Understanding Welfare Support and Sanctions

Tue,23 September 2014
News

Welfare Conditionality would like to invite your organisation to support a major national research project  

What is the research about?

Welfare support and benefits increasingly require people to meet particular conditions and behave in certain ways. This study aims to understand the effectiveness and ethicality of these conditions, and the support and sanctions linked to them, for different groups of people accessing the welfare system, including individuals with disabilities. They want to hear from organisations and individuals who have direct experience of support and sanctions.  

To do this they are carrying out interviews with 480 individuals, and conducting interviews and focus groups with welfare practitioners, in nine cities in England and Scotland.

Who is doing the research?

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the research is being conducted by independent researchers from six UK universities.

How can my organisation take part?

Welfare Conditionality hope that your organisation will be able to help them identify welfare recipients with disabilities who are subject to conditionality and could participate in 3 interviews over a 2 year period. We will then contact them and recruit them to the project. A £20 high street shopping voucher will be given for each interview.

Individuals will be asked to give their informed consent to take part, they can withdraw at any time, and all information related to them and the organisations that are working with them will be treated as confidential. Individuals and organisations will not be named in published research reports and details will not be passed on to anybody else. The research has received university ethical approval and we will ensure that it adheres to your own ethical and procedural standards.   

Need more information?

Enquiries about the project are most welcome and should be directed to Sarah Johnsen on 0131 451 3642 or s.johnsen@hw.ac.uk.  Further information is also available on the project website: www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk.