choose to take part or not after reading the further information. There is recognition that while comfort or support can be provided to participants through a digitally enforced distance, it can also create unintended intimacy (Campbell, 2021). This is something that required in-depth thinking in order to avoid the risk of over-disclosure. There was a sense of rapport that stemmed from the pandemic restrictions, and at various points during the research everybody involved in the research process was experiencing a national lockdown and working from home. Whether or not this is beneficial depends on how the risks against over-disclosure versus the quest for ‘rich data’ are perceived and managed.

Conclusion Conversations about a post-COVID future are ongoing, and it is up for debate whether research will ever return to the traditional means of carrying 109

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out fieldwork and collecting data, particularly as COVID-19 continues to be a central part of how we are living our lives. However, if digital research is the new normal, the ways in which we do research need to be critically reviewed and evaluated to ensure that harm is not being done outside the realm of what is deemed ethical. During the height of the pandemic a broader conversation about whether research should be continuing during times of uncertainty and precarity for many individuals was taking place; this continues today. The conversations that have occurred within the projects outlined in this chapter suggest that more than ever people want to share their lived experiences, particularly in the field of disability and work, as experiences have been shaped and influenced by the pandemic. However, prioritising an ethical approach alongside the willingness to be reflective and flexible as a researcher were crucial during this time and continue to be important. The risk of exclusion of many groups of people as a result of a digital approach remains, and this needs to be considered when adopting a digital methodology. Pandemic responses to research continue to rely upon technology, and further thought is required about the role of the researcher when they are potentially having to train participants to use the technology required to take part (Marzi, 2021). Furthermore, there is the potential for key ethical issues to arise if the technology enabling participation has to be returned to the researcher at the end of the project (Marzi, 2021), further highlighting how remote research has the potential to exacerbate inequalities and power imbalances by positioning researchers as merely ‘data-capturers’. However, new directions for research could mean the adoption of a hybrid approach whereby both face-to-face and digital options are available to better meet the needs of some participants. It is up for debate whether research will ever return to solely traditional means of carrying out fieldwork, and this is potentially a positive element to come from the pandemic in terms of the future of research. If digital research and approaches remain the predominant means by which to collect data, then researchers need to ensure they are being critically reflective of their approach to ensure that harm and exclusion are not being exacerbated as a result of researcher practice. This chapter has raised several questions, such as ‘are we always faceless as researchers?’ As researchers we have a duty to ensure we are not faceless corporate cogs conducting research and return to what it means to carry out ethical research that stretches far beyond the signing off of an ethical review process. Online research further illuminates this issue as more emotional labour and work is required on the part of the researcher to build a rapport and get to know participants. However, there is an important reminder here for the lessons from the pandemic to be transferred forward and for these reflections to be carried out within face-to-face research situations when or if these do return. 110

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Note 1

The first of these projects was a doctoral research project utilising an in-depth qualitative approach and the second was an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award project which used a mixed-methods approach with a survey, online in-depth interviews and research conversations.

References Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. (2002) ‘Breaking the mould? An introduction to doing disability research’, in C. Barnes and G Mercer (eds) Doing Disability Research, Leeds: The Disability Press, pp 1–14. Bashir, N. (2020) ‘The qualitative researcher: the flip side of the research encounter with vulnerable people’, Qualitative Research, 20(5): 667–83. Campbell, L. R. (2021) ‘Doctoral research amidst the Covid-19 pandemic: researcher reflections on practice, relationships, and unexpected intimacy’, Qualitative Social Work, 20(1–2): 570–8. Coffey, A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity, London: SAGE. Costello, L., McDermott, M. L. and Wallace, R. (2017) ‘Netnography: range of practices, misperceptions, and missed opportunities’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16: 1–12. Dennis, B. K. (2014) ‘Understanding participant experiences: reflections of a novice research participant’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 13(1): 395–410. Gerrard, Y. (2021) ‘What’s in a (pseudo)name? Ethical conundrums for the principles of anonymisation in social media research’, Qualitative Research, 21(5): 686–702. Goggin, G. (2016) ‘Reimagining digital citizenship via disability’, in A. McCosker, S. Vivienne and A. Johns (eds) Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp 61–80. Howlett, M. (2021) ‘Looking at the “field” through a Zoom lens: methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic’, Qualitative Research, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1468794120985691. Kara, H. and Khoo, S. M., eds (2020a) Researching in the Age of COVID-19, Vol. 1: Response and Reassessment, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Kara, H. and Khoo, S. M., eds (2020b) Researching in the Age of COVID-19, Vol. 2: Care and Resilience, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Kara, H. and Khoo, S. M., eds (2020c) Researching in the Age of COVID-19, Vol. 3: Creativity and Ethics, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Kozinets, R. (2015) Netnography: Redefined (2nd edn), London: SAGE. Lehner-Mear, R. (2020) ‘Negotiating the ethics of netnography: developing an ethical approach to an online study of mother perspective’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 23(2): 123–37.

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Marzi, S. (2021) ‘Participatory video from a distance: co-producing knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic using smartphones’, Qualitative Research, available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211038171. Partlow, E. (2020) Prioritising inclusion, ethical practice and accessibility during a global pandemic: the role of the researcher in mindful decision making’, in H. Kara and S. M. Khoo (eds) Researching in the Age of COVID-19, Vol. 2: Care and Resilience, Bristol: Bristol University Press, pp 119–26. Robson, C. and McCartan, K. (2016) Real World Research (4th edn), London: Wiley. Seymour, W. (2001) ‘In the flesh or online? Exploring qualitative research methodologies’, Qualitative Research, 1(2): 147–68. Teitcher, J. E., Bockting, W. O., Bauermeister, J. A., Hoefer, C. J., Miner, M. H. and Klitzman, R. L. (2015). ‘Detecting, preventing, and responding to “fraudsters” in internet research: ethics and tradeoffs’, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 43(1), 116–33, available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jlme.12200. Williams, S., Clausen, M. G., Robertson, A., Peacock, S. and McPherson, K. (2012) ‘Methodological reflections on the use of asynchronous online focus groups in health research’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11(4): 368–83.

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6

Caught between the local and the (trans)national: a street-level analysis of EU migrants’ access to social benefits in German job centres Nora Ratzmann

Introduction The arrival of almost one million refugees in Germany from 2015 to 2016 re-sparked the controversy over the redistributive principles of contribution versus solidarity which underpin access to public welfare resources and services in the country.1 This is not the first time Germany’s resident population has changed. After the launch of the guest-worker programme in the 1960s, the country quickly became one of the most ethnically diverse European countries, leading to migrants now accounting for 25 per cent of its resident population. The research summarised in this chapter took place against the backdrop of Germany’s ever-diversifying population. It contributes to the debate on who should get access to public resources and under what conditions, a challenge which many European countries with extensive welfare states currently face. Engaging with the central question of belonging, the chapter examines the experiences of intra-EU migrant citizens living in a member state other than their own. They are now one of the largest immigrant groups in Germany yet they are often overlooked. The study challenges the common pretence of EU policy debates that the settlement of EU migrant citizens in a member state other than their own happens without hurdles. Instead, the analysis reveals the types of inequalities in access to claiming welfare benefits and associated services in local job centres that EU migrant citizens may experience when living in Germany. It does so by focusing on social assistance or subsistence-type benefits which are not covered by the EU legal framework of freedom of movement but instead are regulated at member state level. Considering the EU citizens’ formal status as non-nationals, this inquiry rests on a central tenet of social-psychological theory. The latter has shown 113

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that national citizens give privilege to in-group members, as their ‘fellow insiders’, in welfare resource redistribution (Tajfel, 1979). Such in-group preferences raise the question of how outsiders to the welfare state are treated. Insofar as EU migrants are outside the imagined community of solidarity of their host country, they presumably activate politics of belonging when they interact with local welfare bureaucrats. Part of the novelty of this qualitative study is that it moves away from the (supra-)national policy- and agenda-setting process to the local implementation level. So far, existing literature has identified the various inequalities EU migrant claimants experience through law and policy but has focused less on how processes of implementation shape the lived reality of substantive benefit receipt. Addressing this gap, the research presented here examines the daily administrative practice in German job centres, exploring how ideas of belonging and deservingness are considered in administrative decisions of access to benefits and services on the ground. The data reveal that there are differences in street-level patterns of practice, which may be more generous, restrictive or indifferent with regard to nationality and perceived belonging of a claimant. Effectively, even for migrant groups with legal entitlements to social assistance-type benefits, such as mobile EU citizen workers who can prove their relation to the labour market, de jure eligibility does not necessarily meet de facto access to benefits and services. The findings highlight the importance of studying administrative processes, as policy implementation is not a top-down, linear process. Instead, the data illustrate how the process of translation of policies into action is complex and fuzzy, including dynamics of subversion of legal entitlements. This chapter builds on 103 in-depth, qualitative interviews, each of which lasted between 15 and 180 minutes, with (1) key informants, including policymakers, specialised service providers performing social and labour market integration services for the job centre, legal experts, migrant advisory and advocacy agencies (32 interviews); (2) intra-EU migrants from a range of socio-economic and national backgrounds, including Eastern and Western European migrants (16 interviews); and (3) job centre staff (55 interviews). Key informant interviewees gave an aggregated overview of EU citizens’ claiming experiences from a third-party perspective. The complementary claimant interviews helped to uncover EU citizens’ subjective interpretations of their interactions with local German bureaucracy. To comprehensively cover the perspectives of different types of front-line staff, job centre representatives on different levels of the hierarchy (from the local job centre director to assistant administrators) and within the main organisational units (ie labour market, benefit and entrance zone teams) were interviewed. Most of the interviews were carried out between June 2016 and July 2017 in Berlin, which, as the biggest agglomeration in Germany, with 3.6 million inhabitants, is an interesting case. Berlin represents Germany’s main 114

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migration hub, hosting three times more foreign nationals than the German average in its territory, who account for 19 per cent of its population. About 38 per cent of the foreign resident population are EU migrants – primarily Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian and Polish nationals (for details see Ratzmann, 2019: 85–8).

Setting the scene: migration and the welfare state The research findings presented here rest on the premise that migrationrelated diversity can change implementation dynamics of welfare policies, as it challenges their underlying paradigm of redistribution within a closed community of solidarity. To summarise, the idea of social citizenship was first coined by Marshall (1950). He conceptualised the intrinsic link between nationally bound citizenship and social rights. Immigration fundamentally challenges this social contract between European welfare states. As Entzinger (2007: 119) noted, a welfare state ‘can only function properly when the dividing line between insiders and outsiders is crystal clear, because anyone who contributes to one is also a potential beneficiary, and vice versa’. According to his writings, an individual’s willingness to accept redistributive income transfers presumes a sense of solidarity between the members of a given community. Within the European space, such membership claims to a community of solidarity have been delineated nationally, at the latest since the eighteenth century (Soysal, 1994; Howard, 2006). This raises the question of how immigrants, as outsiders to this community of solidarity, are treated by such nationally oriented welfare states. The model of shared social citizenship varies depending on the European country in question. For instance, reciprocal contributions speak to the German corporatist tradition of a social insurance-based community of solidarity (Esping-Andersen, 1989). Sainsbury (2006, 2012) showed that the corporatist-conservative welfare state is, by design, more exclusionary towards migrants than the liberal welfare state with its means-tested programmes. With a focus on income and social status maintenance, the German social insurance programmes cement migrants’ comparatively low socio-economic position in society, instead of redistributing across all resident groups (Morissens and Sainsbury, 2005; Paul, 2015). However, considering that the insurance-based system does not differentiate between German and foreign national citizens, employment generates quasiautomatic benefit eligibility to social protection (Kaiser and Paul, 2011; Schulzek, 2012). As an extension of historic guest-worker rationales, immigrant workers of non-German nationality can access the top tier, the so-called Unemployment Benefit (UB) I, without restrictions, based on their accrued contributions. Different rules come into play when accessing tax-financed, poverty-relieving benefits. There are explicit legal exclusions 115

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to the subsidiary minimum income scheme UB II. Access to such social assistance-type benefits is premised on a relation to the labour market if the applicant is not a German national citizen. Apart from refugees and the family members of German nationals, non-nationals who are out of work are not currently eligible to claim UB II social assistance benefits. Nonnational residents are expected to be self-sufficient instead. This means that the current social security architecture leaves foreign residents who are neither in work nor a family member of a German national or an immigrant worker outside the redistributive welfare system, and thus without access to an appropriate safety net. The study results presented here pertain to mobile EU citizens’ substantive access to UB  II benefits as an in-work top-up or as an unemployment benefit. The aim of the means-tested, working-age income support is, according to the German constitution, to ensure a life of dignity for every resident. The benefit came into existence when the tax-financed social assistance was merged with the former unemployment assistance scheme (for the insured unemployed), forming a new conditional minimum income scheme for needy jobseekers (UB II) during the 2005 active labour market (Hartz IV) reforms. At that time, newly created local job centres, as one-stop public interfaces, administered these UB II benefits. There are approximately 400 local job centres in Germany, which nowadays serve over four million claimants. About 303 of these local job centres are joint institutions between the Federal Employment Agency and the municipality. Approximately 105  job centres are locally run, authorised municipal authorities, which provide for an alternative governance model (Brussig et al, 2017). The legal framework under which local job centres operate is the same for all institutions, yet each job centre has considerable freedom in determining its organisational structure and processes (Zimmermann and Rice, 2016). Differences in treatment can emerge because there is room for discretion built into the legal framework on social benefit receipt, to allow for the tailoring of measures specific to claimants’ individual needs. Administrative discretion here refers to the choice between several courses of action, which enables caseworkers to assess and evaluate claimants’ needs and conditions and to exert their professional yet subjective judgement regarding treatment (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003; Evans, 2015). While decisions on benefit access as such are not discretionary, different ways of thinking about the benefit eligibility in German job centres indirectly open space for significant discretion (Heidenreich and Rice, 2016). Procedural discretion can be exercised at several stages of the jobseeker’s basic allowance claim, such as decisions about documentation required for processing a claim or the application of sanctions once the benefit has been granted (Brodkin and Majmundar, 2010). 116

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Focusing the analysis on street-level bureaucrats and their discretionary practices helps to gain a deeper understanding about how processes of social and economic inclusion and exclusion work in practice. The findings on Germany developed here highlight the tensions around the construction and the understanding of professional roles when it comes to serving nonnational claimants. Due to their decision-making mandate, local social administrators have some discretionary power over enabling social benefit access to allegedly deserving EU applicants. By granting EU migrants the financial means to settle and allowing their meaningful participation in German society, such administrators implicitly may take on roles as migrant integration agents. Job centre staff equally could turn into local ‘bordercrats’ using gatekeeping techniques, once they perceive an EU claimant to be undeserving, and create administrative hurdles for benefit receipt which may be essential during an EU migrant’s settlement process. Thus, we can understand street-level implementation processes as a form of front-line politics, whereby national policymakers may have left politically contentious questions of migrants’ (social) citizenship rights to be solved at local level by supposedly apolitical bureaucrats who may act far from the public eye. Studying social benefit delivery at street level allows for shedding light on the workings of national migrant integration policies in practice, highlighting how such politics-in-effect are difficult to observe at the nation-state level. In contrast, a bottom-up research approach can unearth the multifaceted processes of the everyday ‘administrative inclusion and exclusion’ migrants may face when claiming benefits in local job centres. The findings illustrate how the ‘welfare-mobility dilemma’ (Righard, 2008) is resolved in street-level policy practice, and what sorts of moral implications institutionalised claims-processing practices may have.

Conceptual backdrop: street-level bureaucrats as the hidden policymakers Policies tend to unfold unintended consequences in practice. Mobile EU citizens constitute a legal category of applicants who, when active in the labour market, are entitled to subsistence-securing benefits under EU and German law, while often being prevented access in practice (Heindlmaier, 2018; Lafleur and Mescoli, 2018). Therefore, their case of claiming subsistence-type benefits in German job centres allows for shedding light on the different ways in which administrators interpret and implement the law, which may conflict with their perceptions of the applicants’ social legitimacy in making a claim. The street-level bureaucracy literature provides the conceptual backdrop for analysing the dynamics of local policy implementation. To date, studies on street-level bureaucrats have extensively investigated the administrative 117

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processes through which policy decisions and legislation are put into action. Lipsky (1980) pioneered this ever-growing body of literature, which explores how institutional constraints, administrators’ job roles and understanding thereof, as well as moral ideas about claimants’ worthiness impact the dynamics of local policy practice. Street-level bureaucrats are defined as those public service workers who interact directly with individual citizens in the course of their jobs, as representatives of the state. They often supply claimants with essential services which cannot be obtained elsewhere. Due to their inherent power position, Lipsky (1980) described them as de facto policymakers. Overall, street-level bureaucrats cannot be reduced to the Weberian ideal of efficient impersonal administrators delivering policy (Weber, 1947). Instead, street-level bureaucrats operate in a complex, uncertain and ambiguous environment with multiple, competing demands (Brodkin, 2015). The work setting is characterised by work pressures of limited time, insufficient information and high caseloads (Lipsky, 1980), which do not allow for individually tailored service provision. Thus, local administrators commonly ignore the subtleties of real social existence and instead follow abstract political guidelines in almost ‘willful blindness’ (Graeber, 2015: 50). While processing claims, local bureaucrats reduce people’s unique life experiences and circumstances to a small range of standardised categories of claims-processing (Zacka, 2017). Recent research has focused on the institutional constraints which shape local implementation (Adler, 2008; Lodge and Gill, 2011; Soss et al, 2011; van der Aar and van Berkel, 2015). Authors have explored the challenges which have come with the economisation of social administration when New Public Management principles of quantitative output control and performance measurement were introduced into social security provision (Heidenreich and Rice, 2016). Such private sector-style management practices have changed the implicit calculus by which street-level practitioners adjust to the conditions of work, increasing standardised and sometimes punitive treatment of claimants. For instance, Senghaas’ (2017) work on German job centres shows how active labour market policies have transformed labour market advisers’ role into one of regulatory and disciplinary gatekeepers. While many street-level studies have explored the administrative constraints of policy implementation, other accounts break with the paradigm of the quasi-mechanical encounter between an impersonal bureaucrat and the standardised claimant (Dubois, 1996). This stream of research understands implementation work as a complex, multilevel negotiation process between two individuals with their own unique backgrounds and experiences (Wenger and Wilkins, 2008; Watkins-Hayes, 2009). Scholars have analysed the role of professional identity in service delivery, including personal work 118

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ethics (Evans, 2014), professional self-understandings of social workers versus bureaucrats (Kallio and Kouvo, 2015), or the kind and level of work experience administrators bring to their job (Thuesen, 2017). Others have focused on administrators’ value judgements regarding the claimants’ circumstances. Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2003) showed that instead of work pressure and routines shaping decisions, bureaucrats follow rules or bend them based on moral considerations, such as the claimants’ apparent deservingness of state support or lack thereof. The role played by perceptions of deservingness in gatekeeping to social security provision also has been relatively well covered, including studies on German (Jewell, 2007), French (Dubois, 2010) or British administrations (Wright, 2003). However, fewer studies exist which delve into how such morally infused decisions might affect migrant claimants (Ratzmann and Sahraoui, 2021). The bespoke policy–implementation gap calls for a careful study of the interaction between local administrators and foreign national beneficiaries. The latter pertains to cases where a legal entitlement is granted but where the applicant cannot necessarily substantiate his or her claim in practice.

