TY - JOUR
AU - Sealey, Clive
AB - The stated aim of the book is to present the lived experiences of welfare recipiency in Ireland through providing ‘unblemished and unvarnished, the experiences of others’ so that ‘readers will gain a real and visceral sense of the everyday realities of those whose words describe that reality’. Whelan aims to do this through qualitative research in the form of single in-depth interviews with nineteen research participants who at the time of the research were or had been in receipt of specified social welfare payments. This is important to clarify as it means that the ‘hidden voices’ in the title refer to those in receipt of welfare in general, and not to specific groups of people. The book is made up of eight main chapters, plus a guest author Foreword, Series editors’ preface, Introduction and Conclusion. The book starts with a Foreword that primarily presents a historical account of the development of the Irish welfare state, in which the historical prominence of the Catholic church may be a surprise to some. The Series editors’ preface locates the book in as principally concerned with social justice. The Introduction presents a rationale for the book, based on the importance of lived experiences. The outline and rationale for lived experiences is very short, which bearing in mind that the book acknowledges that this is a growing rather than established method in policy analysis, would have been enhanced by more discussion of this. The outline of the methods of data collection and analysis in this chapter is relevant, referring to the previous point that this is a growing rather than established method. Chapter 1 aims to ‘set the scene’ by presenting a more detailed historical account of the development of the Irish welfare state than in the Foreword. Again, the focus is on the power of the Catholic Church in the development of social policy. The chapter concludes with a consideration of outline of the Irish welfare state as a hybrid of liberal and corporatist welfare states, with little in common with social democratic welfare state regimes. Chapters 2–7 present the findings from the research. This is done through the outline and thematic analysis of the participants’ interviews. These findings are grouped under specific themes, such as ‘welfare marginality and social liminality’ (Chapter 2), ‘the effect of work ethic’ (Chapter 3), ‘welfare conditionality’ (Chapter 4), ‘maintaining compliance and engaging in impression management’ (Chapter 5), ‘deservingness’ (Chapter 6) and ‘welfare is bad: bringing it all together’ (Chapter 7). If the headings do not convey the orientation of the themes, the analyses clearly do, with the analyses clear in their wholly negative experiences of participants. For many in the field of social welfare, neither the themes or the findings will be new, it will simply be a reinforcement of previous findings of the negative impact that liberal and corporatist welfare states can have on individuals. In this respect, this analysis contributes to existing body of research on the effect that particular welfare state regimes. Chapter 8 is still concerned with the lived experience of welfare recipients, but with a focus on COVID policy responses and the impact of these. The methods for this chapter are different from the previous chapter, as it is from qualitative surveys rather than interviews, and also has more participants. There is no discussion of the methods of analysis. The analysis is brief, but the key point that the chapter does reinforce is the importance of a strong safety net in general, not just at a time of crisis. The concluding chapter argues from the previous chapters that there is a need for doing welfare differently based on a more social democratic model of welfare. It applies this argument not just to the Irish context, as per the book, but to a more internationalist context in relation to other countries. As detailed above, this is the key strength of the book, reinforcing the existing evidence for this welfare model. In a wider sense, it is relevant to note that the analyses chapters make no reference to the importance of the Catholic church in social welfare, which considering the prominence given to this in the Preface and the Introduction, is a significant omission. The book’s clear policy implication will mean that the book will be of relevance to those interested in policy, particularly social policy, as well as those who advocate for individuals in the position of the participants. For social workers, this could provide them with a clear understanding of the lived experiences which may often exist in practice but which they may have little time to explore and understand. © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
TI - Hidden Voices: Lived Experiences in the Irish Welfare Space, Joe Whelan
JF - The British Journal of Social Work
DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcac187
DA - 2022-10-11
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/hidden-voices-lived-experiences-in-the-irish-welfare-space-joe-whelan-0qkolmM0pH
SP - 2468
EP - 2470
VL - 53
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -