Welfare
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- How effective has government’s cost of living support been?
- What can we learn from the COVID-19 shielding programme and other programmes that supported our most vulnerable groups during the pandemic? What were the costs and benefits of different interventions?
- What is the optimal workforce model – in terms of staff volumes, diversity, specialisms and experience levels – to ensure the right level of support?
- How can we better understand the impact of interventions delivered in prisons and how these are sequenced alongside those in the community?
- What types of approaches lead to better outcomes for condition-specific learning needs in mainstream schooling? What works for SEND outreach work, for example from special schools to support learners in mainstream schools?
- How can DWP best learn from serious cases to develop responsive and robust services for those most at risk?
- Where are the notable gaps in the provision of legal advice and support, and how can we best intervene to help fill them? How do different advice and support services interact, share information, and refer individuals between organisations?
- How can DWP and its partners maximise sustainable compliance with child maintenance arrangements?
- What types and combinations of support, incentives and conditionality are most effective at enabling and encouraging people in work and in receipt of Universal Credit to increase their hours and earnings to progress in work?
- What social and economic value does this sector provide?
- What offers would further incentivise parents, particularly from disadvantaged communities, to take up childcare and get back into work? This should include building a local level understanding of supply and demand, costs, and provider profit margins.
- How can the benefit system best help low income and vulnerable households with their housing costs? What is the impact of DWP’s expenditure on housing support? What factors impact on evictions, homelessness and rough sleeping? How effective are policies designed to reduce homelessness?
- How can DWP enhance its understanding of the most appropriate measures of independent living?
- Maximising the efficiency of partnership working in relation to issues concerning mental health
- What is claimants’ experience of the welfare disputes process (Mandatory Reconsiderations and Appeals) and how does it affect them?
- What science-informed changes can be made to policing workplaces that will support the wellbeing of vulnerable or struggling staff?
- What are the likely longer-term consequences of COVID-19 for vulnerable groups and communities in terms of the volume and type of need? What new considerations does this introduce in terms of central government’s role, and that of other levels of government and other providers?
- What workplace wellbeing innovations would police staff be accepting of, use and find most supportive?
- Equipping refugees for life in the UK and for returning home if/when they can.
- What works to reduce levels of self-harm and self-inflicted death in prisons, for different individuals and groups? How can mentoring, peer support and staff relationships help in reducing self-harm?
- Reducing victimisation and repeat victimisation in relation to domestic abuse
- What additional labour market barriers do those from disadvantaged groups (such as ex-offenders, homeless people), face? How can DWP best support those with multiple, complex needs to gain and retain employment?
- What are the factors associated with teacher and pupil wellbeing, and what interventions and approaches are effective in supporting and promoting wellbeing of all in schools and colleges?
- How does staff attrition affect individual behaviours? How can we better understand the risks of, and mitigate, dependency-related progress?
- Supporting partners and communities to reduce crime and vulnerability
- Factors contributing to vulnerability to exploitation, interventions for different groups and individuals, and approaches to targeting these interventions.
- How can we best support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those who attend Alternative Provision (AP)?
- What is the impact of the digitisation of information on transport services on disabled passengers?
- What affects and supports resilience at the organisational level?
- What are the benefits of reducing loneliness?
- How can we embed better evidence into our investment decisions, the impacts of investment on transport users and communities (including vulnerable and protected groups)?
- What technologies can mitigate work-related trauma experienced by police staff? For example, using computer vision technologies to reduce manual assessments of child exploitation images.
- What are the key factors that could drive improved productivity and efficiency in the delivery of DWP services? How can DWP services be designed to effectively identify vulnerable groups and those with complex multiple needs, in order to facilitate early intervention in partnership with other organisations?
- How does well-being matter in the context of levelling up? What are the most effective levers for government (central and local) to affect well-being? How does well-being interact with other place based interventions such as housing and regeneration?
- How do orders made in private family law proceedings – for example, resolving disputes about child or financial arrangements – affect individual and family outcomes? What works, for whom, to deliver positive and sustainable outcomes?
- To what extent could increased progression help to move individuals out of poverty? How should in-work progression support be targeted?
- How can DWP support carers in their caring roles? Including any return to work or progression in the labour market?
- What have been the impact and effectiveness of the AP Specialist Taskforces and SAFE Taskforces programmes? What are the implications for spreading and scaling the models?
- Understanding the drivers of homicide and serious violence
- Understanding the links between drug markets, county lines and gang violence
- How can we better isolate the impact of multiple interventions within an individual's time in prison? How can we better route individuals onto appropriate programmes in a timely way?
- What makes communities resilient to natural hazards and other crises? What can we learn from the coronavirus pandemic about the loss of resilience and protecting vulnerable communities to inform future response to crises? What are the important social dimensions for achieving environmental and infrastructure resilience?
- What are the best ways to encourage engagement and awareness of the State Pension and Pensioner Benefits?
- How does investment in the environment bring benefits to society, including through health, wellbeing, and natural capital? Who are the beneficiaries and how do we quantify and communicate those benefits – and costs?
- When people seek advice, how do we ensure they find useful and accessible information that empowers them – either towards self-help, or to access the most appropriate services for their needs?
- What factors contribute to creating and maintaining a rehabilitative culture within prison, and how can this can impact on post-release outcomes for individuals?
- Statistics representing society: How well or poorly do statistics represent society, and what are the impacts of this on how they are used and valued?
- Who is affected by it?
- What is most effective in preventing people from falling out of the labour market? Does this differ for different groups? Who is best placed to deliver support?
- What are the challenges and issues facing young people? What are the costs of not addressing these issues/risks, or improving youth outcomes?
- What works across our prisons to increase safety and security and reduce levels of violence?
- How are perceptions of international trade affected by the inclusion of sustainability and welfare provisions in trade agreements?
- What works in reducing loneliness and what are the challenges and opportunities?
- Which interventions for disabled people are most effective in supporting movements into work? What barriers prevent disabled people and/or people with health conditions from moving into, and progressing in, work?
- How might the COVID-19 pandemic affect homelessness and rough sleeping in the longer term?
- How can we better quantify and measure the benefits of social work assessment, training and development in terms of child outcomes such as wellbeing and educational achievement?
- How can services and therapeutic interventions, such as training, peer and family relationship support, and drug and addiction services, improve post-release outcomes? What impact does prison education have on the type of work secured after release?
- How are tribunals affected by the policies and services of other government departments, and how can we better understand upstream decision-making processes? For example, regarding welfare policy.
- Effectively safeguarding those vulnerable to radicalisation
- What are children’s end-to-end routes through the care system, and how does this impact on later life outcomes, such as educational achievement, wellbeing and labour market outcomes?
- How can we improve the transition from the secure estate for children and young people to the adult estate?
- How does receipt of benefit payments affect disabled people and people with long-term health conditions? What impact does it have on independence, financial security, employment, wellbeing?
- What are the long-term impacts on children’s developmental outcomes because of placements made under public law orders in care proceedings? Including care orders, placement orders, and special guardianship orders?
- What impacts has COVID-19 had on income poverty, material deprivation and the cost of living?
- To what extent is technology supporting and enabling individuals to rehabilitate? For example, maintaining relationships via in-cell telephony.
- How effective are child maintenance and associated policies at supporting separated families, encouraging family-based arrangements, reducing conflict and helping children and adults achieve better outcomes? And how does this differ by group?
- What role could the theory underpinning social welfare functions play in analysis associated to the Government’s levelling-up agenda? What role could new census data play in the analysis of levelling-up?
- How have different sectors (aerospace, financial services, telecoms), sizes of business, regions and the self-employed been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, and how might they be impacted differently by the recovery phase?
- How can DWP ensure all those entitled to claim benefits or access DWP services are reached? What barriers to accessing support services are faced by individuals from disadvantaged groups?
- Effectively managing violent offenders who pose a risk to the public
- How can society and government act to protect and enhance nature, thereby sustaining the ecosystem services (including mitigation and adaptation to climate change) it provides, under a changing climate?
- How can we better understand the impact of interventions delivered in the community? What timing and sequencing of services, interventions and support works to sustain positive outcomes for individuals? For example, accommodation; employment; relationship, family and peer support?
- How can we consistently estimate impacts across different risks, for example through use of subjective well-being indicators?
- What are the public’s perceptions, beliefs, and concerns about policing’s existing and emerging science and technology capabilities?
- What is the additional value beyond wages (e.g. wellbeing) that can be used to show the welfare impact of cultural and creative employment and therefore the non-wage impact of cultural education?
- How have disabled people been affected by the recent Cost of Living challenges, compared with non-disabled people, and have they sought out extra resources to help them cope?
- Which disabled people are supported by the benefit system and which are not? How do policy choices impact this?