Zooming in to the street level: administrative styles of processing EU migrants’ claims Considering administrators’ discretion and role as gatekeepers to public benefits and services described in the street-level bureaucracy literature, their subjective interpretations of EU citizens’ social legitimacy to claim benefits can bring about important distributional consequences. In other words, this research rests on the assumption that administrators’ individual moral perceptions of a claimant contribute to conditioning their claims-assessing behaviour.2 Depending on whether administrators perceive EU claimants as vulnerable beneficiaries or potential welfare tourists, they express preferences about whether or not to include them in public welfare support. The data also highlight how such value frames offer administrators a more straightforward way of processing EU citizens’ claims with respect to EU citizens’ social entitlements than the often-ambiguous law. As simplification devices of the social reality, value frames help to reduce complexity during situational case assessments (Harrits, 2019). They provide local administrators with a quick decision rationale, thus informally defining the conditions under which access to social benefits and services could be granted in practice. Put differently, moral preferences provide administrators with a convenient shortcut to make complex decisions. Finally, the findings offer insights into some variation by nationality, which, however, goes beyond the scope of this chapter and has been discussed elsewhere (see Ratzmann, 2021). 119

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In summary, the data I collected reveal that there was no single norm for processing EU migrants’ claims to UB II benefits and associated services. Administrative decision-making could range from restrictive application of the law, to bending the rules, to pragmatic coping, depending on administrators’ views of the claimants and the institutional constraints shaping individual decisions. For instance, some administrators relied on their administrative discretion to enable access to benefits. They interpreted legal rules loosely, agreeing to process a claim despite some missing documentation, which was the case for one of the Polish respondents I interviewed. Administrators also sought to bend the rules where possible, as this labour market adviser explained, when abstaining from sanctions: ‘If there is a good explanation for claimants’ [non-compliant] behaviour, I do not sanction … I am operating at the margins of legality, but I always think that claimants have so little money already. So, I don’t want to reduce their income even further.’ Similarly, staff from a benefits team altered housing subsidy calculations in order to match a claimant’s characteristics to the eligibility criteria, commenting that whether the benefit is granted or not ‘depends a little bit on one’s goodwill’. At the same time, some local bureaucrats acted as gatekeepers, blocking access in practice. Such was the case with a Bulgarian claimant whose particular circumstances and individual needs were not considered. She was offered a job as a cleaner even though she was so heavily pregnant that she was ‘barely able to tie her shoelaces’ at the time of the job centre meeting. She perceived her administrator as unwilling to support her claim, concluding that ‘if they do not want to [give you the benefit], they do everything possible so they do not have to’. A Spanish interviewee also described her administrator as ‘only [thinking] inside the box. He did not listen and did not show any understanding.’ Table 6.1 summarises three types of decision-making styles through which administrators exercise administrative discretion, two of which are based on four moral value frames (mobilised as tools of quick decision-making), and a fifth frame, which relates not to perceptions of claimants’ deservingness but to administrators’ interpretation of their own job role. In other words, the table illustrates how street-level bureaucrats justified and accounted for their discretionary decisions, and whether or not, and how, they reported moral preferences to guide their patterns of practice. But while local social administrators may seek to act according to their beliefs, in practice a range of organisational constraints and institutional norms equally shape claimsprocessing (explored in more detail in Ratzmann, 2022). Similar to what Zacka (2017) described in his book under the heading of modes of appraisal, 120

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EU migrants’ access to social benefits in Germany Table 6.1: Administrators’ rationalisations of their discretionary decisions Decisionmaking style

Restrictive enforcer (restrictive application of the law)

Lenient caregiver (benevolent bending of the rules)

Indifferent bureaucrat (pragmatic coping with workload)

Frame (decision rationale)

Welfare tourism

Humanitarian EU social concerns rights

Individual survival in the organisation

Underlying motivation

Duty to help Safeguard Financial (independent or cultural national resources conditionality of origin)

Earned entitlements

Genuine right Fulfilment of derived from performance quotas freedom of movement

Source: Own analysis, expanding on Zacka (2017)

frames should be seen as a heuristic model or lens of interpretation, as reallife decision-making is likely to be less clear-cut. The table combines an illustration of administrators’ decision rationales and underlying motivation, in terms of moral perceptions and role conceptions, with their patterns of administrative decision-making. The latter three types build on an analysis by Zacka (2017), who studied street-level bureaucrats in the United States. He explored their role as translators between the complex and nuanced realities of everyday life of claimants and the rigid world of administrative case-processing, nevertheless not disentangling the potentially differential impact between different types of claimants. The author studied how local bureaucrats inhabit their rules and deal with conflicting values and goals, such as technocratic ideals of efficient use of resources, impartiality and fairness, as well as responsiveness to claimants’ needs. Based on his empirical research, Zacka developed three enduring styles of case-processing, namely (1)  the caregiver, looking for signs of distress and strain and being concerned with meeting claimants’ needs; (2)  the enforcer, approaching cases with the expectation that claimants would try to take advantage of the system; and (3) the indifferent listener, who only listens to the claimants’ stories to extract information that is administratively relevant. Building on Zacks’s work, my data shed light on how such a typology of decision styles applies to migrant claimants who are considered as outsiders to a predefined community of solidarity. An iterative analysis of the data I collected and existing literature revealed three styles of claims-processing, namely generous, restrictive and indifferent decision-making, with regard to nationality and perceived belonging of a claimant. In more detail, a first group encompasses administrators who have favourable, benevolent views of EU migrants’ claims, which maps onto what Zacka (2017) conceptualised as ‘the caregiver’. This group aimed at granting access to 121

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EU citizens through a loose interpretation of the law. To legitimise their decisions, they mobilised either ideas about basic needs and a humanitarian duty to support or rights-based ideas of EU social citizenship. The second category of bureaucrats had a more negative outlook on EU citizens’ legitimacy to claim benefits, which corresponds to the category of ‘enforcers’ in Zacka’s (2017) analysis. Administrators I interviewed either judged EU citizens’ claims to be categorically illegitimate, adopting a welfare tourist frame, or expected access to be earned within the welfare conditionality frame. Both frames of evaluating EU citizens’ claims tended to result in guarded attitudes and administrative gatekeeping techniques, either partial or full. As a third type of bureaucratic implementation behaviour, which can only be touched upon briefly here, the pragmatic, ‘jobsworth’ category emerged, or, as in Zacka’s (2017: 121) words, the ‘indifferent and emotionally distant administrator’. As apolitical actors, these street-level bureaucrats primarily are concerned with their own survival in the organisation. Whereas the first two categories let moral fairness concerns guide their decisions, the third type of bureaucrat portrayed an attitude of withdrawal in political stance and work ethics. The latter group tended to apply the law apathetically and pragmatically to fulfil administrative quotas efficiently, as this quote illustrates: ‘I treat every client the same, I take it fairly literally. Thus, I don’t experience any moral conflicts. I treat all my clients the same, independent of how I perceive them, nice or not nice, whether I understand them or not.’ Considering the pressured work environment they operated in, caseworkers reported that they would retreat ‘into formalities’. This category of administrators understood their professional role as mere executors of bureaucratic routines, perceiving their margins of administrative and informal discretion as limited. As the focus of this analysis remains on administrators’ moral categorisations of migrant claimants, details about the institutional constraints which shape such pragmatic implementation behaviour of indifferent bureaucrats go beyond the scope of this chapter. Pragmatic concerns of exercising discretion, remaining indifferent to the claimant, have been provided, as summarised previously, by existing street-level bureaucracy scholarship (while also being explored more in Ratzmann, 2022). What makes identity-based judgements on deservingness interesting and salient in the context of this research is that local bureaucrats are not only citizens of a given country but also local-level decision-makers who decide on access to poverty-relieving benefits in practice. As a local representative summarised: 122

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‘[The willingness of staff to accommodate migrant claimants] is mixed. Many are interested and engaged. Others less. Like the overall population.’ Similar to what Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000: 351) noted, streetlevel bureaucrats ‘make moral judgements about the relative worthiness of the citizen client, and then they use rules, laws, and procedures to help those they consider worthy and punish those they deem unworthy’. In my research, I observed administrators who judged an EU applicant to be undeserving trying to impede benefit and service receipt on the ground. Such administrators ascribed negative characteristics to EU migrant claimants to legitimise their exclusion from benefit access. Positive deservingness appreciations, meanwhile, led to attempts to enable access to social provisions. Like Belabas and Gerrits (2017) showed in the Dutch case, street-level workers who perceived the policies in place to be insufficient or inappropriate were willing to go the extra mile and bend the rules. As a third variation in claims-processing, access was made conditional upon behavioural expectations, leading to attempts of partial gatekeeping for those who did not comply with the conditionality rules. Administrators depicted the ways in which they handled EU migrants’ claims as linked to their professional identities. They saw themselves either as career bureaucrats, focused on efficient case-processing and the protection of financial state resources ‘representing the interests of the tax payer and the job centre’, or as social workers, taking account of the ‘human angle’ of their work or ‘acting humanely’ by supporting those in need. Such accounts relate to parts of the public administration literature, which explores the relationship between organisational variables and professional role perceptions. For instance, Kennedy’s (2012, 2013) work similarly provides an account of street-level workers’ understanding of their role either as active representatives of claimants’ interests and advocates of social equity and diversity, or as traditional career bureaucrats concerned with managerial efficiency. In line with findings from recent street-level bureaucracy research, the interviewed administrators conceded to the value-led nature of their decisions, as the following two respondents described: ‘Everyone is deciding according to their own values.’ ‘Personal attitudes play a role, with the effect that, sometimes, requests are turned down unlawfully, or granted upon conditions which are not justified.’ Hence, the heuristic described here maps onto part of the street-level bureaucracy literature on professional role conceptions (Coleman et al, 1998; 123

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Kennedy, 2013). The latter highlights the trade-offs between efficiency and equity concerns, distinguishing between a traditional bureaucratic understanding of exercising neutral competence versus advocates of minority interests, who could be qualified as politicised actors. As such, many administrators aimed actively to play a role in public redistribution processes, intending to shape the boundaries of welfare provision through the ways in which they implemented the legal provisions. Regarding the moral value frames advanced by my interviewees, of the 39 street-level bureaucrats who spoke about their ways of interpreting EU migrants’ claims,3 four value frames emerged inductively (see Table 6.1): (1) first having to earn entitlements (earned entitlements frame, 19 instances); (2) not being entitled in principle, as welfare tourists taking advantage of the system (welfare tourist frame, 12 instances); (3) being entitled on the grounds of need (humanitarian frame, four instances); and (4) being entitled by virtue of being a European citizen (European social rights frame, four instances). The ways in which job centre interviewees interpreted the nature of EU migrants’ legal entitlements is best portrayed through a continuum, ranging from highly conditional, earned entitlements to genuine rights. Different rationales were sometimes mobilised concurrently or combined in decision processes. Indirectly, each frame mobilised notions of belonging to German society and the welfare state in one form or another. The frames revealed how the imagined boundaries of the German community of solidarity were drawn. How local administrators perceived entanglements between moral ideas of deservingness and perceptions of belonging played into their interpretation of EU citizens’ status and claimants’ legitimacy to claim benefits. In this respect, respondents tended to divide claimants into an in-group and an outgroup on the basis of their national citizenship in all except the humanitarian frame. The latter prioritised need over an applicant’s country of origin. Job centre respondents arguing in favour of allowing access to UB II benefits on the basis of need and dignity considered residence in Germany to be enough to qualify, as this team leader explained: ‘I think that those who live in this country, … and who get into difficulty should be helped. Full stop. Completely independent of their religion, skin colour, origin or something else.’ Instead of setting any qualifying preconditions, this group of job centre interviewees considered it to be a moral duty to support those who experience a spell of poverty, as this receptionist explained: ‘In principle, I think it is good that foreigners can access … for me, all human beings are equal.’ 124

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They discussed welfare access as a universal right, independent of a claimants’ descent. In contrast, the other frames portrayed belonging as essential in establishing the deservingness of an EU migrant applicant. In more detail, geographical belonging, expressed through national citizenship from one of the EU member states, sufficed to legitimately place a claim within the European social rights frame. As one of the job centre representatives explained, the legal free movement rights justified access to subsistence-type benefits in Germany: ‘I am a convinced Europeanist … For me, these [EU citizens] are not foreigners in the literal sense. These are citizens of a Union of French nationality, or of German nationality. … Why should they not get money?’ EU claimants were perceived as part of the in-group. Interestingly, only one of the 55 interviewed job centre representatives explicitly referred to ideas of a European identity. Alternatively, several respondents problematised the issue of socio-economic disparities between EU member states, including their unequal welfare systems, which put the functionality of EU social citizenship into question. They argued that such geographical inequalities could create distorted incentives to claim social security in Germany for citizens whose home countries have less generous social security coverage. These administrators argued that EU citizens should not be blamed for their shortfall of income, as structural reasons beyond their influence might have caused their spell of poverty: ‘There are huge disparities between Northern and Southern Europe, Western and Eastern Europe. Including the welfare systems … Central and Northern Europe depend on cheaper labour. Mostly from Eastern Europe. … So I think, okay, people are looking for new perspectives. And come to Germany to try to improve their livelihoods … not all are here voluntarily. And I think, the majority needs support, and only a few take advantage.’ A similar argument has been made by scholars, showing how some countries such as Germany benefit from less qualified Eastern European labour while indirectly contributing to their inequalities by not granting them equal welfare protection (Amelina and Vasilache, 2014; Bellamy and Lacey, 2018). Such a point of view contrasts with ideas of mobile EU citizens not being eligible for public social support in principle, by virtue of their status as foreigners, advanced by those who depicted EU migrant residents as welfare tourists: 125

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‘There were … Greeks, Spanish, Italians, young people, mid-20s, around 30, EU citizens, French. They directly came from the airport to the benefit office to live off of ‘Hartz IV’ benefits in Berlin … it is irritating, because these are German taxes.’ For those abiding by the welfare tourist frame, as the terminology alludes to, EU citizens were seen as outsiders. They were portrayed as transnational journeyers who seek to illegitimately access limited public resources, which called for their categorical exclusion. As the quote illustrates, some respondents perceived the current legislative framework to be insufficient to protect state resources and thus considered it their role to limit EU migrants’ access to welfare. Interviewees justified the creation of informal barriers to substantive social security through their underlying belief that some groups were purposefully abusing the German welfare system: ‘They [Eastern European migrants] all work eight hours in a restaurant, but only report 450 euros; the rest they work illegally.’ What the data further unveiled was how nationality-based stereotypes were linked to value judgements on EU migrant citizens’ deservingness to claim: ‘A problematic group for us are EU citizens, mainly Romanians, Bulgarians, Polish. The danger is that they came for economic reasons, to receive social benefits here.’ By interpreting fraudulent behaviour as behaviour typical of a certain nationality, administrators inferred a causal relationship between moral character and the country of origin (for details see Ratzmann, 2021). The welfare tourist frame was closely connected to the reciprocity frame, which tended to advance a double conditionality. This encompassed a workcentred conditionality, whereby deservingness ought to be acquired through financial contributions, and a performative conditionality of demonstrating belonging through cultural assimilation. Those administrators tended to expect EU applicants to be acquainted with the German language and the perceived dominant socio-cultural norms: ‘Here [in Germany], certain rules apply, and people normally have been socialised in a certain way. And I expect from my [foreign] clients that they assimilate, and it’s not happening.’ The reasoning put forward relates to what Chauvin et  al (2013) have reflected on under the heading of ‘performance-based deservingness’, whereby newcomers were expected to abide by a set of cultural norms and 126

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rules. As a form of ‘culturalisation’ of citizenship rights, entitlements were granted in exchange for cultural acculturation efforts. Some administrators only considered as deserving those who appear ‘German enough’, hence those who assimilated into the German host society. In this context, cultural markers act as a signifier of legitimate belonging to the respective community of solidarity (see Holzinger (2019) for a similar argument in the Austrian case). In summary, the qualitative data analysis pointed to three envisioned patterns of decision-making which could emerge based on street-level bureaucrats’ ideas about a claimants’ worthiness and other considerations, such as their understanding of their professional role. Under high work pressure, and when legal provisions remained ambiguous, local administrators commonly turned to personal preferences as convenient shortcuts to accelerate decision-making. Resonating with Zacka’s (2017) analysis and categories on the moral agency of public service workers in the United States, administrators’ self-understandings of their professional role would range from seeing themselves as compassionate social workers or caregivers, who enable a claim, to ideas of a rule-enforcing bureaucracy, who protect the interests of the state, while also sometimes being concerned with their own job security, focusing on pragmatically dealing with the required workload.

