The Developmental Welfare State and Children

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The Developmental Welfare State and Children
John Sweeney, Senior Social Policy Analyst, NESC
Secretariat, 23rd February, 2007
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The Developmental Welfare State. May 2005. 240pp
What is it about?

• The complementary relationship between social
  policy and economic performance

• A wide view of social protection e.g., family,
  civil society, market and state labour market
  and education included

• A new basic architecture for Irelands welfare
  state

• A new planning framework the life cycle

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Why the life cycle?
It supports a focus on outcomes population-based
benchmarks
It embraces the multiple dimensions and the
dynamics of complex situations from a single
standpoint the individual person

• It reinforces a particular perspective on social
  disadvantage
• chooses to see the individual persons needs and
  potential chiefly in the context of their stage
  in the lifecyle and only secondarily and
  reluctantly - as a member of a problem group

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Key empirical findings on supports for children
 
 

• By international standards, our child income
  transfers are at a high level but childrens
  access to services is poor

 

• Despite high spending on child income transfers,
  a large number of children are below the income
  poverty line (21 per cent below the 60 per cent
  line in 2005)

• Essential services for children can be accessed
  if their households are poor their cost to
  families rises rapidly with household income

• Underdeveloped childcare has made it more
  difficult to tackle educational disadvantage,
  raise the employment rate of lower educated
  women, reduce child poverty, ensure systematic
  surveillance in the pre-school years

• Our public investment in education is highest
  (in per capita terms) at the ages where the
  return is lowest

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Child Income Support
Major growth in absolute terms from 16 (1994)
to 20 (2004) of total DSFA spending. Major
restructuring from Child Dependant Additions to
Child Benefit (spending ratio 1.081 in 1994, to
15.86 in 2004)
A large minority of children are still being
reared in households below the relative income
poverty line (21 below 60 per cent line in
2005). Main reasons non-employed parents, low
adult welfare rates

These children should get priority in the
allocation of further resources to child income
support
A new instrument second-tier child income
support paid in full where family income is low,
withdrawn gradually, not paid at all where family
income is high. Meets key criterion, viz.,
support is transferable across employment/non-empl
oyment divide
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Interim conclusions ?
Improving the transferability of supports on
which children in socially disadvantaged
households rely across the employment/non-employme
nt divide is an immediate challenge
 
 
 
Meeting the needs of disadvantaged children
through mainstream services is a longer term one
While complex and diverse childcare patterns
are developing, we have not moved as decisively
to provide ECEC as we did to extend secondary
education (1967) and third level (RTCs/ITs)
Our educational system is least experienced and
equipped to deal with the age groups where
returns to public spending are the highest
Our vision is well articulated (NCS, DWS, T2016).
Mobilisation and implementation are now the
greater challenges
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The Vision
 
 
An Ireland whereall children enjoy a fulfilling
childhood and realise their potential (T2016)
receive quality supports and services (NCS)
 
The vision is inspiring, challenging,
authoritatively articulated, translated into
significant objectives, shared (?), etc.
Mobilisation and implementation are the primary
challenges
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Mobilisation
For greater mobilisation, three core messages
need constant repetition
Effective spending on children at risk improves
lives and is cost effective (hugely) in the long
run
Investing in families and children is integral to
labour market and skills policy in the 21st
century
If our children do not have a fulfilling
childhood and realise their potential, why
bother? It is the ultimate career failure,
undermines equality of economic opportunity,
casts a pall on migration
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The major findings of an entire literature
(Heckman, 2005)
Rate of return to investment in human capital
Preschool programs
Schooling
Opportunity cost of funds
r
Job training
Preschool
School
Post-school
Age
0
Rates of return to the same investment made in a
person of a given ability at different ages
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From targeted programmes to Tailored
Universalism
Context the most means-tested welfare state in
Europe
Targeted programmes reserve public spending to
the least fortunate in the population.
Downsides maintaining their quality and
protecting their budget is difficult closed
circuits from which the desire to leave is
lessened publicly funded but not public
services
Tailored universalism evokes flexibly provided
mainstream services which socially disadvantaged
people access and benefit from, thanks to
supplementary supports integrated into their
provision
People at risk of social exclusion benefit more
from being facilitated to use, and benefit from,
mainstream services than from having services
created that are exclusive to them
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Uniform Service ()
 
 
 
Targeted Service ()
Parental support
Stable staff
Parental absence
Positive peer influence
Staff turnover
Good outcomes
Negative peer influence
Poor outcomes
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Tailored Universal Service ()
Service differentiated
 
 
 
Specialist staff
Parental engagement
Stable staff
One-to-one, small group
Parental support
Positive peer influence
Good outcomes
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A Danish Case Study
 
 
The organisational framework for supporting
families (under local government in Odense,
Denmark) is based on two integrated systems the
normal system and the special system. The normal
system includes the school department, the
department of recreation and the department of
day care institutions. The special system has
only one department, with the purpose of helping
the three departments in the normal system give
the children and adolescents with special needs
the best possible help from within the normal
system. Excluding the children and adolescents
from the normal system is viewed only as a last
option. Jensen Junker, Supporting Families
Through Local Government A Danish Case Study
 
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Accountable Autonomy the ideal
Diverse but networked service providers, focus on
outputs and outcomes, performance indicators,
transparency, network management
The centre fosters mutual learning among the
local deliberating units by collecting and
distributing information on experiences gathered
within the network. The most important task of
the (network acting in coordination) is (then) to
convert information on multiple parallel
experiments into performance standards based on
the best practice found. These performance
standards help local units to locate a large
number of similar experiences and draw lessons
from them. They stimulate discussion on the
reasons for shortcomings and possibilities for
improved performance. Such performance standards
are constructive in that they not only entail an
implicit criticism of sub-standard performance,
they also show ways of improving performance.
Eberlein and Kerwer,2004. Cited DWS 210
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Implementation specific to childrens services
 
 
All services working with and through
parents/guardians to maximum extent possible
 
Integration at the local level and a lead
professionalprivileged surveillance
positionarising from routine contact, not
crisis-initiatedactivator of escalating response
From infant health through childcare to schools
passing the baton - example of the Finnish
teacher
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Example of lead professional - the Finnish
teacher
A multi-layered response achieving equity in
education - first the teacher her/himself
one-to-one or small group work on the students
problem area before, during or after school day
 
 
 
- second the teachers assistant, not fully
trained as a teacher, always working under the
direction of the teacher
- third the special needs teacher, credentialed,
focus on the 17-20 of students who need special
help to keep up (not the 1.8 with severe
disabilities in special schools or the 4.4 with
less severe disabilities mainstreamed with the
help of special education teachers)
- fourth the multi-disciplinary team where weak
progress is due to wider home or social problems
(teacher, special needs teacher, school
counsellor psychologist, social workers,
representatives of health, mental health,
housing, etc. systems)
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OECD (2005), Equity in Education Thematic Review
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Conclusion Child Well-Being (Unicef, 2007)

• 9th place out of 21 advanced OECD countries
  half empty, half full?

• Good dimensions health and risk behaviours
  (4th), subjective well-being (5th), family and
  peer relationships (7th), educational well-being
  (7th)

• Poor dimensions health and safety (19th),
  material well-being (19th)

Maintain our strengths while addressing our
weaknesses!
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Unicef Innocenti Reserch Centre, Report Card No.
7 (2007)