Collaboration has been a central feature of Welsh Government policy in respect of delivering effective public services for over a decade yet continues to be difficult to achieve in a meaningful way across sectors, organisations and boundaries. The report of the Commission on Public Service Governance and Delivery in Wales (2014) reinforced the importance of pursuing collaborative initiatives and offered proposals for approaching collaboration more consistently and effectively. This thesis adds new knowledge to understanding the complexities of collaboration through a critical overview of three research outputs relating to collaboration in social services in Welsh local authorities. By reviewing the literature on collaborative theory and practice and applying it to the research outputs which constitute the portfolio, a conclusion is reached that collaboration will remain an elusive objective unless action is taken to improve its chances of successful implementation. A new strategy is proposed for obtaining the necessary increase in the scale and pace of collaboration to justify its position as a continuing part of Welsh Government policy.

The objective of my thesis ``Evaluation of the marketing strategy of selected social services facilities operating under the Social Services Act No. 108/2006 Coll., and its proposed innovation{\crqq} was to ascertain whether the facilities had been making use of any marketing strategy, and if so, in what fields. I also investigated the impact of the new Social Services Act on operation of the facilities, and whether there were any differences in usage of strategies in dependence on the founders of the facilities. Marketing of social care has not had a long history in the Czech Republic; it is a segment which has not been experiencing sufficient attention. Marketing is mostly used by private providers of social services.

The dissertation paper focuses on problems related to social services and mapping of changes that have taken place since the most recent update of the Act on Social Services (the Welfare Code). The theoretical part of the paper concentrates on the Act on Social Services whose enactment has brought many significant changes into the welfare system that impact above all on the providers and users of social services. The practical part of the paper describes the opinions that selected registered providers of social services have about the legislative update.

The thesis deals with the topic of ?The importance of quality inspection of the provision of social services in meeting the Quality Standards for Social Services in sheltered housing facilities?. The inspection is a social policy tool of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs the purpose of which is the inclusion of persons threatened by social exclusion. The main objective of the thesis was to determine the effect of the inspections on the quality of provided social services in sheltered housing facilities. Based on the gathered data the following hypothesis was formulated: The quality of the provided social services in sheltered housing facilities is not directly affected by the inspection. One of the partial objectives of the thesis was to determine the effect of the inspection of the provided social services on lives of residents in sheltered housing facilities and the following hypothesis was formulated for the purpose: The inspections of the provided social services do not have any significant impact on the lives of residents in sheltered housing facilities. The qualitative research related to the main objective used the technique of a semi-structured interview. The method selected for the qualitative research for the partial objective was inquiring by means of a questionnaire. The surveyed group consisted of 15 employees and 67 residents of sheltered housing facilities in Veselí nad Lužnicí, Ústí nad Orlicí and in Brno. Based on the above mentioned facts and the completed research I believe that the objectives of the thesis were met and the hypotheses were tested by means of two qualitative surveys.

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have alternatively been portrayed as a promising tool to improve the functioning of welfare systems, or as an instrument of neoliberalism that threatens to undermine them. Recently, a more nuanced understanding of the promises as well as pitfalls of SIBs has developed, as both practical experiences and published empirical evidence about implemented SIBs have increased in number. We aim to contribute to the development of such an understanding by means of a combination of qualitative and quantitative text analysis. In doing so, we analyse a comprehensive sample of 51 practitioner reports on SIBs. We identify two key paradoxes of SIBs. These paradoxes centre on statements that cannot both hold true for the very same SIB: (1) flexible but evidence-based services and (2) cost-saving risk transfer to private investors. We conclude by discussing how those paradoxes have been resolved in existing SIBs so far, which strategies of de-paradoxification may turn out paramount in future, and how positive aspects of SIBs can be preserved while defusing their more problematic ones.

This thesis concerns the issue of a family with a child with combined disability. It maps stories of three families which have disabled children like this. In particular, it is about Angelman syndrome, Down syndrome and poliomyelitis. The theoretical part deals with combined disability, specifics of families with a disabled child and social services. Within the chapter combined disability, there is a summary of the most important facts about diagnoses relating to the practical part, which means Angelman syndrome, Down syndrome and poliomyelitis. Therefore, the thesis is further focused on the area of social services which proceed from valid legislation. The practical part of the thesis is based on interviews with respondents belonging to families with a child with combined disability. The perception of individual life events of the families is very subjective and influenced by a whole range of circumstances. Therefore, especially the individual records of interviews are interesting. Furthermore, social services provided to families with a child with combined disability are mapped there, together with some basic information about them. The elaborated issue offers an infinite amount of further usage possibilities and it can be followed in the field of deepening and extension for family members, as...

This thesis deals with an analysis of the status of the elderly population in the Czech society in terms of demographic, socio-economic and regional point of view. The demographic part discusses the structural evolution of the Czech population over the time, with emphasis on its senior component. The demographic analysis examines reasons for these structural changes and their current impact. It includes also predictions of the course of the future development. The regional part reflects various differences that exist in populations (both general and elderly) in particular regions of the Czech Republic, and how have these populations changed over the last ten years. The socio-economic perspective includes social and psychological aspects of the conversion to the economically inactive part of life, it takes into account the financial provision and also analyses the offer of social services in terms of financial and regional aspects. The thesis concludes with a summarization of opportunities that are offered by governmental and private subjects for the pursuit of an adequate active life of seniors.

Intimate partner violence is a global issue that occur in both opposite and same-sex relationships, with both male and female offenders, but also with male and female victims. The police and social services are the two main authorities in Sweden to evaluate the situation of intimate partner violence, identify the offender, examine the probability of future violence, and to provide victim support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate Swedish authorities' perceptions regarding intimate partner violence from a gender perspective, using an experimental vignette technique. The study examines the perception of stereotypical and non-stereotyped gender and gender roles through various constructs and aims to explore how offenders and victims of intimate partner violence is perceived by police employees and social workers. The participants age, gender, education background, and work experience of intimate partner violence is also analysed in combination with variances of perception regarding offender and victim culpability, offender risk and the severity of the incident. The result of the study follows previous literature where male-to-female intimate partner violence is perceived as more severe, and male offenders as more culpable, though the differences are minor. Further does this study indicate only small differences between perceptions of gender between police employees and social workers.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / Grassroots participation in the domain of public policy is assuming global significance particularly in the fields of welfare and development. Revived by the United Nations' resolution in the 1970s, many governments both in developed and underdeveloped countries have endorsed the grassroots participation ideals as contained in the United Nations' policy statements and resolutions. Accordingly, many governments have declared their support for grassroots participation and in number of cases, grassroots participation has featured conspicuously in their national development plans. _. A late arrival on the grassroots participation discourse, grassroots participation and civil society's involvement have also featured predominantly in the national development plans of the new South African government. The new democratically elected government pronounced in various policy documents and on public platforms, a commitment towards grassroots participation. Although many governments have employed the rhetoric of grassroots participation in their national·. development plans, there is however an accumulative literature which points to the fact that grassroots participation endeavors have· often been undertaken in a top-down fashion, with marginalized groups of communities often excluded. The central objective of this study has therefore been a critical evaluation of the manner in which the Western Cape Provincial Department of Social Services has implemented its grassroots approach in the context of policy. formulation and implementation and service delivery. An evaluation of the Department's grassroots approach has been attempted by assessing the grassroots structures, which the Department has established as vehicles for grassroots participation in its policy processes and service delivery. To this end, of Fourteen District Committees established by the Department throughout the Western Cape province, four have been evaluated. Through reviewing literature Oh grassroots participation, the project's findings highlighted a discrepancy between the Department's prevailing rhetoric of grassroots participation and the reality of the grassroots participation as operationalized through these committees. The findings indicated that the grassroots participation through these committees is far from the ideal of authentic grassroots participation as discussed in Chapter Two, as it is replete with elements of unrepresentativeness of the marginalized groups, co-option, political manipulation, centralized and top-down decision-making styles. The study also attempted to provide recommendations tailored to bring the Department's grassroots participatory process closer to the ideals of authentic

Homelessness represents a most serious challenge for current cities and their administrations across the globe. Despite this fact, it is surprising that the topic of homelessness from the perspective of institutions has been so understudied so far [e. g. Temelová, Jana et al. 2015]. This paper will focus on the conceptualization of homelessness by institutions. It will try to describe how the institutions, which are dealing with homelessness, conceptualize it and see if the conceptualization occurs in the practice of social service providers. There are three main research questions: (1) how do institutions conceptualize homelessness?, (2) do the conceptualizations change over time and if they do how ? (e. g. under the influence of the "ETHOS" European definition (FEANTSA 2005)), (3) how is the individualizing neoliberal project manifested in this? For answering the questions I will use a qualitative research methodology - semi-structured interviews with representatives of institutions, which will be supplemented by networks mapping and structured literature search of conceptual, methodological and strategic documents, which will first be deductively and then inductively analyzed with using MAXQDA program.