Conclusion My research findings uncover how the less tangible processes of streetlevel filtering shape the real-life experience of EU citizens’ claim-making. While the rationing of financial benefits and services described here are common features of street-level work, how applications are assessed has been explored less. Based on over 100 in-depth qualitative interviews in local job centres, this study explored the inequalities in access that EU migrants may face when claiming welfare benefits and associated services, studying the role of administrators’ moral perceptions on extending welfare support to non-nationals. The data of this study highlight the heterogeneity of the EU migrants’ claiming experience concerning the allocation of welfare resources, depending on how bureaucrats use their discretion. For that purpose, the chapter developed a typology of job centre respondents’ accounts of EU social citizenship rights, clustering ideas of deservingness and belonging into four value frames. Respondents suggested reciprocity to be the dominant norm for redistribution, which mirrored Laenen et al’s (2019) qualitative findings on the welfare preferences among the German population. Beyond ideas of earning deservingness through work, the data highlight the role of cultural conditionality. Administrators tended to expect EU applicants to be acquainted with the German language 127

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and the perceived dominant socio-cultural norms. Finally, the data shed light on a fifth frame of rationalising administrative decision-making, which relates to organisational constraints rather than individual deservingness perceptions. Thereby, the analysis unravelled how EU social citizenship status becomes less meaningful once EU citizens, living in a member state other than their own, interact with the local welfare bureaucracy. Similar to findings in other EU country contexts (Carmel, 2016; Brändle, 2020), EU citizenship loses part of its relevance once EU migrants have crossed the border, which offers them an unfamiliar domestic context. In contrast to ideas of national citizenship or ethnicity, the concept of EU social citizenship generally remains too abstract to define membership in a welfare community in a meaningful way at the local level. Instead, as the title of this chapter suggests, EU citizens who attempt to claim social benefits in Germany become caught in the web of local-level filtering practices which can contradict, challenge and subvert the national and EU legislative framework on social entitlements. In line with what Dwyer et al (2019) argued in a recent study on the United Kingdom, the dynamics of local policy implementation add a fourth level of conditionality to the stratification of EU social citizenship rights. By adding to the hidden costs of compliance, local welfare workers could de facto deny EU applicants whom they considered undeserving access to social benefits, unearthing the hidden politics of bureaucratic implementation work. Practices of discretion can produce outcomes with moral implications and are political in effect while likely not always being political in intent, as the case of the indifferent bureaucrat illustrates. Within tax-financed social assistance arrangements, those who become socially constructed and ‘othered’ as ‘outsiders’ commonly remain unseen as part of the community of solidarity. The research presented here underlines the importance of looking beyond legal entitlements, towards the repercussions of implementation practice for recipients. Yet while my analysis illustrates how EU migrants’ claims to benefits get filtered at street level, an exhaustive comparison of the claiming experiences of EU citizens of different national and educational backgrounds, as well as in comparison with German-born nationals, goes beyond the scope of this study. Further research could also examine potential regional differences of policy implementation, such as whether, and to what degree, local (immigration) politics shape the administrative culture of the job centre in a particular region. Finally, the linkages between local migration authorities and welfare offices have remained underexplored. In that regard, a better understanding is needed of how social administrators might negotiate the tension between the conflicting role mandates of including vulnerable population groups through social support, and excluding migrant groups marked as ‘undeserving’ by the public discourse. Overall, we can conclude from this research that transnational, pan-European social citizenship appears 128

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to be continuously linked to ideas of nationhood and nationally bound solidarities, even though some gradual shift to inclusionary policies towards foreign claimants could be observed. Notes 1

2

3

I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Hartley Dean and Isabel Shutes at the London School of Economics, the participants of this study and the Leverhulme Trust, without whom this research would not have come to fruition. I would like to extend a special thanks to Evelyn Brodkin, who provided me with invaluable comments on an earlier version of this chapter. While street-level bureaucrats may believe and describe their decision behaviour to be driven by their moral preferences, this research does not claim causality. The remaining interviewees, of the 55 job centre staff spoken to in total, focused on the institutional constraints challenging daily claims-processing instead, which goes beyond what this chapter can explore.

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Ratzmann, N. (2019) ‘Caught between the local and the (trans)national EU citizens at the front-line of German welfare policy’, PhD Thesis: London School of Economics and Political Science. Ratzmann, N. (2021) ‘Deserving of social support? Street-level bureaucrats’ decisions on EU migrants’ benefit claims in Germany’, Social Policy and Society, 20(3): 509–20. Ratzmann, N. (2022) ‘“No German, no service”: EU migrants’ unequal access to welfare entitlements in Germany’, Social Inclusion, 10(1), available at: https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i4.4647. Ratzmann, N. and Sahraoui, N. (2021) ‘Conceptualising the role of deservingness in migrants’ access to social services’, Social Policy and Society, 20(3): 440–51. Righard, E. (2008) ‘The welfare mobility dilemma: transnational strategies and national structuring at crossroads’, Lund Dissertations in Social Work, Lund. Sainsbury, D. (2006) ‘Immigrants’ social rights in comparative perspective: welfare regimes, forms in immigration and immigration policy regimes’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16: 229–44. Sainsbury, D. (2012) Welfare States and Immigrant Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schulzek, N. (2012) ‘The impact of welfare systems on immigration: an analysis of welfare magnets as a pull-factor for asylum seekers and labour migrants’, LSE Migration Studies Unit Working Papers, No  2012/02, London School of Economics and Political Science. Senghaas, M. (2017) ‘Caseworker–client relations in the German active welfare state: what role does trust play?’ Paper presented at the 2nd Conference on Street-Level Research in the Employment and Social Policy Area, 21–22 June 2017, Copenhagen. Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nürnberg. Soss, J., Fording, R. and Schram, S. F. (2011) ‘The organization of discipline: from performance management to perversity and punishment’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21(Supp. 2): i203–32. Soysal, Y. N. (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tajfel, H. (1979) ‘Individuals and groups in social psychology’, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 18(2): 183–90. Thuesen, F. (2017) ‘Linguistic barriers and bridges: constructing social capital in ethnically diverse low-skill workplaces’, Work, Employment and Society, 31(6): 937–53. van der Aar, P. and van  Berkel, R. (2015) ‘Fulfilling the promise of professionalism in street-level practice’, in P. Hupe, M. Hill and A. Buffat (eds) Understanding Street-Level Bureaucrats, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 263–78.

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Watkins-Hayes, C. (2009) The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class, and Policy Reform, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Weber, M. (1947) ‘Rational legal authority and bureaucracy’, in M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, New York: Oxford University Press, n.p. Wenger, J. B. and Wilkins, V. M. (2008) ‘At the discretion of rogue agents: how automation improves women’s outcomes in unemployment insurance’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 19(2): 313–33. Wright, S. (2003) ‘Confronting unemployment in a street-level bureaucracy: jobcentre staff and client perspectives’, PhD Thesis: University of Stirling. Zacka, B. (2017) When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Zimmermann, K. and Rice, D. (2016) ‘Organizational barriers to service integration in one-stop shops: the case of Germany’, in M. Heidenreich and D. Rice (eds) Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe: Active Inclusion and Challenges for Local Welfare Governance, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 162–84.

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Critical perspectives on social work and social policy practice with vulnerable migrants in an era of emergencies Erick da Luz Scherf

Introduction The acceleration of global warming and climate change (IPCC, 2021), alongside democratic decay and the escalation of authoritarianism worldwide (Daly, 2020), the COVID-19 global pandemic (WHO, 2021a), a rise in global inequality and extreme poverty (United Nations, 2020), economic and humanitarian crises affecting the safety and wellbeing of large groups of people (Save the Children, 2021), followed by the return of fascism and violent extremism in Europe and elsewhere (Coolsaet, 2017; Le Roux, 2019): all might be indicative that we may be living in an ‘Era of Emergencies’ (Celermajer and Nassar, 2020; Lopez, 2020).1 Contrary to what liberal internationalists preached at the end of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights did not pave the way for ‘a world made new’ (Glendon, 2002). In fact, we are facing problems similar to those of past generations, if not worse ones. The recent calls for hope in human rights activism in the twenty-first century (Sikkink, 2017) is contrasted with other far from hopeful empirical analyses that indicate that human civilisation and the economic growth-based world we live in might collapse in the near future (Spratt and Dunlop, 2019; Branderhorst, 2020; Helmore, 2021). Extreme events such as pandemics, climate change and economic crises are all drivers of migration, either internally or transnationally. On top of these socio-environmental emergencies, vulnerable migrants often need to deal with institutional or structural violence (Artero and Fontanari, 2019), rights violations on a daily basis (Riley et al, 2020; Oxfam International, 2021), social welfare exclusion (Vintila and Lafleur, 2020), and the enduring effects of colonisation, racism and inequality (Adeyanju and Oriola, 2011). Every human being will experience some level of vulnerability throughout their lives, however, there are particular groups in society who are more vulnerable than others to abuse and/or human rights violations: for various 134

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reasons, they were historically put in weak and vulnerable positions and therefore require special protective measures. Legal protection of vulnerable groups has become a crucial component of human rights law (NifosiSutton, 2017), for example. Equally, for the fields of health and social care, vulnerability has been a key concept in defining intervention strategies (Gitterman, 2001; Larkin, 2009). Even though there is no universally accepted definition of ‘vulnerable groups’ let alone ‘vulnerable migrants’,2 the concept of vulnerability is key to understanding how individuals in different contexts have been marginalised, abused, discriminated against and given limited opportunities and resources. Thus, the focus here is not necessarily on individual factors, but rather on ‘structural/contextual/ environmental’ forces that render migrants vulnerable in the first place (Larkin, 2009; IOM, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a huge toll on the mobility of migrant workers: travel bans, social distancing and the deceleration of many economic activities have had a pervasive effect when viewed through a migration lens (World Bank Group, 2020). What is the role of the social worker in the midst of this? Social work professionals are constantly engaged with vulnerable and marginalised individuals. However, to create effective social change, social workers are required to engage not only with service users, but with social policy practice and politics. Therefore, there is an urgent need to decolonise social work and embrace its inherently political nature, which means not only incorporating postcolonial theory and approaches into the profession but also questioning and calling out the colonial and oppressive practices often reproduced through welfare and social assistance programmes, in order to provide effective political and social emancipation for the recipients of social services. Taking that into account, this chapter engages with social work practice with vulnerable and/or marginalised migrants by exploring critical voices in the fields of social work, social policy and human rights to address the long-lasting effects of neoliberalism, colonisation and capitalist oppression in times of social, environmental and health emergencies. The main argument is that social work practice with migrants in vulnerable situations, especially in Europe, can no longer be disassociated from the larger historical legacies of European colonialism, or from the current (and future) effects of global capitalist expansion. Moreover, I argue for the application of intersectionality as a framework for analysis not only of the personal level of an individual’s social and political identities, but also of the external factors and issues here explored; that is, we cannot fully meet the needs of vulnerable and marginalised migrants without understanding the interrelatedness of the social phenomena that allow them to be in such positions of vulnerability. This chapter is divided into four main sections, which will discuss, in the following order: (1) the need to decolonise critical social work; (2) the 135

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role of postcolonial human rights practice in social work and social policy; (3) welfare provision in the context of environmental and climate migration; and (4) migration amid public health emergencies. The overall goal is to convey a holistic, intersectional and postcolonial account of social work and social policy practice in the field of migration given the new challenges brought about in the era of emergencies.

How critical is critical social work? Contributions of social work knowledges from the ‘other side of the line’ In a general definition, Healy (2014: 183) states that modern critical social work ‘is concerned with the analysis and transformation of power relations at every level of social work practice’. Critical social work scholarship proposes, among other things, a change in focus from the ‘psy’ discourses (that favour clinical work with so-called clients) to structural approaches to service users’ problems (Healy, 2014). Healy (2014) categorises at least five branches of modern critical social work: (1) radical; (2) Marxist; (3) feminist; (4) structural social work; and (5) anti-oppressive practice. It is important to highlight, however, that critical theory or thinking is not native to the social work discipline. In the narrow sense, ‘Critical Theory’ was born from several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition usually known as the Frankfurt School (Bohman, 2005). For instance, Granter (2019) argues that critical theory is essential to critical social work and demonstrates the points of intersection between the two, showing how the perspectives of the Frankfurt School can inform emancipatory theory and social work practice. In that sense, critical social workers are preoccupied with social structural analyses of class, race and gender in order to achieve political emancipation as well as social transformation and social justice (Healy, 2001; Granter, 2019). Overall, ‘modern critical social work is oriented towards understanding the structural conditions that impact on the genesis and maintenance of social problems and in which social work practitioners operate’ (Healy, 2014: 184). This structural focus, however, is not the only narrative on critical social work, as poststructuralists have advocated for more ‘Foucauldian’ analysis focusing on identity, language and power relations at the personal level (Fook, 2003). Despite the diversity in approaches, one can say that the core of modern critical social work theory is built on the concepts of empowerment, collective action, social justice and social change (Healy, 2014). For Adams et al (2002: 1), critical social work practice ‘seeks growth and empowerment as human beings for the people we serve, development and social progress for the communities we work in and greater justice and equality in the societies to which we contribute’. Modern critical social work also draws 136

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attention to oppression and oppressive structures in society and the need to change societal and institutional conditions through critical social work practice (Adams et al, 2002; Healy, 2014). Therefore, critical social workers are committed to critically reflective thinking processes and to transforming the unjust aspects of both the social work profession and society in general (Campbell and Baikie, 2012). At the same time, since the late 1990s postmodern discourses on critical social work (CSW) have advocated for the adoption of concepts such as discourse, subjectivity, power, positioning and (self-) reflection into social work theory and practice (Fook and Pease, 1999; Healy, 2014). Nevertheless, many authors are sceptical of the relevance and applicability of postmodern CSW. Mullaly (2001), for example, argues that some postmodern authors in Social Work adopt an uncritical acceptance of postmodernism. For Ungar (2004: 488), ‘social workers interested in postmodernism have been provided an abundance of theory, but little to guide them in direct practice’. In fact, postmodernism has often been neglected as a useful framework for social work. Noble (2004) believes that despite the fact that the postmodern discourse in contemporary social work literature has captured a growing audience, the postmodern ‘turn’ does little to address the economic, gender and colonial issues which are often reproduced by structural forces. The postmodern rejection of theory is also dangerous to the organisation of social work as a specific field of knowledge, as well as the rejection of values, given that social work essentially is a value-based profession: [T]he social work profession is by definition a political activity that is value laden. Therefore, the demands postmodernists make of social workers prevent us from pursuing micro and macro social justice goals. Postmodernism thus denies and absorbs our essence. (Wood, 1997: 27) Overall, neither modern nor postmodern CSW has contributed substantially to the decolonisation of social work knowledge and practice. Modern and postmodern critical Social Work (SW) scholarship is built on knowledge produced mostly by North American and European scholars – which led SW to emerge as a discipline disconnected from the material and mental aspects of colonialism (Ranta-Tyrkkö, 2011). Dittfeld (2020: 1) explains that ‘social work is a profession based on (White) Euro-American concepts, problems and historicity in which Indigenous knowledges and cultures are marginalised, and the effects of colonisation are obscured to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous social workers’. Therefore, the postcolonial or decolonial movement in social work aims at critically looking at social work education, practice and research aiming at decolonising the field and discipline of SW (Kleibl, 2020). A key strategy towards that might 137

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involve looking into and acknowledging social work knowledge (as well as Indigenous knowledge) and epistemologies produced outside the Global North, which will be referred to here as SW knowledges from the ‘other side of the line’. Overall, one of the main challenges is to overcome what Boaventura de Sousa Santos has called ‘abyssal thinking’ in modern Western thought – a dichotomous, colonial way of thinking that divides the world into two sides: ‘this side of the line’ and ‘the other side of the line’, where the first defines the content and debates of scientific knowledge, and the latter (usually ‘popular’, traditional or Indigenous knowledges from former colonies) is made invisible, unacceptable and unapplicable (Santos, 2007). Thus, there is a need to advocate for post-abyssal thinking in Social Work and Social Policy scholarship, in order to recognise and accept the knowledges that now lie on ‘the other side of the line’. Before proceeding, it is important to say that this chapter does not completely reject the existing body of literature on CSW. In fact, there are many theoretical and practical tools such as structural analysis and emancipatory theory that can indeed be used in favour of vulnerable or marginalised migrants in SW practice. A central argument is that, for CSW to live up to its name, critical social workers must be aware of the effects that colonialism and global capitalism still produce in the lived experiences of migrant persons worldwide, especially those in the Global South.3 With that said, it is not an easy task to define the postcolonial or postcoloniality – for the purposes of this research, the interpretation of Robert J. C. Young will serve as the compass that guides the understandings of the place of postcolonial thinking in SW theory and practice: Postcolonialism, therefore, begins from its own counterknowledges, and from the diversity of its cultural experiences, and starts from the premise that those in the West, particularly, both within and outside the academy, should relinquish their monopoly on knowledge, and take other knowledges, other perspectives, as seriously as those of the West. Postcolonialism, or tricontinentalism as I have also called … that is the language and perspective of the three continents of the South—Africa, Asia, and Latin America—represents a general name for these insurgent knowledges, particularly those that originate with the subaltern, the dispossessed, that seek to change the terms and values under which we all live. (Young, 2003: 15) Therefore, postcolonial theories and movements have not only confronted the political, economic, historical and social impact and legacy of European colonialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century around the world 138

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(Elam, 2019), they are also worried about the persistency of a ‘colonial mentality’, that is, the perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority and internalised forms of racial oppression (Decena, 2014), which – among other things – contribute to maintaining the Western, Global North’s monopoly on what is valid knowledge, and particularly in this case, what counts as Social Work knowledge. With that said, it is an urgent (albeit far from easy) task for social workers to decolonise their minds, to acknowledge the persistency of colonial or neocolonial structures in social policy and fight against them. One important addition to this debate might be the conceptual category of ‘Social Work of the South’. According to Lutz et al (2021: para 3), this particular discourse on SW aims ‘to establish independent social work in the Global South which, on the basis of its historical, political and social backgrounds, addresses its own issues and aims to find its own answers, in contrast to colonial imports’. In their view, this category does not wish to homogenise the diversity by which social work in the South is constituted, but rather to critique the universality of Western and Northern concepts of SW. Therefore, they argue, among other things, for independence from ‘colonial clutches’, referring to indigenisation, localisation, authentisation or reconceptualisation of SW theory and practice (Lutz et al, 2021). That is to say that countries and schools in the Global South should structure their social work education to deal with specific conditions and cultures (Mogorosi and Thabede, 2018), rejecting automatic, non-critical imports from the North. The book Global Social Work, edited by Noble et al (2014), was a substantial attempt at establishing culturally sensitive SW practice, and it introduces a range of different practices and theories from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, but also Europe and North America. However, it does not engage deeply with postcoloniality. A great deal of the Western and Northern literature on SW with forced migrants, for example, has been published by authors based in North America (52 per cent), Western Europe (26 per cent) and Australasia (13 per cent) (Gonzalez-Benson et al, 2020). In their scoping review, GonzalezBenson et al (2020) demonstrate that the second most common topic in the literature on social work and forced migration is questions of health and mental health, whereas issues of human rights, social justice and poverty represent only 9 per cent or less of all articles reviewed. Thus, the claim from CSW scholars that the SW literature from Europe and North America is primarily focused on clinical work and individual interventions remains valid, even in the field of forced migration. Equally, the largest amount of knowledge in that field continues to be produced from this side of the line, with little influence from authors in the Global South. In the field of Social Policy, authors have equally argued for the need to look at countries in the Global South to understand the global dynamics 139

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of social policy and social protection, stating that ‘Southern countries have their own social policy histories, external influences from foreign powers notwithstanding, and that these histories are under-researched’ (Leisering, 2021: vi). In sum, to have really critical and transformative social work and social policy practice, scholars and practitioners in the field have to look for traditions and examples from the other side of the line (including but not limited to postcolonial SW, Southern SW, Indigenous SW and postcolonial policy analysis), facilitating the construction of an ‘ecology of knowledges’. Midgley (1998) has argued that contemporary social policies in previously colonised societies have been largely influenced by the colonial experience, and therefore they would benefit from a postcolonial analysis in order to reformulate these policies and properly address the urgent and localised social needs of vulnerable populations, including migrants. Social policy can play a crucial role in protecting vulnerable migrants and preventing destitution, especially amid public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Sengupta and Jha, 2020); however, the ‘common knowledge’ around migration management in the Global North cannot be uncritically used to guide intervention strategies (either in the field of social work or that of social policy) across the Global South, given the particularities of crossborder mobility in Southern nations (Sadiq and Tsourapas, 2021). In sum, a key component of present and future CSW and Social Policy global research agendas may be related to the abandonment and rejection of the cultural-genocidal, abyssal views still deeply rooted in Western thought and academia, which is the only route to acknowledge and recognise the validity of non-Western practices and knowledges, which are often silenced or overlooked. Migrants in vulnerable situations might benefit from cultural, historically sensitive and postcolonial practice that addresses not only their immediate situation, but also the challenges and structures that allow them to be in a position of increased vulnerability in the first place – usually linked to colonial legacies, imperial policies of power and control, and the effects of global capitalist expansion.

Seeking a postcolonial human rights framework for social workers and policy practitioners Social work has long been recognised as a human rights profession and to have incorporated human rights values into the core of its activities (United Nations, 1994; IFSW, 1996; Mapp et al, 2019); however, anticolonial human rights narratives have largely been left out of the conversation. The main argument is that if social workers engage with and reproduce the ‘liberal’ and ‘Western-centred’ conceptions of human rights in their practice with vulnerable migrants (especially those deemed ‘irregular’ or ‘undocumented’), they may fail to properly address the structural challenges posed by colonial 140

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legacies in receiving countries and the impact they have upon these persons’ lives and livelihoods. Considering that, this section will explore the foundations of postcolonial thinking in the field of human rights and how it may be translated into social work and social policy practice. As much as authors and practitioners have talked about the importance of human rights for the SW profession in articles, textbooks, guidebooks and training materials, they have often failed to engage more deeply with the philosophical and political nature of rights, reproducing (even if unintentionally) the modern, liberal traditions of human rights scholarship and practice. To develop truly critical human rights practice, social workers and policy practitioners need to look beyond the liberal human rights schemes that are often accused of reinforcing colonial and imperialistic structures, which are harmful especially to non-Western societies. In the British Association of Social Workers’ practice guide on Human Rights and Social Work for example, the authors make the case for a rights-based social work practice that envisions human rights as ‘universal entitlements’ as well as ethical and legal obligations (Nicholls et al, 2019). Despite being well intentioned, these guidelines tend to legitimise one view of what human rights are or should be, assuming the ‘self-evident’ universality of Western, European narratives on human rights. In Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Antony Anghie (2004) argued that imperialism and colonialism were central to the constitution of international law, thereby tracing the colonial origins of the modern international legal system and examining the relationship between the emergence of international law and the European ‘civilizing mission’ that ‘has justified colonialism as a means of redeeming the backward, aberrant, violent, oppressed, undeveloped people of the non-European world by incorporating them into the universal civilization of Europe’ (Anghie, 2004: 3). To a certain extent, the Western and Northern traditions of international human rights – which gained global prominence in the aftermath of the Second World War – has been caught up in the business of empire and colonialism, without confronting these historical legacies. In Colin Samson’s (2020) book The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism, the author critically analyses the paradoxical emergence of ‘universal human rights’ narratives from nations that were once colonial powers, settler colonists and sponsors of slavery. These two ground-breaking works may be a good starting point to anyone interested in a critical, anticolonial view of human rights and international law. Therefore, even though the language of human rights has permeated the SW profession, it does not mean that human rights values should be adopted and implemented uncritically in everyday practice. Thus, a central argument here is that rights-based social work should be reconceptualised in order to make room for human rights idioms founded outside European and North 141

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American liberal conceptualisations. It is not at all about abandoning the ‘rights talk’ but rather broadening our understandings of it by embracing various definitions of human rights beyond Western traditions and legalism (Grovogui, 2007, 2011; Brown, 2014). Social workers involved with either service users or policy work need then to constantly question whether they themselves are unintentionally reproducing colonial narratives on human rights and look critically at the set of values that guide their practice. For instance, Ife’s (2012) seminal work Human Rights and Social Work suggests that formal rights documents, treaties and conventions are only one aspect of human rights discourses; in fact, social workers can and should engage communities, groups and individuals in the process of defining and signifying human rights from their own perspective. On that account, elements of a postcolonial human rights discourse in Social Work and Social Policy might entail – among other things – acknowledging the colonial roots of modern international human rights law, rejecting the ‘universality’ of Western and Northern notions of human rights, and accepting the validity of rights narratives from ‘the other side of the line’. As opposed to social work, human rights have not been central to social policy research or practice, mainly because ‘social rights continue to be a relatively marginalised or qualified element of the human rights agenda’ (Dean, 2008: 1). Therefore, there is still a need for social policy researchers and practitioners to engage on a deeper level with rights-based approaches to their work. Such engagement also needs to consider the decolonising efforts of Western human rights discourses (Brydon, 2015) and how they still influence social intervention and policy practice with vulnerable groups in different settings. When discussing the experiences of vulnerable migrants, ‘migrants in an irregular situation are often disproportionately affected by human rights violations when compared to nationals of a State, or even when compared to other migrants in a regular situation’ (OHCHR, 2017: 2). Therefore, policies should be designed in a way to prevent human rights abuses from happening through an honest commitment to protect migrants in vulnerable situations. Here, the postcolonial critique can be used to address and challenge historical and ongoing inequalities that allow vulnerable migrants to experience positions of rightlessness in host countries. Policy practice may include (but is not limited to) legislative advocacy, litigation (national and international), social action and policy analysis (Pawar, 2019). Through these channels, social workers, policymakers and anyone involved with human and/or social services can employ strategies to decolonise different aspects of daily interventions, interactions and practices with migrants in situations of vulnerability (see Figure 7.1). Nonetheless, there are still limitations to how postcoloniality and human rights can be translated into social work and policy practice, and the 142

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Vulnerable migrants in an era of emergencies Figure 7.1: ‘Three Ps Model’ for postcolonial policy practice and intervention with vulnerable migrants

P2: People P1: Personal being Engagement with self-reflection and personal values – ‘decolonisation of the mind’

Engagement with service users, communities, as well as bureaucrats and politicians involved with migration policymaking, focusing on mobilising the voice and needs of vulnerable migrants

P3: Paper Engagement with critical, postcolonial policy analysis, policy research, writing for the general public (on social media, news outlets), and employing postcolonial approaches to human rights advocacy on behalf of vulnerable migrants

Source: Elaborated by the author, based on Pawar (2019)

suggestion for future research on this topic is to further explore this gap. In the next section, the nexus between environmental/climate migration and welfare studies will be explored, given that global warming and climate change pose a huge challenge to human rights protection regimes and have become central themes in the contemporary global agenda for social intervention and postcolonial studies.

Environmental and climate migration: theories and interventions in welfare studies Environmental change and disasters, alongside climate change, extreme weather and other ecological events, can be (and often are) drivers of environment-induced migration and displacement. However, it is very challenging to quantify environmental or climate migration, given the lack 143

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of adequate methodologies and a coherent conceptual or legal framework. Nonetheless, the estimates generated indicate that ‘25 million to one billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years’ (IOM, 2009: 9). Therefore, environmental and climate migration is a key feature of contemporary migration flows in the era of emergencies. In that sense, social workers required to engage with policy work need to be aware of these trends and prepare for the specific challenges in working with persons and communities affected by environmental and climate change. Environmental challenges in SW and the limitations to growth-based welfare policies have been discussed before, predominantly through the concepts of ‘sustainable welfare’ (Koch, 2021) and ‘green social work’ (Dominelli, 2012). However, the extent to which these views address the history and effects of colonisation and global inequality is questionable, and therefore they will be contrasted with other theories, mainly postcolonial approaches to climate change (Chakrabarty, 2012) and contributions from ecosocialism (Löwy, 2005). According to the Routledge Handbook of Green Social Work, green social work (GSW) is a new approach to the social work profession that aims at bridging the gap between social justice and environmental justice in SW scholarship and practice (Dominelli, 2018). Moreover, GSW ‘reminds the profession of its origins and seeks to transcend the limitations of those early beginnings to include the duty to care for the environment within its jurisdiction. As a result, green social work opens new doors in dealing with environmental crises’ (Dominelli et al, 2018: 1). In chapter 26 of the Handbook, Wroe et al (2018) argue extensively that social workers need to be aware of climate change and environmental degradation and how these processes function as migration or displacement drivers. Social and environmental justice then becomes a central theme to social work practice with forced migrants displaced by climate change and other environmentrelated events. However, despite the proliferation of publications on social work and environmental issues in the last decade or so, Ramsay and Boddy (2017: 69) argue that many authors have highlighted a relative absence of SW in recent public environmental discourse, a lack of environmental content in SW curricula and a continued focus on human-centred, clinical, modernist interventions (also known as the ‘psy’ discourses) – which renders the application of environmental social work, in practice, limited at the least. At the same time, more policy-oriented concepts such as ‘sustainable welfare’ or ‘green social policy’ point out that social policies and welfare states will have to be reformed altogether to address future global ecological demands and the climate emergency. The history of welfare states is intimately linked to industrial capitalism, modernisation and the use of fossil energy; thus, welfare states have also been dependent on an expansionary economic model of national economic growth (Hirvilammi and Koch, 2020). 144

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Koch (2021) argues, then, for a post-growth model for the welfare state, where social policies need to be aligned with environmental policies due to present and future socio-ecological emergencies. In that sense, the author uses ‘“sustainable welfare” as an umbrella term to conceptualise the intersection of social and environmental goals and policies’ (Koch, 2021: 2). That is to say that the idea of endless growth as the fuel of modern capitalism is not only harming the environment but posing an existential threat to our very existence on the Earth; therefore, there is an urgent need to imagine a ‘zero-growth world’ (Strauss, 2008). However, oftentimes authors on sustainable welfare (Hirvilammi and Koch, 2020; Koch, 2021) and green social policy (Fitzpatrick and Cahill, 2002) fail to address the connection between environmental policies and migration policies and could therefore benefit from a crossover with GSW scholarship. Nonetheless, what these different approaches might fail to do is look for the nexus between environmental emergencies, climate change and colonialism. According to Agarwal and Narain (2019), the issue of global warming raises questions of justice and morality across the North/South divide. They argue that Third World nations are frequently blamed for ‘heating up the Earth’ and destabilising its climate, whereas the heavier burden is posed upon the ‘survival emissions’ of the poor and not the ‘luxury emissions’ of the rich (Agarwal and Narain, 2019). Thus, climate change is not politically neutral: late capitalism plays a crucial role in global warming and the current political choices regarding the environment have long-lasting effects on the life of future generations (Maxwell, 2009).4 The relationship between colonialism and the environment is rather a complex one. However, what is indeed known is that ‘western imperialism radically altered the landscapes of the colonized lands at an unprecedented speed and scale; colonialism can thus be understood as a major factor in the degradation of the environment’ (Mount and O’Brien, 2013: 3). Migrants affected by environmental and climate events are often in a position of increased vulnerability that stems from – among other things – the unequal outcomes of late capitalist expansion and its endless exploitation of the environment. In that sense, social intervention in this area should not only take into account the need for immediate responses and crisis management but also look at the structures that allow vulnerabilities to be (re)produced every day. There is an urgent need to recognise the connection between colonial legacies and present-day ecological catastrophe (PorayWybranowska, 2020), which often leads to environment-induced migration and displacement. When combined with critical postcolonial scholarship, GSW and sustainable welfare can indeed be used to guide social workers and policymakers in imagining and practising values of social and environmental justice in the context of environmental and climate migration. Yet another 145

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aspect often overlooked by academics writing on sustainable welfare and environmental and social policy are the findings from radical economy and ecosocialism – which argue that we might not be able to stop the imminent ecological catastrophe from happening within the realms of capitalism; that is, we would have to dismantle capitalism altogether to achieve and maintain a healthy, balanced and liveable environment for all species (Fisher, 2014; Löwy, 2015). Even though ecosocialists have yet to engage on a deeper level with values such as social justice and human rights (Pepper, 1993; Silva and Scherf, 2020), which are essential to social work and social policy practice, this framework can be used to critically analyse current strategies that address the ongoing global environmental emergencies. Climate change also brings about unequal health hazards, which can potentially increase the number of diseases and deaths in the context of ‘climate-sensitive health outcomes’ (Ebi and Hess, 2020: 2056). Thus, the next section will explore the intersection of migration and public health emergencies, as well as the role of welfare provision during such times.

Migration, public health emergencies and welfare provision Historically, the social work profession has challenged society’s most difficult social problems and issues, beginning with poverty and deprivation and expanding its reach to other areas such as mental health, racial disparities and community engagement, among others (Rank, 2020). Moreover, ‘as we have entered the 21st century, there is a renewed call for the profession to once again commit itself to addressing the most pressing problems of our times’ (Rank, 2020: 1). For instance, the global COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s livelihoods, health and general wellbeing. Not only has it caused an enormous number of deaths worldwide, but the socio-economic disruption also caused by the pandemic is devastating – millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, the number of undernourished people has risen and nearly half of the world’s global workforce is at risk of losing their income and livelihood (WHO, 2020). Therefore, the public health risks posed by COVID-19 converge with social policy issues and need to be addressed transversally and collectively by a range of professionals in human services, including social workers. Public health emergencies – such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – render migrants in a vulnerable position even more vulnerable: internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants are at particular risk of facing xenophobia, encountering discriminatory policies and programmes, experiencing inequality in healthcare access, and disproportionate biomedical risk factors directly linked to systemic, historical inequality (Mukumbang, 2021). With that said, this section explores the role of social work and social policy professionals in advocating for transformative 146

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changes in migration policies and inclusive welfare policies focused on vulnerable migrant populations during and after public health emergencies. Carruth et al (2021) use the term ‘structural vulnerability’ when describing the challenges in clinical care and healthcare for migrants in different social contexts. According to their findings, ‘vulnerabilities caused by the social, political, and economic structures inherent to global migration and asylum systems increase the risk of poor health outcomes among migrants and also place clinicians at risk’ (Carruth et al, 2021: 1). Therefore, migrants (especially those who are ‘irregular’ or ‘undocumented’) are positioned in a situation of vulnerability because there are structures that produce and reproduce these vulnerabilities through institutional arrangements, legal systems, policies and even welfare services. During public health emergencies, when resources are limited and health policies can be even stricter in scope and reach, many migrants experience exacerbated situations of vulnerability. In the United Kingdom, a joint report recently released by Doctors of the World, the Nuffield Foundation and the University of Birmingham has revealed that migrants, refugees and asylum seekers experienced increasing levels of bad health and inadequate housing during the COVID-19 pandemic (LessardPhillips et al, 2021), facing several barriers when trying to access healthcare (Wise, 2021), whereas in some cases migrants were charged 150 per cent of the cost of the treatment by the NHS (Gardner, 2021). Most undocumented migrants in the UK fear seeking medical attention because their data can be transferred from the NHS to the Home Office/Home Department, which could later result in imprisonment, fines or deportation: It’s like walking through thick dark unending tunnels. It’s dehumanising, lacking dignity, mentally exhausting, no hope in future, not likely to visit GP or hospital if I contracted Covid-19. (undocumented cleaner interviewed by Gardner, 2021: 2) Thus, public health emergencies (such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic) tend to exacerbate existing inequalities and vulnerabilities that are particularly harmful to migrants and other vulnerable groups. Additionally, they might also suffer from the lack or poor levels of welfare provision in other areas such as housing and employment. Piccoli (2021) has demonstrated how some governments used the COVID-19 health emergency as an excuse to exclude groups of migrants from welfare provision measures such as monthly emergency income stipends and business relief funds (see also Vintila and Lafleur, 2020). Many vulnerable migrants have not been included in policy responses around the world, leaving them at greater risk of dying from the virus or losing their income and livelihood (Testaverde, 2020). It is also important to note that these persons are not simply ‘victims’; they have also shown resilience and have managed to cope with the troubling effects of 147

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these emergencies through remittances and informal social support networks (see, eg, Shimizutani and Yamada, 2021). Nevertheless, the ongoing global pandemic provides a textbook example of the need for an integrated approach from service providers and policy actors to the situation of vulnerable migrants, especially amid public health emergencies. Most healthcare problems are not solved by the health services system alone (Mera, 2002) but instead are dependent on other factors such as housing, nutrition, social support systems, ecological balance, healthy environmental conditions and so on. In addition, postcolonial scholars in the field of health studies argue that there is an ongoing role of colonialism in producing health inequities (Beavis et al, 2015), which points to the need for a postcolonial analysis of healthcare policies (Horrill et al, 2018). In sum, social intervention and policy responses to the situation of vulnerable migrants amid (and after) public health emergencies should provide pathways for them to overcome structural vulnerabilities and inequalities through social inclusion, active participation and social rights expansion, as well as acknowledge and challenge the neocolonial aspects (Browne et al, 2005) of many healthcare services.

