Routes to Employment for Administrators of Discretionary Payments within Social Assistance Schemes in Britain and the Netherlands

Date01 December 2006
Published date01 December 2006
AuthorJacqueline Davidson
DOI10.1177/138826270600800401
Subject MatterArticle
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 8 (2006), No. 4 341
ROUTES TO EMPLOYMENT FOR
ADMINISTRATORS OF DISCRETIONARY
PAYMEN TS WIT HIN S OCIA L ASSISTANCE
SCHEMES IN BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS
J D*
Abstract
is paper presents a comparative analysis of the routes to employment taken by
administrators of discretionary exceptional needs payments within social assistance
in Britain and the Netherlands and que stions assertions that admini strators seek out
their ‘occupations because of their potential as socially useful roles’ (Lipsky 1980).
Empirical data illustrates that whilst Dutch administrators had o en purposely
embarked on a previous course of stu dy and a subsequent career in ‘helping people’,
British administrators had o en come from a bureaucratic background and had,
as they saw it, ‘ended up’ as Social Fund O cers, having mostly perceived the Civil
Service as a means to helping themselves get a secure career.  e paper concludes
that, when asked to make the same kind s of decisions about (the sometimes complex
exceptional needs of) social assistance bene ciaries, the two sets of workers came
equipped to deal with their stressful occupations with quite di erent personal
resources, which may be thought to impact on their understandings of poverty and
the nature of social assistance dynamics.
1. INTRODUCTION
Social serv ice delivery jobs are among the most stre ssful in society (El more 1997:251).
Sta are o en confronted with inadequate resources, physical and psychological
threats and con  icti ng and ambiguous role expec tations. Nevertheles s, it is argued th at
‘people o en enter publ ic employment , parti cularly street-leve l bureaucr acies, wi th at
* Research Fellow, Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD.
Tel: +44 1904 321950. E-mail : jd527@york.ac.uk.
Jacqueline Dav idson
342 Intersentia
least some commitment to service’, seeking out ‘these occupations because of their
potential as socially useful roles’ (Lipsky 1980:xii).  e ways in which governments
go about selecting and training professional or bureaucratic personnel di ers across
countries however, and is argued to constitute one way of narrowing the range of
possible outcomes of the policy-making proce ss (Peters 1985:74, Bradshaw 1981:141).
Following the suggestion that we should study the motivations personnel hold
for applying for such positions (Peters 1985:89), this paper is concerned with cross
national divergence in the occupational backgrounds and subsequent routes to
employment taken by administrators of discretionary exceptional needs payments
within social assistance in Britain and the Netherlands. Essentially, diverse
educational and occupationa l backgrounds of the two sets of workers may, along with
their organisat ional contexts and controls, be expec ted to a ect t heir performance in
a bureaucratic sett ing (Peters 1985:74). For example a professional ‘helping ideolog y’,
or the lack of one, might be expected to inform their values and dispositions, and
in uence their ‘framework of meaning’ (Degeling and Colebatch 1997:354) for the
consideration of a discretionary payment. Such di erences may be important in
contextualisi ng and understanding the decisions and ac tions of welfare state workers
who administer discretionary payments in what are agued to be di erent types of
welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999).
A comparison of the administration of discretionary payments within social
assistance schemes in Britain and the Netherlands was considered a potentially
fruitful endeavour given the relative lack of in depth cross national research in this
area of income maintenance. Both countries have developed welfare states including
provision to meet the exceptional needs of soc ial assistance bene ciaries. At the time
of research, the systems of provi sion shared some broad similarities (b oth were budget
limited, operated as a s ystem of loans and grants and involved disc retionary decision
making). However their historical development had essentially led to di erent
con gurations of social assistance a ecting the degree and nature to which such
exceptional payments were (de)centralised and i ntegrated into a ‘workfare context’.1
1 It is recognised that this is a contentious term that has been used in a variety of di erent ways.
Shragge’s (1997:18) de nition is that the conditions of social assistance require the ind ividual
receiving suppor t to participate i n some kind of progra mme. Lødemel and Trickey (20 01:278) argue
that ‘due to a fu ndamental change i n the way that socia l assistance i s provided’ both Br itain and the
Netherlands c an be considered to have central ised ‘workfare’ schemes bas ed on case management
and interested in hu man resource development.  ey argue th at ‘workfare’ strengt hens an already
established t radition of cash-care provision i n the Netherlands, while i n the UK it re-introduces
a social work role to a sys tem in which cash and ca re have previously been separ ated (Lødemel
and Trickey 2001:29). Such asser tions however are made without a conside ration of the structure ,
aims and resu lting implementation of di scretionary pay ments within soc ial assistance a nd whether
exceptional pay ments are fully integrated into a paternal istic ‘workfare’ prog ramme is in part
dependent on the adm inistrative stru cture of the state. Relati vely speaking, the S ocial Fund is not
as integrated i nto the administration of ‘wel fare to work’ as Bijzondere Bijstand is to an ‘activity
fare’ social assistance context.

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