How effective is conditional welfare support for enhancing child wellbeing? An examination of compulsory income management (welfare payment quarantining) in Australia
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Author(s)
Roche, Steven
Mendes, Philip
Marston, Greg
Peterie, Michelle
Bielefeld, Shelley
Staines, Zoe
Humpage, Louise
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2021
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Conditional welfare, a social policy mechanism in which disadvantaged groups are required to conform to behavioural changes to receive income support, has become an influential policy mechanism in recent decades. Conditional welfare in Australia involves compulsory income management (CIM), comprising the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant’s welfare payment for use on food, rent and other essential items. A major objective of all Australian income management (IM) programs since 2007 has been to enhance children’s wellbeing by protecting them from harm caused by anti-social behaviour such as alcohol ...
View more >Conditional welfare, a social policy mechanism in which disadvantaged groups are required to conform to behavioural changes to receive income support, has become an influential policy mechanism in recent decades. Conditional welfare in Australia involves compulsory income management (CIM), comprising the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant’s welfare payment for use on food, rent and other essential items. A major objective of all Australian income management (IM) programs since 2007 has been to enhance children’s wellbeing by protecting them from harm caused by anti-social behaviour such as alcohol and drug abuse, and ensuring they have access to basic needs such as food, education and health care. To explore the outcomes of these objectives, this qualitative study explores the views of both compulsory and voluntary IM participants as well as community stakeholders in relation to child wellbeing in four IM locations across Australia. It finds minimal evidence to support the view that IM contributes to positive outcomes in children’s welfare.
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View more >Conditional welfare, a social policy mechanism in which disadvantaged groups are required to conform to behavioural changes to receive income support, has become an influential policy mechanism in recent decades. Conditional welfare in Australia involves compulsory income management (CIM), comprising the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant’s welfare payment for use on food, rent and other essential items. A major objective of all Australian income management (IM) programs since 2007 has been to enhance children’s wellbeing by protecting them from harm caused by anti-social behaviour such as alcohol and drug abuse, and ensuring they have access to basic needs such as food, education and health care. To explore the outcomes of these objectives, this qualitative study explores the views of both compulsory and voluntary IM participants as well as community stakeholders in relation to child wellbeing in four IM locations across Australia. It finds minimal evidence to support the view that IM contributes to positive outcomes in children’s welfare.
View less >
Journal Title
Children and Youth Services Review
Copyright Statement
© 2021 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Note
This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advanced online version.
Subject
Applied economics
Social work
Law in context