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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Interaction between voluntary and statutory social service provision in Sweden
— a matter of welfare pluralism, substitution or complementarity? | | Author(s) | Lena Dahlberg |
| Journal title | Social Policy & Administration, vol 39, no 7, December 2005 |
| Pages | pp 740-763 |
| Source | http://www.blackwell-synergy.com |
| Keywords | Services ; Social Services Departments ; Voluntary agencies ; Interaction [welfare services] ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | Many welfare states have met with criticism, and it has been argued that they are in crisis. Simultaneously, there has been a greater openness to voluntary work as an alternative to statutory services, for example in Sweden. Sometimes the activities of voluntary organisations have been seen as complementary to those of local authorities; at other times, this issue has been addressed in terms of welfare pluralism. However, countries with strong welfare states have often been assumed to have insignificant voluntary work - as claimed in substitution theory. This article examines variation in welfare service provision in the light of welfare pluralism, substitution theory and complementarity theory. The study was carried out in the area of support for relatives of older people in Sweden. It was conducted by means of national questionnaire surveys of voluntary organizations and local authorities in 1999 and 2002. In this period, there was an increase in statutory service provision, and many voluntary organisations were involved in service provision. However, it is too early to describe this in terms of welfare pluralism. Nor was any evidence found for substitution theory. Furthermore, overlaps in service provision for voluntary organisations and local authorities question complementarity theory, which assumes that different actors specialise in different tasks. Nevertheless, actors tended to be complementary at a local level. It is suggested that this complementarity might be explained by ideological support for a norm of complementarity. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-051219223 A |
| Classmark | I: PF: PK: QK6: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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