Conclusion: global emergencies, migration and the future of social work and social policy One of the main goals of this chapter was to investigate social work and policy practice with vulnerable and/or marginalised migrants by exploring critical voices in the fields of social work, social policy and human rights in order to address the long-lasting effects of neoliberalism, colonisation and capitalist oppression in times of social, environmental and health emergencies. A theoretical discussion on critical social work was introduced, contrasted with the recent calls to decolonise social work and social policy knowledges produced in Northern and Western societies and to embrace traditions and examples from ‘the other side of the line’. That is one of many routes that practitioners can take to create intervention strategies that favour vulnerable migrants by addressing not only their immediate situation but also the cultural, historical and social structures that serve as vulnerability drivers, especially during emergency times. In the wake of COP26 in Glasgow, the International Organization for Migration, the World Health Organization and Lancet Migration have called on world leaders to pay attention to the direct linkages between climate change, health and migration. According to them, those who are migrating due to the direct impacts of climate change are particularly vulnerable, with increased physical and mental health needs linked to their exposure to climate and environmental conditions, alongside other stressors such as economic insecurity, abuse, exploitation, lack of support and xenophobia (WHO, 2021b). 148

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Therefore, there is an urgent need to look at the intersectionality of socioenvironmental phenomena in order to deliver effective social interventions at different levels, especially with vulnerable migrants. Social workers can no longer remain outside the sphere of public debate and policy decisionmaking forums. Decisions made in the social policy sphere have a direct impact on the delivery of social services; therefore, welfare professionals need to look beyond the immediate, individual needs of service users and engage with the larger structures of social and environmental policy practice. Social policy researchers and practitioners have for a long time not engaged with the human rights agenda (Dean, 2008), and as a discipline it has failed to address racism in welfare provision or the experiences and struggles of Black people concerning the welfare state (Williams, 1987). Even this chapter has failed to discuss the importance of critical race studies to address the situation of vulnerable migrants, especially migrant persons of colour. The ongoing socio-environmental emergencies require social work and social policy practitioners to revisit their priorities and to understand the interrelatedness of these crises, seeing beyond the knowledge that is produced in and for the Global North and acknowledging the subaltern voices often silenced in academia, politics, the media and other public spheres. Migration needs to be embraced as a normal feature of human life on this planet, instead of repelled and criminalised. Moreover, future research on social work and social policy interventions with vulnerable migrants must consider the need to decolonise our professions, which means not only incorporating postcolonial theory and approaches into research and practice but also questioning and calling out the neocolonial and oppressive practices often reproduced through services and policies. If social policy does not bring about social change in favour of vulnerable and marginalised populations, then it is not social policy but something else. Therefore, anyone directly involved with these issues or writing about them needs to be aware of the political nature of their work and actively denounce and fight against the negative effects that colonialism and global capitalism and other oppressive structures still produce in the lived experiences of migrants worldwide. Notes 1

2

The acclaimed British historian Eric Hobsbawm divided modern history into ‘Ages’: (1) the Age of Revolution: 1789–1848; (2) the Age of Capital: 1848–75; (3) the Age of Empire: 1875–1914; and (4) the Age of Extremes: 1914–91 (Hobsbawm, 1977, 1996, 1989, 1995). Similarly, some authors have argued that we are entering an Age or Era of Emergencies, in the sense that emergency situations may be one of the defining aspects of present and future life on Earth. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR, 2018: 5): ‘The concept of vulnerability is a foundational element of the human rights framework. … “Migrants in vulnerable situations” are thus persons who

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3

4

are unable effectively to enjoy their human rights, are at increased risk of violations and abuse and who, accordingly, are entitled to call on a duty bearer’s heightened duty of care.’ The Global North–South divide is a category that emerged in the 1980s with the famous ‘Brandt Line’, to account for the considerable income gap between countries located in the northern and southern hemispheres. Over time, the concept evolved to embrace not only differences in wealth and geographic location but also access to public goods (healthcare, education, etc) and the unequal distribution of power (Trefzer et al, 2014). The production of ‘scientific knowledge’ on climate change is also not neutral. Researchers from the Global South – often from the regions worst affected by climate change and sea-level rise – are struggling to get published, and in fact recent figures have shown that 90 per cent of climate change research papers from 2016–20 were published by academics affiliated to institutions in North America, Europe or Australia (Tandon, 2021).

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WHO (World Health Organization) (2020) ‘Impact of COVID-19 on people’s livelihoods, their health and our food systems’, WHO News, 13 October, available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/13-10-2020impact-of-covid-19-on-people’s-livelihoods-their-health-and-our-foodsystems. WHO (World Health Organization) (2021a) ‘Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)’, WHO Health Topics, available at: https://www.who.int/ health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1. WHO (World Health Organization) (2021b) ‘COP26 – direct linkages between climate change, health and migration must be tackled urgently – IOM, WHO, Lancet Migration’, WHO News, 9 November, available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/09-11-2021-cop26---direct-linkagesbetween-climate-change-health-and-migration-must-be-tackled-urgentlyiom-who-lancet-migration. Williams, F. (1987) ‘Racism and the discipline of social policy: a critique of welfare theory’, Critical Social Policy, 7(20): 4–29. Wise, J. (2021) ‘COVID-19: migrants face barriers accessing healthcare during the pandemic, report shows’, BMJ, 374(2296): 1. Wood, C. (1997) ‘To know or not to know: a critique of postmodernism in social work practice’, Australian Social Work, 50(3): 21–7. World Bank Group (2020) ‘COVID-19 crisis through a migration lens’, Migration and Development Brief no. 32, Washington, DC: World Bank. Wroe, L., Ng’andu, B., Doyle, M. and King, L. (2018) ‘Positioning social workers without borders within green social work: ethical considerations for social work as social justice work’, in L. Dominelli (ed) The Routledge Handbook of Green Social Work (1st edn), Abingdon: Routledge, pp 321–31. Young, R. J. C. (2003) Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (1st edn), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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8

The Autonomy Voucher for the elderly and people with disabilities in the context of local welfare transformation: potentials and limits of Lombardy Region’s policy Franca Maino, Ilaria Madama and Federico Bruno

Introduction: the potential of the Autonomy Voucher from a social innovation perspective This chapter analyses, from the perspective of social innovation, the implementation of the Autonomy Voucher (Voucher Autonomia), a programme launched in 2015 by Lombardy Region (Regione Lombardia) as part of a package of measures, the autonomy income,1 aimed at preventing and reducing the risk of poverty and social exclusion.2 More specifically, the voucher was included in the 2014–20 Regional Operational Programme co-financed with resources from the European Social Fund (ESF) and has now come to its third round. The measure is means-tested and targets two specific categories of low-income beneficiaries: (1) elderly people with mild to moderate functional impairments or caregivers of non-self-sufficient people (elderly vouchers) and (2) young people and adults with disabilities or impairments that do not preclude the possibility of acquiring social skills and personal autonomy (disability vouchers). The main goals are to promote the maintenance of personal autonomy, the development of skills and active inclusion, and to prevent the institutionalisation of the elderly and of people with disabilities in vulnerable socio-economic conditions and of those exposed to a greater risk of social exclusion and poverty. To this end, the voucher entitles the recipient to a personalised set of projects which provide access to services available in the district and that are aimed at maintaining and developing personal autonomy, staying at home and developing skills for social inclusion. Over the course of the three rounds considered here, over 2,000 projects have been launched for both the elderly and people with disabilities.

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Drawing from this, the chapter contends that the Autonomy Voucher exhibits some potential elements of social innovation in two main respects. The first concerns its target, namely people with mild and moderate impairments who are often overlooked by public social policies, which commonly address more serious impairments. The second has to do with its scope, and specifically the goal of maintaining the autonomy of individuals in order to delay institutionalisation as much as possible. More specifically, residents interested in receiving the voucher first apply to their municipality of residence. Once the eligibility of the application has been verified, the lead body of the territorial social district (hereafter district)3 proceeds with the multidimensional assessment of the beneficiary, which analyses the ‘personal activities’ dimension, in particular those related to personal autonomy, socio-relational skills and cognitive functions (the latter only for people with disabilities), and the ‘contextual factors’ dimension, that is, the characteristics of the physical and social environment that can constitute an element of facilitation or a barrier for the beneficiary. During the multidimensional assessment, the lead body identifies the case manager and drafts, together with the beneficiary, an individualised project proposal that specifies the interventions and services that will be provided. From submitting the application to validation, the process takes an average of 90 days. Case managers, selected from among the social workers of the district, represent the link between the beneficiary, their family, the multidisciplinary team and Lombardy Region. They inform, guide and assist the beneficiary and their family in the choice of services, accompany and support the beneficiary throughout their project, monitor progress and critical issues, and evaluate along with the beneficiary (also involving the team) whether to make corrections to the project and, if so, which ones. They also deal with the bureaucratic management of the measure, verifying the documentation (calendars, diaries and final reports) to be sent to the region and administering the evaluation questionnaires to the beneficiaries at the end of the courses. As will be seen, this reporting phase is particularly burdensome for case managers. The Autonomy Voucher provides diversified services for the elderly and people with disabilities. In the case of the elderly voucher, beneficiaries can access day centres, integrated day centres and other accredited services. The activities and services are aimed at maintaining cultural and social levels, personal autonomy and the family context. They include accompaniment to external activities, cooking, IT and manual skills workshops, cognitive stimulation, massages and physical activities, psychological support and counselling for the families. In the case of the disability voucher, beneficiaries can access social educational centres and the autonomy training service as well as other affiliated entities. The activities and services are aimed at promoting personal autonomy and socialisation, maintaining 159

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the cultural level, integration or reintegration into the labour market, and the development of social competences and skills to act within the family context or for emancipation from the family. Activities include cooking, home management, IT and occupational skills workshops, psychological support, sports activities, hygiene and body care. Relying on a broad and original empirical base, the purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the factors that have favoured or hindered the realisation of the Autonomy Voucher’s potential for social innovation, focusing on three fundamental aspects: process innovations, product innovations and outcomes of the measure. To this end, the chapter is organised as follows. The next section explores the links between social innovation, ageing and loss of autonomy to outline the framework within which the Autonomy Voucher is placed. We then present the research design and the original empirical basis used, illustrate how the voucher works and examine its implementation over the course of the three rounds. Finally, we turn to the assessment of the AV, discussing both the factors that have hindered or facilitated the realisation of the measure and the critical issues pointed out at the local level. The conclusion summarises the strengths and limits of the voucher, with a focus on the key factors which help explain why the measure failed to realise its full potential for social innovation.

Social innovation in the field of non-self-sufficiency: key issues In recent years, and especially in the decade following the Great Recession, the concept of social innovation has acquired even greater prominence in public discourse and on the reform agendas of European welfare systems. In fact, the concept appears particularly suitable for orienting the reform of welfare systems towards greater adequacy in dealing with old and new social risks on the one hand, and towards greater sustainability in terms of costs on the other. However, the literature agrees that including social innovation in a single definition is complex and, in part, also reductive. Jenson and Harrison refer to social innovation using the term quasi-concept – a concept characterised by a high degree of flexibility but also by a series of empirical and analytical weaknesses (see European Commission, 2013: 14).4 Among the various definitions of social innovation, the one proposed by the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) has been particularly successful. It played a central role in the agenda-setting process that brought the issue of social innovation to the attention of European policymakers and eventually converged into the Europe 2020 Strategy (Sabato et  al, 2015; Madama, 2020). According to the BEPA, ‘[s]ocial innovations are innovations that are social in both their ends and their means’. These are ‘new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships 160

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or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance society’s capacity to act’ (BEPA, 2010: 33). For the BEPA, one can properly speak of social innovation only in the presence of four conditions at the same time: (1) novelty and reactivity in response to a social need; (2) greater effectiveness than existing solutions; (3) the ability to renew or improve social skills and relationships; and (4) greater efficiency in the use of resources. As pointed out by Madama et al (2019), this definition is very demanding and lends itself more to delineating an ideal type than to representing observable empirical models. For this reason, starting from the definition of the BEPA, it is useful to give an operational definition that allows us to identify the different dimensions and the different degrees of social innovation. In this sense, we define as socially innovative a measure that presents at least one product innovation (ie, relative to the nature of the services offered and the results achieved) or a process innovation (relative to who offers the service, with what resources, following which interactions, in the light of which interests) which has the deliberate intent to produce a positive impact on at least one of the outcomes consistent with the innovation approach. Table 8.1 summarises some aspects of social innovation related to the process, the product and the outcomes. Social innovation has often been linked to the themes of population ageing and long-term care, issues that have long been on the policy agenda due to the enormous challenges that the new needs linked to these phenomena present for society, the welfare state and the labour market. Active ageing, frail elderly people, new needs, loneliness, new models of social protection, ‘live-in care’, ‘silver age’ and the ‘silver economy’ are recurring concepts in Table 8.1: Process and product innovations and expected outcomes Process innovation

Involvement of multiple stakeholders who traditionally operate separately.

Product innovation

Development of solutions that differ from existing ones, favouring more: • Prevention and rehabilitation • Accessibility and continuity of assistance • Autonomy and home care • Guarantee of quality of assistance

(Expected) outcomes

• • • •

Involvement in the functions of: • Co-design and co-production • Financing • Organisation • Governance • Monitoring and evaluation

Containment of demand for assistance Qualification and increase of assistance supply Reduction of costs Increase in the quality of life for vulnerable subjects and their formal and informal assistants

Source: Elaboration on Madama et al (2019)

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the debate that have been sharpened by the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected the elderly in particular (Dawson et al, 2020; Rogalewski and Florek, 2020; European Commission, 2021; Rocard et  al, 2021; Rodney et  al, 2021). This debate has been accompanied by a growing convergence on the need for the policies aimed at the elderly to go beyond an intervention model focused mostly on pensions and monetary transfers in favour of services that can accompany the long ‘descending’ parable that sees elderly people who are still active being confronted with an ever longer life expectancy, not necessarily in good health, and experiencing a progressive loss of autonomy. This convergence hinged on an overall vision of the problems centred on three fundamental axes: the centrality of the person and their family; attention to the overall care of the elderly and not the individual service, abandoning the separation between social and health services; and the systemisation of all available resources, in terms of both financing and organisation of the provision of services. Overall, the policy orientations supported by the EU over the last decade to address the challenges posed by ageing invite us to frame the issue in the broader life cycle of the individual, underlining the importance of an approach aimed primarily at preventing or delaying the onset of non-self-sufficiency, that is, a preventive and proactive approach rather than a restorative and reactive one, considered essential to contain the demand for assistance, to reduce costs for the system and to improve quality of life for the elderly and their caregivers (Madama et al, 2019: 129; European Commission, 2021). The responses provided in Italy to the challenge of ageing are unanimously considered inadequate (Gori, 2018; Nna, 2020), characterised as they are by a lack of planning and innovation on the part of both the public (at all levels of government) and the private sector. Among the numerous criticalities identified in the literature, there are three main ones at the macro level: (1) the dominance of monetary transfers (first and foremost the Indennità di Accompagnamento – a form of carer’s allowance) over other types of help; (2) the disjointed administration of programmes across several policy bodies, which results in uneven performance and dispersion of (scarce) resources; and (3) the extension of do-it-yourself welfare that shifts the problems related to ageing onto families and informal caregivers (Crescentini et al, 2018; Fosti et al, 2021; Maino, Agostini and De Tommaso, 2021). Similar considerations also apply to assistance to people with disabilities (see Birtha et al, 2019). In Italy, 3.15 million citizens constitute people with disabilities, equivalent to 5.2 per cent of the population; as in the case with assistance to the elderly, the assistance system for people with disabilities in Italy is essentially based on monetary transfers and shifting onto families – and women in particular – the burden of care work. Furthermore, interventions in favour of disabled people focus on cases with severe and very serious functional impairments, while they tend to neglect mild or 162

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moderate disabilities. In the Italian welfare system for people with disabilities, monetary transfers represent the predominant source of help, compared with the services provided by regions and local authorities (Istat, 2019). Despite the critical issues just mentioned, in recent years we have been able to see the signs of some attempts to reorient the original model of intervention in the direction of greater attention to the development of skills and the empowerment of the individual (Schulmann et al, 2018; Maino and Razetti, 2020). Among these, the Autonomy Voucher promoted by Lombardy Region follows this new orientation, representing an interesting experiment in regional policy in support of frail elderly people with disabilities. In fact, the Autonomy Voucher presents some potential elements of social innovation. In terms of product innovations, a first notable element is the target of the measure, namely the elderly and people with disabilities with mild to moderate functional impairment, who, as we have seen, tend to be overlooked by public interventions. Closely connected to this is the approach oriented towards empowerment of the individual: the voucher aims at strengthening and maintaining autonomy. On the one hand, this improves the quality of life for individuals, who can improve their social functioning (in the case of people with disabilities) and delay the moment of institutionalisation (in the case of the elderly). On the other hand, it allows public resources to be saved, as it postpones more onerous interventions. In this sense, the voucher must be interpreted from a social investment perspective. In addition, the individualised projects financed by the voucher are highly flexible and personalised. With regard to process innovations, the voucher involves a plurality of actors: the European Union, which cofinances the measure through the ESF; the regional administration (Lombardy Region), which designed the measure; the territorial social districts, which are called upon to implement it; and third sector organisations, which offer services to the districts through partnership agreements. As to the expected outcomes, the voucher aims to improve the quality of life for elderly people and people with disabilities on low income and, according to the logic of social investment described previously, to contain the demand for assistance. The remainder of the chapter will be devoted to verifying to what extent the voucher has succeeded in realising this social innovation potential.

Research design and data In order to reconstruct the implementation of the voucher and identify the factors that have favoured or hindered the realisation of its social innovation potential, the research combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach. The quantitative analysis of the research is descriptive and deals with the funding and assignment of the programme across the various territories and the characteristics of the beneficiaries. The analysis is based on 163

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primary documentary sources (Official Bulletin of the Lombardy Region, in particular Ddg  11640/2015, Dds  5837/2017 and Dds  11526/2019, which contain the definitive allocations for the resources) and an original data set provided by Lombardy Region, allowing for the reconstruction of each voucher assigned, the district, as well as gender, age, educational qualification, citizenship, labour market status (for the beneficiaries of the disability voucher) and possible further vulnerabilities of beneficiaries. The data provided by Lombardy Region refer to accepted voucher applications but do not distinguish between accomplished and interrupted individual projects. Although this does not make it possible to establish with certainty how many projects have been successfully completed, the number of accepted applications remains a good indicator of the success of the measure in the territories. Furthermore, the data of the third round lack information relating to the beneficiaries of the vouchers. For this reason, analysis of the beneficiaries’ characteristics was only possible for the first two rounds of the intervention. At the time the data were collected, the third round was still in progress, and therefore the data provided were not definitive. The data relating to the third round have been updated to 3 February 2021. For further information, refer to Maino, Madama and Bruno (2021). The second part of the research has an interpretative purpose and relies on qualitative analysis techniques. We conducted two focus groups and a qualitative interview, covering representatives of nine selected districts. The selection of the districts was based on two main criteria aimed at ensuring a realistic and accurate representation of the measure’s implementation. A first criterion was the number of applications accepted by each district: in order to have diversified evidence, we selected both districts where the voucher was ‘successful’ and where a substantial number of vouchers were assigned, and districts where the measure had not taken off and vouchers were assigned to a limited extent or remained unused. Secondly, based on the population of the lead bodies of the districts, districts of different sizes were selected: large, medium and small districts and mountain communities. Finally, an attempt was made to select districts relating to various health tutelage agencies (Agenzie di Tutela della Salute – ATS).5 The districts selected for the focus groups and the interview were the following: Crema (ATS Val Padana), Lecco (ATS Brianza), Mantua (ATS Val Padana), Milan (ATS Metropolitan City), Romano di Lombardia (ATS Bergamo), Imagna Valley – Villa d’Almè (ATS Bergamo), Vallecamonica (ATS Montagna), Varese (ATS Insubria) and Voghera (ATS Pavia). We contacted the districts via email and asked to be put in touch with the people involved with the voucher programme. These could include both the social workers selected as case managers and the managers of the districts. The first focus groups saw the participation of nine social workers acting as case managers. The second focus group saw the participation of two case managers and two district 164

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managers (two districts, in fact, did not assign any vouchers and therefore did not have any case managers). The two focus groups took place in March 2021. The qualitative interview involved the manager of a district and was held in April 2021. In the first focus group and in the qualitative interview, which involved districts that assigned a high number of vouchers, the discussion covered three topics: (1) the individual projects – what kinds of service were offered, how the projects were designed with the beneficiaries and what their outcomes were; (2)  the relations with other actors, such as the region and third sector organisations; and (3) a general evaluation of the programme – what worked out and what did not, what factors facilitated the implementation of the programme and what hindered it. As to the second focus group, which involved districts that assigned few or no vouchers, topics (2) and (3) remained largely the same. Instead of topic (1), the discussion focused on the issues that hindered the realisation of the programme – for instance, the fact that the Autonomy Voucher does not cope with the needs of the territory, or that it overlaps with other programmes. For the definition of the topics to be explored in the empirical analysis, the research group benefited from an extensive discussion with the Directorate for the Family, Parenting and Equal Opportunities of the Lombardy Region, which also provided useful information on the districts to be selected for the focus groups and for the reconstruction of the genesis of the voucher. In addition, in the initial phase of the empirical research, a preliminary qualitative interview was conducted with a former executive of the general management, aimed at reconstructing the characteristics of the measure and triangulating the empirical evidence collected from the local districts.

Autonomy Voucher: the three rounds compared The aim of the voucher is to ‘guarantee elderly people, in a condition of vulnerability, the possibility of staying at home by consolidating or developing personal and relational autonomy’ and to ‘foster, in young and adult disabled people, the skills aimed at social inclusion and at the development of personal autonomy’ (Dds 19486/2018, Annex 1). To this end, the measure grants beneficiaries a €4,800 voucher to access the network of social and socio-health services in their district of residence within the framework of an individualised multidisciplinary project. Since the measure was partially reformed over the three rounds, Table 8.2 summarises the features and the differences. Overall, 2,026 vouchers were assigned over the three rounds of the voucher (1,264 disability vouchers and 762 vouchers for the elderly). In the first round, 177 disability vouchers and 88 elderly vouchers were assigned, equal to 37 per cent and 17 per cent of the allocated resources, respectively. For 165

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166 Table 8.2: Features of the three autonomy voucher rounds Funding (€ millions) Edition

Disabled

Elderly

Total

Involved districts

First (2015–16)

2.3

2.5

4.8

72

Second (2016–17)

4.5

4.5

9.0

98

Third (2018–21)

3.0

3.0*

6.0

94

Target Disabled

Elderly

Between 16 and 35 years old (intellectual disability) ≥35 (disability from trauma or pathologies) ISEE < 10,000

>75 years old Functional impairment resulting from the initial state of dementia or other psychogeriatric pathologies ISEE < 10,000

≥16 years old Must be able to acquire skills for social inclusion ISEE ≤ 20,000 (≤35,000 from June 2021)

>65 years old Living at home Mild to moderate impairment May be a caregiver ISEE ≤ 20,000 (≤35,000 from June 2021)

Note: * To these must be added €480,000 initially assigned (but unused) to the Voghera-Oltrepò Pavese district as part of the National Internal Areas Strategy. Source: Ddg 10226/2015, annex A; Ddg 10227/2015, annex A; Dgr X/5672, annexes A and B; Dds 19486/2018, annex 1; Regional decision XI/4866

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the second round, 682 disability vouchers and 426 elderly vouchers were assigned, equal to 64 per cent and 40 per cent of the allocated resources. Finally, in the third round, the allocation was reduced to €6 million, while the percentage of vouchers assigned remained the same: 64 per cent of disability vouchers and 40 per cent of elderly vouchers (see Tables 8.3 and 8.4).6 In the first two rounds of the programme, most beneficiaries of disability vouchers were male (63 per cent in the first edition and 61 per cent in the second), while most beneficiaries of elderly vouchers were female (76 per Table 8.3: Disability vouchers per ATS – third round (2018) Districts that assigned vouchers

ATS Number of districts

Denomination

Number

Assigned voucher

%

Funded vouchers

Assigned vouchers

%

Bergamo

14

11

79

 69

 67

 97

Brescia

12

 8

67

 72

 44

 57

Brianza

 8

 6

75

 74

 44

 59

Città Metropolitana

18

15

83

216

135

 63

Insubria

19

12

63

 91

 36

 40

Montagna

 7

 4

57

 20

 11

 55

Pavia

 7

 3

43

 35

 13

 37

Val Padana

 9

 8

89

 48

 55

115

Total

94

67

71

625

405

  64

Source: Authors’ elaboration from data provided by Lombardy Region

Table 8.4: Elderly vouchers per ATS – third round (2018) Districts that assigned vouchers

ATS Number of districts

Number

14

Brescia Brianza

Denomination Bergamo

Assigned voucher

%

Funded vouchers

Assigned vouchers

%

 9

64

 63

 31

49

12

 8

67

 68

 30

44

 8

 6

75

 76

 39

51 39

Città Metropolitana

18

15

93

218

 86

Insubria

19

 7

37

 94

 14

15

Montagna

 7

 4

57

 19

  5

26

Pavia

 7

 2

29

 36

  6

17

Val Padana

 9

 7

78

 51

 37

73

Total

94

58

62

625

248

40

Source: Authors’ elaboration from data provided by Lombardy Region

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cent in the first and 71 per cent in the second). The vast majority of the beneficiaries of elderly and disability vouchers in both editions had Italian citizenship. Most beneficiaries of disability vouchers in both rounds had a secondary education diploma (respectively, 52 per cent and 60 per cent), while most elderly voucher beneficiaries had an elementary education diploma (respectively, 55 per cent and 54 per cent). Only a minority of the beneficiaries of disability vouchers had an additional vulnerability profile (15 per cent in the first edition and 16 per cent in the second); this is in contrast with the elderly voucher beneficiaries, the majority of whom had an additional vulnerability profile (65 per cent in the first edition and 83 per cent in the second). Finally, inactive non-students represented the largest category in both rounds of the disability voucher (49 per cent in the first round and 52 per cent in the second).

Projects: outcomes, facilitating factors, hindering factors The focus groups suggested that the main determining factors for the success of the measure were the existence of a consolidated network between local services and the third sector and having sufficient resources available for social policies so as to give continuity to the interventions, even after the end of the individualised projects. A solid network between social services and the third sector represents a central aspect for several reasons. A first reason concerns the advertising of the measure. As reported in the focus groups, the promotion of the voucher through ‘generic’ communication material had a limited impact due to the non-immediate comprehensibility of the measure: many potential beneficiaries ignored its existence or misunderstood its nature, believing they could have direct access to a sum of money rather than being able to take advantage of a catalogue of services. Through the local social services, the districts have made an upstream selection of the potential beneficiaries, directly proposing participation in the measure to people who might be interested. The involvement of social workers has proved invaluable in avoiding false expectations and in providing correct information to potential beneficiaries. The main advantage linked to the availability of a solid collaboration between social services and the third sector, however, lies above all in the possibility of offering a wide range of services to the beneficiaries. This relates to one of the strengths of the voucher: its flexibility, which favours the possibility of customising the interventions. Participants in the focus groups also pointed out the existence of good practices in the definition of the individualised projects, which involve not only the multidisciplinary team but also often the families of the beneficiaries. The objective of the voucher, in fact, is to improve the quality of life not only for the beneficiaries but also for their families and caregivers. Investing in a network and maintaining it 168

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throughout the course of the intervention can make the difference so that the results of the voucher are not lost and the social service carries on and accompanies the beneficiaries after the end of the voucher. As emerged in the focus groups, the interventions are therefore in accord with the beneficiaries and their families and generally have a positive outcome. However, it should be emphasised that the definition of a positive outcome varies from subject to subject. According to the participants in the focus groups, the most important aspect is that the work done with the voucher should not be lost: once the voucher has finished, the beneficiary should continue to be supported in some way by the social services. As we will see, one of the main potentialities of the voucher consists precisely in being able to act as a ‘trailblazer’ for further interventions by the social services. As we will see in the next section, the main obstacle reported in the implementation of the measure was the lack of sufficient resources to manage the social problems of elderly or disabled people. Some districts have in fact reported encountering problems in managing the demand of users in more serious conditions or with more urgent needs. In these districts, it was decided to focus on this target and not to invest time and economic and personnel resources on the Autonomy Voucher. Another obstacle is the fact that sometimes the tools provided by the voucher did not correspond to the needs of the beneficiaries in that specific territory. While the disability voucher was generally positively received with respect to filling the gap in measures for this target and its ability to activate beneficiaries with disabilities, the elderly voucher was less successful, even in those districts that appreciated the measure. Some districts, in fact, found the interventions provided for by the elderly voucher to not be suitable for the needs of the elderly in the territory; therefore, the potential beneficiaries did not submit an application, either because they were not interested or because they were already in the charge of other services. Emblematic in this sense is the case of a district which, having given a restrictive interpretation of the activities envisaged by the elderly voucher, was unable to identify any interested beneficiaries. A clarification with Lombardy Region subsequently allowed the district to focus on the margins of flexibility available in autonomously proposing services more suited to the requests of the population. The interruption of activities following the COVID-19 pandemic represented a further obstacle, preventing the launch of new vouchers or, despite the commitment of social workers and the third sector in ensuring the continuity of services, the completion of those already started. Understandably, the interventions that envisaged a strengthening of the social capacities of the beneficiaries were most affected by the lockdown and by the limitations of the subsequent phases. 169

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Issues and obstacles During the focus groups and the interview, the respondents highlighted a number of critical issues in the implementation of the voucher. Remarkably, some of these were reported by all participants, such as an excessive administrative burden, an ineffective reimbursement system and frequent misunderstandings about the scope of the measure, which led to the submission of several improper applications and/or waivers. Other critical issues were instead highlighted only by some districts and are probably linked to the poor success of the voucher in those territories. In what follows we review the evidence collected with reference to some of these major issues, namely the excessive administrative burden, the ineffective reimbursement mechanism and other structural limits of the programme. Burdensome administrative formalities Excessive bureaucracy was reported by all participants as one of the main critical issues related to the voucher. The most criticised aspect in this sense was the cumbersome reporting system. The forms are excessive and redundant: already in the initial phase of taking charge, the procedure requires that individual projects precisely specify dates and types of intervention; this high level of detail is considered a waste of time since the types of intervention could change based on the needs that emerge during the implementation of the project and since the schedule of access to the services largely depends on contingent factors, which can result in changes to the intervention dates. Moreover, for each voucher case managers are asked to fill in three forms – the individual project, the intervention plan and the final report – which basically contain the same information. Furthermore, the reporting of the individualised projects does not reflect the richness and complexity of the interventions. The list of services provided by the voucher does not always correspond to the type and modality of interventions actually offered at the local level, and the operators – to simplify – record them as ‘other’ in the project reports, further dispersing a wealth of knowledge on the services effectively offered. Although in the end the region has always accepted the project reports, the cumbersome reporting activity nevertheless has created a procedural burden for the districts. In addition, the procedure requires that the signatures of all participants in team meetings – such as the social worker, psychologist, educator and others – be collected; when these meetings are held online, they are often not recorded in the case manager’s diary because it would be too difficult to collect all the participants’ signatures. Participants in the focus groups therefore believed that the planning and reporting procedures of the interventions were excessively cumbersome 170

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and that by slowing down the work, they damaged the beneficiaries. This criticality is one of the factors that has prompted not only some districts but also some organisations of the third sector not to opt for the voucher and to move towards other measures. Focus group participants also criticised the regional IT system, used by case managers to upload voucher documentation, for its lack of intuitiveness. Finally, they complained about a certain initial slowness in communications between territorial districts and the region for the launch of projects, which sometimes meant that projects were not completed due to an organisational mismatch between districts, cooperatives and the region. An ineffective reimbursement mechanism One of the major problems concerns the region’s methods of disbursement of funds, which dissuaded the territorial social districts and the third sector from taking part in the measure. In this sense, there are at least three critical issues: the reimbursement mechanism, the reimbursement times and the minimum threshold of project realisation to get the reimbursement. The voucher system requires that the cost of the interventions is anticipated by local authorities and reimbursed later. This poses problems for districts with fewer resources or with other policy priorities. In this sense, the case of the Voghera–Oltrepò Pavese district, which renounced substantial funds for this reason, is emblematic. In the latest edition of the voucher for the elderly, resources amounting to €480,000 were allocated to the district as part of the strategy for inland areas. Regardless of other considerations, it would have been very difficult for the district to advance such an amount for it to be credited only after a few years, assuming in any case that all interventions had come to an end. This example highlights a perverse mechanism of the voucher: an increase in the resources allocated to a district does not necessarily correspond to an increase in the vouchers provided since the resources must in any case be anticipated by the territorial districts. The second critical issue, closely linked to the issue of reimbursement, is represented by the length of payment times: the value of the vouchers is often paid back several years after the end of the interventions. While this did not represent an insurmountable obstacle for the districts that have greater resources or where relations with the third sector are intense enough to ensure continuous flows of resources towards them, for other districts the fact of having to anticipate the cost of the interventions was one of the factors that contributed to the failure of the measure. A further critical aspect is that the voucher can be reimbursed only if the individualised project reaches at least 70 per cent completion. In some districts, this has dissuaded some cooperatives from accepting the voucher, but even in the districts where the cooperatives have not pulled back, the 171

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problem was nonetheless felt: municipalities and cooperatives have in fact found themselves discussing who should bear the costs if the voucher does not reach the threshold for reimbursement. The logic that led the regional legislator to insert a minimum completion threshold for reimbursement was obviously to ensure a certain level of performance and to contain waste, thereby reducing the risk of inefficient use of resources. However, this choice does not seem to consider that early termination of the voucher can be determined by numerous causes that do not depend on the districts or on the cooperatives and does not necessarily underlie bad public management. Vouchers can be terminated because of the sudden rethinking on the part of the beneficiary or because of the demise of the beneficiary. For instance, a district reported that it had to bear the costs of an interrupted voucher because of the sudden death of the beneficiary before the project reached 70 per cent completion. Structural limits of the voucher Notably, some criticalities are related to the structural characteristics of the voucher. These critical issues concern three aspects: the amount, which for some districts is not considered sufficient or makes it necessary to provide for an integration of the voucher; the duration of the interventions, considered too short compared with the fact that in many cases, projects that aim at the autonomy of the beneficiaries require well over 12 months to achieve significant results; and the impossibility of automatically renewing the voucher. Furthermore, it should be noted that the districts received numerous applications which were later found to be improper, either because the applicants did not meet the income requirements or because even if they did, they were beneficiaries of other services incompatible with the voucher (for instance, they were already placed in a nursing home or attended a socio-residential facility). While this is not necessarily a problem with the voucher, it certainly signals the existence of both a demand for this kind of service, which does not find an adequate response, and, at the same time, a lack of coordination between programmes and measures at the regional level. Focus group participants also repeatedly pointed to the inadequacy of the voucher, both with respect to the priorities of the territories and with respect to the expectations of the applicants. The districts that used only a few vouchers or none at all complained that the voucher is a measure ‘dropped from above’ and that it is the result of a lack of listening to the territories and of a poor understanding of the real social needs they express. Two consequences follow from this. First of all, the voucher points to a target that is not considered a priority by the local welfare authorities. In many cases, in fact, the elderly who turn to social services have serious 172

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impairments and have no need of recreational moments or interventions aimed at promoting socialisation. For example, one district stressed that it faces problems in guaranteeing the treatment of serious non-self-sufficiency cases and therefore considers it a priority to concentrate resources on such cases rather than on the minor frailties covered by the voucher, particularly considering the administrative overhead highlighted previously. The second consequence is that the tools provided by the voucher do not always meet the real needs of the population, resulting in low demand below the expectations of the region. This is especially true for the elderly voucher. In some districts, the beneficiaries did not apply, either because they could independently organise activities similar to those provided for by the voucher or because the day centres were too far from home and they did not want to move. The applicants’ expectations were also not met because they did not always have a clear idea of what the voucher was in the first place. Many applicants expected to receive spending money; others, suffering from serious frailties, saw in the voucher a ‘preferential lane’ to access the services they needed, but which the district struggled to ensure; finally, other applicants thought they could use the voucher to finance activities that fall outside the scope of the voucher – from physiotherapy sessions to various types of recreational activities. As soon as they were informed of what activities could actually be accessed through the voucher, many of these applicants withdrew their application. This problem, which mainly concerns the elderly voucher, is probably due to the design of the measure, which is difficult for the potential beneficiaries to understand. While this problem persists in some districts, others have managed to overcome it – as we have seen – by adopting a more targeted promotion and identifying potential beneficiaries upstream. Finally, some participants related the weakness of the voucher to the fragmented nature of the social policies of Lombardy Region. This is a critical issue that not only concerns the Autonomy Voucher, and it is one which is often referred to by studies that deal with the effectiveness of Lombard policies (Betti and Neri, 2021; Pasini and Gasparotto, 2021). The regional measures activated simultaneously in the territories amount to more than 60.7 While on the one side this reflects the effort of the region, on the other side the burden for local authorities is very significant, as the implementation of these policies falls on them. Furthermore, these measures do not always respond to the needs of the territories and often appear to be ‘dropped from above’. Remarkably, a similar fragmentation of interventions and resources appears to be in contrast with the most recent social policy guidelines (European Commission, 2021; Longo and Maino, 2021) that aim to recompose and rationalise the offer of social and health policies and the related available resources. 173

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Conclusions This chapter has analysed the experience of the first three rounds of the Autonomy Voucher, with a focus on its institutional design and implementation at the local level from the perspective of social innovation. Our findings suggest that although the measure embodies some relevant elements of social innovation, its implementation also showed some major limits, which are reflected in the relatively low adherence of the territories to the measure. Further, the focus groups produced rather mixed assessments of the programme, which were generally positive for the districts that actually used the vouchers and negative for those which did not use them. Even though due to the lack of data we could not evaluate the impact of the measure on beneficiaries’ wellbeing, overall, in the light of the concept of social innovation, the results of our research appear relevant for a number of reasons. More precisely, the respondents that gave a positive evaluation of the voucher pointed out three aspects. The first refers to the innovation of this measure, which made it possible to target a group which, as explained previously, is usually neglected in favour of those within more urgent needs or with more severe disabilities. In particular, it was observed how the voucher can help to avoid or delay the institutionalisation of subjects at risk, which is one of the objectives associated with the paradigm of social innovation. The voucher can therefore be evaluated as a low-cost initiative that not only improves the quality of life and autonomy for the beneficiaries, very much in line with the recent regional law on the ‘During and after us’ (Durante e dopo di noi) for people with disabilities, but also manages to save local and regional institutions the cost of much more expensive services. The second aspect is the flexibility of the voucher, namely the possibility of elaborating innovative individualised projects thanks to collaboration between different actors. This highlights an aspect linked to the involvement of public subjects and the third sector, who work together for the implementation of interventions. The measure, therefore, seems to contribute to the creation – or strengthening where they are already present – of territorially rooted multi-actor networks that try together to provide integrated answers to emerging problems that are difficult to address with traditional resources and interventions, which is in line with what has been highlighted by the recent literature on welfare transformations (see Longo, 2016; Maino and Ferrera, 2019; Longo and Maino, 2021). The third positive aspect is that the voucher can be used as a ‘trailblazer’ for further interventions. Being addressed to people whose functional impairment is still limited, the voucher can be used to intercept a part of the public not yet familiar with the social service and represent the beginning of a broader and possibly continuous project over time. Intercepting people whose social problems usually go under the radar and starting to work 174

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immediately on their autonomy in a logic of social investment contributes to the dual virtuous mechanism of improving the life of the beneficiaries and saving public resources outlined previously. Therefore, the focus groups pointed out that the most innovative aspects of the Autonomy Voucher were those on the product side. The limits of the voucher are to be sought instead at the process level. The regional legislator was unable to design a simple mechanism for the management and governance of the measure. An example of this is the clumsiness of the planning and reporting procedures for individual projects, which is in stark contrast to the flexibility of the voucher. The difficulties related to the reimbursement mechanism, reported both by the districts that responded with the most enthusiasm to the voucher and by those who used fewer resources, are another prominent example. The perverse mechanism whereby an increase in allocated resources does not necessarily turn into an increase in provided vouchers because of the reimbursement procedures indicates that the problem has to do not with the allocation of the resources, but with the institutional design of the programme. The region could have done more to facilitate the work of the territorial districts. A further aspect that emerged is that the voucher is part of the fragmented panorama of regional social policies. Despite not representing a specific problem of the voucher itself, this has contributed critically to limiting its success. The excessive fragmentation of regional social policies, in fact, weighs on local administrations; this, together with the complex planning and reporting procedures and sometimes long repayment times, dissuaded some districts, especially those with fewer resources, from engaging in the provision of the voucher, in favour of other interventions and other subjects with more serious compromises. These weaknesses at the process level have consequences on the concrete results of the measure: although the opinion was positive in the territories where the vouchers were actually issued, most of the resources remained unused. The voucher therefore represents a half success. The measure is undoubtedly characterised by some potential for social innovation. However, our research suggests that the innovative potential lies more in the design of the measure and in its objectives than in its actual implementation. The concrete realisation of the voucher is in fact hindered by a series of administrative and procedural burdens, to which are added the territorial differentiations relating to the levels of capacity building and the partnership between social services and third sector entities. The voucher can therefore be conceived as an interesting experiment in regional social policy concerning assistance to the elderly and people with disabilities, whose full potential still needs to be unlocked. Remarkably, to this end the regional government in the future can be a key player, either promoting or inhibiting the dissemination of innovative solutions by setting up a procedural and administrative framework 175

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that facilitates their implementation, thus favouring greater enhancement of the contribution that local public and private actors can make – all issues which lend themselves to being fruitfully addressed in future research. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

In addition to the Autonomy Voucher, the autonomy income also included interventions aimed at families (zero ticket, ie, exemption from the additional ticket on outpatient specialist healthcare services; family bonus, an economic contribution for families with new-born or adopted children; and free nursery, ie, the cancellation of the nursery fee) and at the unemployed (job insertion project, an allowance aimed at favouring job insertion). This chapter is the result of a reworking of the data collected for an evaluation mission of the results of the Autonomy Voucher, commissioned by the Lombardy Regional Council and carried out by the three authors (Maino, Madama and Bruno, 2021). Municipalities, mountain communities, consortia of municipalities and special companies can be lead bodies of a territorial social district. Territorial social districts (Ambiti territoriali) are administrative units that group together several municipalities and that plan and implement the provision of social and health services in the territory. They are the local articulation of the Health Tutelage Agencies (see note 5). For a review on the evolution of the concept of social innovation, see Ayob et al (2016). With specific reference to the link between social innovation and non-self-sufficiency, see Schulmann and Leichsenring (2015), Razetti (2018) and Maino and Razetti (2019, 2020). The ATSs are subregional administrative authorities that plan and implement social and health services. They are located between the region and the territorial social district. As previously mentioned, these numbers refer to the vouchers assigned and also include the vouchers that were interrupted and concluded prematurely. This explains why in Table 8.3 ATS Val Padana assigned 115 per cent of the theoretically allocated vouchers. A mapping of Lombard regional welfare policies is available at the following address: https://www.ordineaslombardia.it/mappatura-e-urazione-sulle-misure-di-welfare/.

References Ayob, N., Teasdale, S. and Fagan, K. (2016) ‘How social innovation “came to be”: tracing the evolution of a contested concept’, Journal of Social Policy, 45(4): 635–53. BEPA (Bureau of European Policy Advisers) (2010) Empowering People, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union, Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union. Betti, M. and Neri, S. (2021) Scelte per la Salute, Studi sui nuovi scenari per le politiche regionali promossi dal Comitato Paritetico di Controllo e Valutazione, Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia. Birtha, M., Rodrigues, R., Zólyomi, E., Sandu, V. and Schulmann, K. (2019) From Disability Rights towards a Rights-Based Approach to Long-Term Care in Europe: Building an Index of Rights-Based Policies for Older People, Vienna: European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research.

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Crescentini, L., Maino, F. and Tafaro, T. (2018) ‘Non autosufficienza: analisi e proposte per un nuovo modello di tutela’, Working Paper 2WEL, 3/2018, Turin: Centro di ricerca e documentazione Luigi Einaudi. Dawson, W. D., Ashcroft, E. C., Lorenz-Dant, K. and Comas-Herrera, A. (2020) ‘Mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak: a review of international measures to support community-based care’, International Long-Term Care Policy Network, CPEC-LSE. European Commission (2013) Social Innovation Research in the European Union: Approaches, Findings and Future Directions, Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union. European Commission (2021) 2021 Long-Term Care Report: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities in an Ageing Society, Joint Report prepared by the Social Protection Committee (SPC) and the European Commission (DG EMPL), Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union. Fosti, G., Notarnicola, E. and Perobelli, E. (eds) (2021) Le prospettive per il settore socio-sanitario oltre la pandemia. 3°Rapporto Osservatorio Long Term Care, Milan: Egea. Gori, C. (2018) ‘Changing long-term care provision at the local level in times of austerity – a qualitative study’, Ageing & Society, 39(9): 2059–84. Istat (2019) Conoscere il mondo della disabilità: persone, relazioni e istituzioni, Rome: Istat. Longo, F. (ed) (2016) Welfare futuro: Scenari e strategie, Milan: Egea. Longo, F. and Maino, F. (eds) (2021) Platform Welfare: Nuove logiche per innovare i servizi locali, Milan: Egea. Madama, I. (2020) ‘Innovazione sociale e politiche di LTC: una concettualizzazione place-based a partire dal caso italiano’, Biblioteca delle Libertà, 229: 1–20. Madama, I., Maino, F. and Razetti, F. (2019) ‘Innovating LTC policy in Italy from the bottom: Lombardy and Piedmont confronting the challenge of inclusive local care environments’, Investigaciones Regionales/Journal of Regional Research, 44(2): 125–41. Maino, F., Agostini, C. and De Tommaso, C. V. (2021) ‘Contrastare le povertà’, Studi sui nuovi scenari per le politiche regionali promossi dal Comitato Paritetico di Controllo e Valutazione, Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia. Maino, F. and Ferrera, M. (eds) (2019) Nuove Alleanze in un welfare che cambia: Quarto Rapporto sul secondo welfare in Italia 2019, Turin: Giappichelli. Maino, F., Madama, I. and Bruno, F. (2021) ‘Voucher Autonomia: attuazione ed esiti dell’intervento di Regione Lombardia, Missione valutativa n. 22’, Comitato Paritetico di Controllo e Valutazione e Commissione Sanità e Politiche Sociali, Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia.

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Maino, F. and Razetti, F. (2019) ‘Long term care: riflessioni e spunti dall’Ue, fra innovazione e investimento sociale’, La Rivista delle Politiche Sociali/ Italian Journal of Social Policy, 1: 143–62. Maino, F. and Razetti, F. (2020) ‘Superare l’immobilismo: alla ricerca dell’innovazione nelle politiche di LTC’, Biblioteca della Libertà, 229: 5–38. Nna (2020) L’assistenza agli anziani non autosufficienti in Italia, 7° Rapporto, Rimini: Maggioli. Pasini, N. and Gasparotto, M. (2021) Nuovi bagagli di competenze per il lavoro che verrà, Studi sui nuovi scenari per le politiche regionali promossi dal Comitato Paritetico di Controllo e Valutazione, Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia. Razetti, F. (2018) ‘LTC e innovazione sociale: quali spunti dall’Europa?’, paper presented at SISP Conference, Turin, 5–7 September. Rocard, E., Sillitti, P. and Llena-Nozal, A. (2021) ‘COVID-19 in long-term care: impact, policy responses and challenges’, OECD Health Working Papers No. 131. Rodney, T., Josiah, N. and Baptiste, D.-L. (2021) ‘Loneliness in the time of COVID-19: impact on older adults’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 77(9): e24–e26. Rogalewski, A. and Florek, K. (2020) ‘The future of live-in care work in Europe’, European Economic and Social Committee. Sabato, S., Vanhercke, B. and Verschraegen, G. (2015) ‘The EU framework for social innovation – between entrepreneurship and policy experimentation’, ImPRovE working paper, 15/21, Antwerp: Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy – University of Antwerp, Social Policy Committee. Schulmann, K. and Leichsenring, K. (2015) ‘A qualitative inventory of the key drivers of social innovations in social support and long-term care’, WP8 Deliverable 8.3, MoPact Project. Schulmann, K., Reichert, M. and Leichsenring, K. (2018) ‘Social support and long-term care for older people: the potential for social innovation and active ageing’, in A. Walker (ed) The Future of Ageing in Europe: Making an Asset of Longevity, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 255–86.

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9

The impact of the pandemic crisis on territorial inequalities: the right(s) to healthcare in Italy Gaia Matilde Ripamonti

Introduction Italy was ‘patient zero’ of the Western world with regard to the spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, it was the first country after China to undertake severe quarantine measures at the national level. Beginning in early 2020, COVID-19 strongly and repeatedly hit the country, leading to a harsh health, social and economic crisis that the national government tried to deal with using a wide range of solutions over time. The health crisis has put the Italian National Health System (NHS) under pressure and highlighted the differences between its Regional Health Systems (RHSs). This happened on at least two occasions. Firstly, during the first wave of the crisis in spring 2020, the pandemic outburst was mainly located in the north-west area, where regions put in place different strategies to address the spread of the new virus within their borders, mostly relying on the fundamentals of their regional healthcare systems. Secondly, during the second wave in autumn 2020, the national monitoring of the regional evolution of the pandemic helped to draw even more attention to the extent to which subnational governments were reacting differently to it. The aim of this chapter is to understand the impact of COVID-19 on territorial inequalities with regard to access to healthcare. For this purpose, it will first introduce the concept of ‘one NHS composed of 21 RHSs’, focusing on health inequalities and healthcare disparities between Italian regions.1 Then, the analysis will focus on what happened during the pandemic crisis at the regional level during two different periods: the first wave of the crisis from February to June 2020 and the second wave from the beginning of November to the end of December 2020. With regard to the first wave, data from the Civil Protection concerning the three most affected regions – Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna – will be used; data on the virus’s spread, hospitalisation rates and domestic isolation rates will enable us to learn about the coping measures adopted by the three 179

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subnational governments. The results will facilitate a reflection upon the different regional reactions to the crisis and the impact that those reactions had on citizens’ lives. The second part of the analysis will focus on four regions that were classified as highly risky by the national government according to the monitoring system adopted on 3  November 2020: Lombardy, Calabria, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Data about the number of cases, hospitalisation rates and domestic isolation rates will briefly be discussed before moving to a more in-depth analysis of the circumstances that led to the four regions being classified as highly risky. Once again, the results of the analysis will be useful to reflect upon the role of COVID-19 in fostering territorial inequalities with regard to healthcare, highlighting the differences between Italian RHSs. The final purpose is to answer the critical and fundamental question that part of the academic literature has recently brought to the table: is there still one right to health or are there instead multiple rights with a strong regional dimension?

The Italian National Health System and its regional differences The Italian NHS has been considered one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world by international academic and scientific literature (World Health Assembly 53, 2000). Nonetheless, these results have often hidden an unspoken truth: there is sharp territorial differentiation between regions with regard to their healthcare systems. The universal health insurance system was established in 1978 in the middle of the Italian regionalisation process. After a decade of relatively limited powers, regions gained a central role in health policy after the reforms of 1992–93 and 1999 that pursued strong decentralisation in the health sector. This ‘second regionalisation’ originated from both exogenous and endogenous factors, above all the political turmoil following the Tangentopoli scandals, the requests of the newly born regionalist parties and the Europeanisation process, which promoted the regional level as the third level of the new multilevel governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2001). The reforms of the 1990s tried to combine in a single politicalinstitutional solution three highly innovative elements: the corporatisation, the regionalisation, and the privatisation of the healthcare sector. Indeed, the three elements, especially regionalisation, resulted in a high degree of fragmentation in social and health policies. Within the new multilevel system, as soon as the central level experienced a period of political instability and uncertainty, the regions played a pivotal role in the guarantee of social rights. The region-building processes of those years and the competitive vertical and horizontal dynamics allowed regions take advantage of their power in social policymaking to claim their own identities and legitimise themselves in front of the citizens as well as national and international 180

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institutions (Ferrera, 2005). Regions’ determination in finding their own space within the political arena together with the decentralisation of the healthcare sector led to the development of healthcare systems with (more or less) distinct regional identities. The contents of the right to health were defined at the national level, but the organisation of the health services needed to guarantee that right was moved to the regional level: subnational governments decided upon the number and typology of facilities in the territory, the services provided inside them, the involvement of the private sector, the organisation of hospital care, territorial assistance, preventive measures and so on. From a financial point of view, the NHS is publicly funded. The total amount distributed to each RHS is decided at the national level using a set of fixed criteria; however, regions are rather free to decide how to use resources inside their territories, and they can also activate further funds from their regional budgets. The regional role in the guarantee of the right to health received proper recognition with the constitutional reform of 2001 that appointed the responsibility of health policy to subnational governments. As a result of the same reform, regions have had to respect the minimum assistance levels (LEA) defined by the state; this was an attempt to establish some kind of uniformity in response to the differentiation resulting from previous reforms. The LEA have been more and more specific over time; nowadays they also represent a tool to evaluate the quality of assistance provided by the RHSs. Their achievement may provide additional resources to regions, while their violation activates strict controls by the central government that can lead to the appointment of a commissioner for the management of the health sector. The latter measure was introduced in 2005, and it was extremely useful during the years of the economic crisis of 2008, when the central government tried to recentralise the decision-making of health policy (Taroni, 2019) using the described mechanisms, excluding regions from the funding decision-making and blaming subnational governments for excessive spending while cutting funding for the healthcare sector. During and especially after the economic crisis, the national government has attempted to maximise (and cut) the use of financial resources; meanwhile, regional governments have tried to take back full control over health policy. Before the pandemic crisis, one of the most important issues in the public debate concerned the request made by Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna for further autonomy in several policy sectors. Despite the diversity of their health systems and political-institutional characteristics, they all asked for greater autonomy in the management and organisation of their RHSs and, above all, in the regional fiscal capacity. Nevertheless, many authors argued that these requests could represent a danger for equity (Dirindin, 2019; Neri, 2019; Spina and Vicarelli, 2020) because of the three regions’ greater fiscal capacity – especially when compared to southern regions. The possibility 181

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for the regions to retain part of the resources collected through taxation would jeopardise the redistribution of resources towards the territories with less fiscal capacity, which according to a certain type of narrative would not deserve to be helped to achieve territorial equity due to their inefficiency (Spina and Vicarelli, 2020). Giving further autonomy to those territories would leave behind the rest of the peninsula, escalating the cleavage between the north and the south of the country and establishing a new setup in which regions would have differentiated powers and responsibilities according to their economic conditions (Neri, 2019). In any case, the three requests clearly demonstrate how far regions have come since the 1970s and that social policies are still a privileged instrument for affirming one’s regional identity. In the meantime, Italian health policy continues to be based on a form of multilevel governance built on the consensus method and on the model of conferences (Saitta, 2018). Regions hold an important position in the decision-making processes, participating in the redefinition of the LEA, guaranteeing the same levels within their boundaries and providing potential additional forms of protection that, together with the organisation of the healthcare system, is what truly differentiates Italian RHSs. Since its institution, the NHS was designed to be regionally based. For this reason, it was inevitable that regional disparities would increase, given the lack of any proper intervention to prevent them. Despite this, the Italian NHS rapidly became a reference point in the healthcare sector. In comparison with other European countries (Table 9.1), Italy performs well with regard to healthy life expectancy, mortality rates, hospital services provision and effectiveness; however, it also spends less on healthcare than most EU Member States (Pavolini, 2020). In the past decade, unlike the countries of Northern Europe, Italy cut public spending on the hospital system, severely reducing the number of hospitals and hospital beds as well as human resources (Neri, 2020; Pavolini, 2020; Prante et al, 2020; C.R.E.A. Sanità, 2021).2 Furthermore, even if the rate of unmet health needs follows the European average, the differences based on residents’ Table 9.1: Healthcare performance of Italy and EU-27 in 2018

Healthy life in years Standardised preventable mortality rates Standardised treatable mortality rates

Italy

EU-27

66.8

64.0

104.03

184

64.94

109

Total healthcare expenditure (% of GDP)

8.68

9.87

Healthcare expenditure (EUR per capita)

2,543.54

2,987.15

2.4

2.0

Self-reported unmet need for medical examination and care

Source: Based on data from Eurostat online database (HLTH_HLYE; HLTH_CD_APR; HLTH_SHA11; HLTH_UNM)

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Impact of the pandemic on territorial inequalities

income and out-of-pocket expenses (outpatient healthcare and medications/ drugs) are higher than the EU average. The high out-of-pocket expenditure together with the disparities in GDP per capita create a connection between social and territorial inequalities: specifically, southern regions have not only the highest rate of out-of-pocket expenses in a condition of lower incomes, but also the highest share of population with unmet medical needs due to financial difficulty or lack of services (Giarelli and Vicarelli, 2020; Pavolini, 2020). Indeed, shifting the focus to the regional level adds an extra layer of complexity to the context (Table  9.2). With regard to life expectancy, the gap between Trentino-Alto Adige in the north and Campania in the south was 2.5 years in 2018. Health expenditure as a percentage of GDP, which was said to be rather low compared with other Member States, is Table 9.2: Healthcare performance of Italian regions in 2018 Life expectancy at birth in years

Total healthcare expenditure (% of GDP)

Healthcare expenditure (EUR per capita)a

Hospitalisation rate 108.84

Italy

83.0

8.56

1,978

Piedmont

82.7

8.31

2,007

97.28

Aosta Valley

81.9

7.82

2,140

117.47

Lombardy

83.5

6.8

1,959

117.64

Liguria

82.7

8.42

2,182

116.67

Trentino-Alto Adige

84.0

6.59

2,400

117.67

Veneto

83.6

7.51

1,962

107.95

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

83.1

10.38

2,162

119.36

Emilia-Romagna

83.5

7.57

2,060

142.76

Tuscany

83.6

8.06

2,031

108.99

Umbria

83.8

9.96

1,988

121.36

The Marches

83.7

8.68

1,963

109.81

Lazio

83.1

7.3

1,912

101.44

Abruzzo

83.1

9.33

1,985

109.04

Molise

82.7

12.55

2,319

113.21

Campania

81.5

11.58

1,862

Apulia

83.1

12.62

1,916

92.83 113.11

Basilicata

82.7

11.24

1,983

99.73

Calabria

82.5

13.65

1,948

83.46

Sicily

82.0

12.73

1,905

90.71

83.1

11.97

2,103

132.25

Sardinia

Note: Deducted by interregional mobility. Source: Based on data from HFA (6110; 6120; 9010; 9043; 7300) a

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higher than the EU average in most of the southern regions because of their low GDP level, not high expenditure rates. In terms of healthcare expenditure per capita, there is a great difference between northern and southern regions (Toth, 2014):3 in most of the northern areas, healthcare expenditure per capita exceeds €2,000, while in the south it remains below that threshold. The current financing scheme introduced in 2011 uses an approach based on the demographic characteristics of the regional population and the so‑called standard costs for the determination of the total funding and its distribution between regions. Until some kind of social deprivation criterion is introduced in the formula, as most of the southern regions have been requesting for years, the financing of the RHSs is rather fixed and in the hands of the central level. Rather than in the financing decision-making, regions’ powers reside in their ability to differently organise the RHSs with those resources according to their population’s needs. An example of this differentiation is the hospitalisation rate, which varies considerably across the country – from 83.46 in Calabria to 142.76 in Emilia-Romagna. The national government annually monitors regional healthcare performance in order to evaluate the LEA within the country. There are three recognised categories of assistance that constitute the LEA: prevention and public health, which includes the protection of individuals and the community from risks related to infections, environment, workplace or citizens’ lifestyle; district assistance, which includes a variety of territorial services, from healthcare to pharmaceuticals, from home to residential care; and hospital care, which includes all the activities carried out in hospital facilities. Regions perform differently according to the type of assistance (Table 9.3): in 2019, all three categories were insufficient in only one region (Calabria), and only one (Emilia-Romagna) was considered excellent in all three.4 Each region performs better in one or two categories that mirror the regional predisposition towards certain forms of healthcare; this is the case of district assistance in Veneto; prevention and public health in Lombardy, Umbria and Piedmont; and hospital care in the Autonomous Province of Trento. In the end, the LEA evaluation clearly shows that depending on where one resides, the quality of assistance changes. It could also mean that RHSs have been set up according to different understandings of the right to health: for example, where district assistance is excellent and hospital care is not, the region has given more importance to the territoriality of care and to a certain vision of health that goes beyond the care of the body. The regionally based NHS is far from homogeneous. The right to health is constitutionally guaranteed, but the decentralisation of the healthcare sector has opened the road to differentiation. The issue has remained quiet for a very long time, but it has erupted again with the COVID-19 crisis. 184

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Impact of the pandemic on territorial inequalities Table 9.3: LEA evaluation by region in 2019 Prevention and public health

District assistance

Hospital care

91.72

88.33

85.78

Lombardy

91.95

89.98

86.01

Autonomous Province of Trento

78.63

75.06

96.98

Piedmont

Veneto

94.13

97.64

86.66

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

80.39

78.35

80.62

Liguria

82.09

85.48

75.99

Emilia-Romagna

94.41

94.51

94.66

Tuscany

90.67

88.5

91.39

Umbria

95.65

69.29

87.97

The Marches

89.45

85.58

82.79

Lazio

86.23

73.51

72.44

Abruzzo

82.39

79.04

73.84

Campania

78.88

63.04

60.4

Apulia

81.59

76.53

72.22

Sardinia

78.3

61.7

66.21

Aosta Valley

72.16

48.09

62.59

Autonomous Province of Bolzano

53.78

50.89

72.79

Molise

76.25

67.91

48.73

Basilicata

76.93

50.23

77.52

Calabria

59.9

55.5

47.43

Sicily

58.18

75.2

70.47

Source: Based on data from Ministry of Health, https://www.salute.gov.it/portale/lea/ dettaglioContenutiLea.jsp?lingua=italiano&id=5238&area=Lea&menu=monitoraggioLea

COVID-19 impact in Italy: Regional Health Systems during the pandemic COVID-19 has put the RHSs under pressure and shown the price of a regionally differentiated NHS. During the first quarter of the pandemic crisis, COVID-19 mostly spread in three regions: Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. Even if the virus soon reached all the regions of the country, the extent to which it affected the three northern regions was not comparable to what happened elsewhere.5 Nonetheless, the central government decided on a national lockdown which all regions had to adopt until May – even those with a relatively low number of cases. The unprecedented decision to implement a national lockdown on 9 March 2020 was soon followed by other exceptional measures. In the first phase of the pandemic crisis, regional governments adopted a variety 185

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of measures concerning the restriction of movement, prevention of virus transmission, the reorganisation of territorial services and boosting hospital capacity; however, as a result, the situation became very chaotic. At the end of March, the central government provided for regions to enact laws only when they were more restrictive than the national ones, trying to take control of the crisis and at the same time giving regions some space for autonomy. Nevertheless, the rule was often broken by subnational governments as they soon realised that the pandemic crisis was a window of opportunity to gain more power and legitimacy (Baldi and Profeti, 2020). Regional leaders took advantage of the moment to gain popularity for the forthcoming regional elections in autumn 2020. Furthermore, opposition parties strategically used regional representatives to undermine the activity of the central government. The concurrency between the state and the regions in health policy is key to understanding what happened during that time. Regions enacted several laws and acts in contrast with or in anticipation of the central government’s activity (Baldi and Profeti, 2020). It goes without saying that during the emergency, all the actors involved were playing it by ear and did not have time to settle potential disputes as in ordinary times. Therefore, regions were able to legitimise the adopted measures as a means to protect public health within their borders. The pandemic crisis has raised new issues in which both the state and the regions could claim their competences: according to the Observatory survey on Health Systems and Policies, in a poll of 11 strategic activities, the central government is responsible for four of them (physical distancing, purchase and distribution of protective equipment, health personnel and services planning), and regional governments for four of them (isolation and quarantine, tests and tracing, infrastructures and essential services), while they share responsibilities for three activities (governance, management of health personnel and case management) (Vicarelli, 2020). During the pandemic, the relationships between the national and regional levels could be considered even more competitive than in the past (Vampa, 2021). After a relatively restriction-free summer, circulation of the virus increased. This time the new wave of the pandemic affected the whole country. In order to avoid a new, unpopular national lockdown, the central government created a ‘colour system’ to provide for different restrictions within the territories from November 2020. Based on some indicators of the spread of the virus and hospitalisation rates, regions have been classified weekly by risk as yellow (low risk), orange (medium risk) and red (high risk); the darker the colour, the more restrictive the measures. The monitoring and colour assessing has been carried out by the Italian National Institute of Health and the Ministry of Health using the data transmitted by regions and local health authorities. 186

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Impact of the pandemic on territorial inequalities

With the aim of understanding to what extent the regionalisation of the healthcare sector in Italy has had an impact on territorial inequalities and how COVID-19 has highlighted this phenomenon, the analysis is divided into two sections: the first section focuses on what happened during the first wave of the pandemic crisis in the three regions most affected by COVID-19; the second section analyses the characteristics of four regions classified as ‘red’ during the time in which the colour system was in place. As the pandemic crisis is still under way, we must be cautious in using and reading these data: since the information gathering has been a work-in-progress process, there have been frequent errors in data definition, collection and transmission. The first section focuses on the first wave of the pandemic crisis from 24 February to 3 June 2020. In Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, COVID-19 spread faster than in any other part of the country. Those regions soon reached a high number of cases within their borders (Figure 9.1):6 in Lombardy, the rate of new cases per 10,000 inhabitants was higher than in the other regions, especially from April on. Since at the beginning of the crisis no one knew how to fight the virus, March 2020 was a period of ‘solutions-testing’ for both national and subnational governments; the first results of the newly implemented measures showed up in April and May. Comparing, therefore, the regional data during this initial period of uncertainty allows us to uncover in what ways the three regions reacted differently to the crisis. In particular, the analysis uses data on the rate of people in intensive care (Figure 9.2), rate of people hospitalised (Figure 9.3) and rate of people in home care (Figure 9.4).7 In Lombardy, there were higher rates of people in intensive care over the time frame, but even more in the very first period; furthermore, the rate of hospitalised Figure 9.1: New cases per 10,000 inhabitants in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Lombardy

Emilia-Romagna

Veneto

40 30 20 10

n Ju 3

ay M 3

Ap r 15

ar M 9

24

Fe b

0

Source: Based on data from Civil Protection, https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/blob/master/ dati-regioni/dpc-covid19-ita-regioni.csv

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Social Policy Review 34 Figure 9.2: Rate of people in intensive care in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Lombardy

Emilia-Romagna

Veneto

20 16 12 8 4

n Ju

ay

3

M

15

3

Ap r

ar M 9

24

Fe b

0

Source: Based on data from Civil Protection, https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/blob/master/ dati-regioni/dpc-covid19-ita-regioni.csv

people was also higher than in Emilia-Romagna and, especially, Veneto, by 30 percentage points. By contrast, Veneto showed the highest rate of people in domestic isolation from the very first days of the pandemic crisis; at the end of the period the rate was close to 90 per cent of regional cases. Emilia-Romagna’s performance was similar to Veneto’s. The different outcomes of the three regions relate to how they reacted at the very beginning of the crisis: Lombardy made extensive use of its hospital services; Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, conversely, preferred territorial services to hospitalisation and considered hospital care a last resort. Figure 9.3: Rate of hospitalised people in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Lombardy

Emilia-Romagna

Veneto

20 16 12 8 4

n Ju 3

ay M 3

Ap r 15

ar M 9

24

Fe b

0

Source: Based on data from Civil Protection, https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/blob/master/ dati-regioni/dpc-covid19-ita-regioni.csv

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Impact of the pandemic on territorial inequalities Figure 9.4: Rate of people in domestic isolation in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto from 24 February to 3 June 2020 Lombardy

Emilia-Romagna

Veneto

20 16 12 8 4

Ju n 3

ay M 3

Ap r 15

ar M 9

24

Fe b

0

Source: Based on data from Civil Protection, https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/blob/master/ dati-regioni/dpc-covid19-ita-regioni.csv

After this initial period, the three regions start to converge, suggesting the activation of policy learning mechanisms with regard to the use of domestic isolation rather than hospitalisation in Lombardy. The comparison of data on hospitalisation and domestic isolation with data on death rates, number of cases and tests shows how the two strategies led to different outcomes: the rate of infections started to decrease in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna from mid-April, but this was not true in Lombardy; moreover, on 3 June the percentage of deaths among the cases was 10.0 per cent in Veneto, 14.9 per cent in Emilia-Romagna and 18.1 per cent in Lombardy. Veneto and Emilia-Romagna were not able to eliminate the virus, but at least they managed to better control its spread and reduce the number of deaths. Living in Lombardy or in Veneto made the difference in terms of assistance and care, probability of infection and, in the end, between life and death during those first months of the pandemic crisis (Pioggia, 2020). A proof of the three regions’ diverse approach is provided by what happened in the residential care homes. The already problematic sector registered a generally high mortality rate due to the characteristics of its population:8 elderly people in need of specialised medical care. However, the mortality rate was higher in Lombardy than in other regions (Arlotti and Ranci, 2020).9 Reasons are found both in pre- and post-pandemic measures. Before 2020, Lombardy suffered a decrease in the intensity of care in these facilities and a general lack of continuity services between the hospital and the territory. During the COVID-19 crisis, the situation soon deteriorated because of two unfortunate decisions taken by the regional government: first, moving COVID-19 patients to these facilities to ease the pressure on hospitals in the absence of sufficient and appropriate protective devices 189

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and personnel; then, blocking access to hospitals for the elderly patients hospitalised in these same facilities (Arlotti and Marzulli, 2020). Thereafter, because of the relatively positive experience of Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, domestic isolation was preferred to hospitalisation during the second wave of the crisis. However, it was not sufficient to slow the spread of the virus. As anticipated, the national government decided to implement a new system to deal with the pandemic crisis in order to avoid a new national lockdown. From 3 November 2020, regions were classified by colour based on the intersection of two parameters: the first was the risk index produced by 21 indicators on the regions’ capability in monitoring, contact tracing and management of contacts, stability of transmission and resilience of health services; the second was the transmission index (RT index), which had the most important role in the classification of risk. The colours correspond to three different degrees of restrictions: the yellow area is the less risky one; the orange area is an area of medium risk; the red zone is the most critical area. In the red zone (Rt > 1.5), the measures applied can be compared to those in the first lockdown: prohibition of any movement into, out of and inside the region except in the case of necessity or urgency; only kindergartens and primary schools opened; closure of stores (except for basic goods), bars, pubs and restaurants; and suspension of all free-time and sports activities. In the orange zone (1.25