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...

Historically, social security started to arise due to the need of preventing social unrest rather than of the need of helping people. Although the society has developed itself towards sophisticated tools of social politics - including social services - general awareness about their significance and their social prestige are still very low. The goal of this paper is therefore to draw attention to the activities of workers and volunteers working in social services and highlight the problems the providers as well as users of the social services and public authorities contend with. The first part of this paper pursues historic development of social security institutes, which to a great extent determines their current form. The second part of this paper concentrates on an up-to-date valid social services adaptation which has been regarded by experts to be indeed revolutional. It entirely changes the conception of a users services role from passive care recipients to active agents in finding a solution in their own hard life situations. The third part of this paper concerns with non-governmental organizations, especially the ones, which inherently belong to a social domain for being bearers of civic participation values, personal responsibility, plurality of interests and views, democratic...

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.

Abstract The aim of this study was to explore how the police and the social services work to prevent youth crime. The aim of this study was also to explore how the police and the social service collaborate with each other in the work that they do with youth crime and also to explore which factors are obstelcos and which are considered as success factors in the collaboration between the two authorities. In this study we used a qualitative method in which six interviewers with the police and social services were performed. The result of this study showed that the police and the social service collaborate with each other in many ways, for example in different forums where they can exchange information. The result of the study also showed that there can be some obstacles in the way of the two authorities' collaboration for example the secrecy law, lack of time, lack of understanding for each other's work and lack of communication. The success factors were identified as good comunicacion, an open dialog, an understanding of each other's work and common goals. The result also showed that both authorities are working preventively with youth crime in many ways. Some of the efforts are made on a general level while some are more selective.

No description available.

My findings imply that homeless LGBTQ young adults are very limited in where they can go to find LGBTQ-accepting services. Even though all the shelters that were interviewed claimed they did not discriminate against LGBTQ persons, they do not provide and are not affiliated with services or programs that are considered to be LGBTQ- accepting. Based on the research, shelters would rather have clients conform to their pre-existing structure rather than the shelters conforming to the specific needs of the clients.; The goal of this research is to explore what programs and services are being provided at various homeless shelters in the South Florida area that would appeal to homeless clients who self-identify as a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community, if staff and faculty are trained on how to better address LGBTQ specific issues, how often staff receive LGBTQ sensitivity training, what demographic information is being recorded upon client intake and whether or not homeless LGBTQ young adults would feel safe using their facility when receiving social services. Data for this research was collected through brief, confidential telephone interviews with staff members at twenty-five various social service providers throughout the Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties of South Florida. Short interviews were also conducted with two major LGBTQ advocacy groups in Broward and Miami-Dade County. As a result of completing my research, I have found that no shelters in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade County provide programs or services that are identified as LGBTQ-friendly. There are a few shelters that are affiliated with the local LGBTQ advocacy groups and will refer LGBTQ clients to these groups for services. Training on cultural diversity is required of all staff members of each social service provider, however in these cultural diversity training sessions, LGBTQ issues are just reviewed and not the main focus of the sessions. In addition to a lack of direct focus on LGBTQ specific issues, these training sessions are infrequent. This research also shows that social services are taking into account demographic information such as race and sex but not really focusing on sexual orientation or gender identity, leaving us with a severe lack of data on where this specific population is going to receive social services.