Women, Vulnerabilities and Welfare Service Systems

This book studies welfare systems in Europe and beyond from the standpoint of women in vulnerable positions in society. These systems are under major transformations with new models of service delivery and management, austerity measures, requirements for cost-effectiveness, marketization, and the prioritization of services. Divided into three parts: - Welfare service systems (not) responding to vulnerable situations of women - Women's encounters with the welfare service system - Contradictions of informal support this book considers the experiences and encounters with the service system of women in poverty, homeless women, women with substance use problems, women sentenced of crime, girls and young women in care, and refugees and asylum-seeking women. Drawing upon research and critical discussions from Finland, Canada, Israel, Slovenia, Spain and the UK, this book provides new empirical findings and critical insights, and a valuable resource for the academics and students in social work, social policy, sociology and gender studies, but also for policy makers and professionals in social and health care.

Marjo Kuronen is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Elina Virokannas is a University Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Ulla Salovaara is a Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

1. Introduction: women, vulnerabilities and welfare service systems. Part 1 Welfare service systems (not) responding to vulnerable situations of women. 2. Vulnerability as lived experience: marginalised women and girls in the UK. 3. Finnish welfare service system from the standpoint of women in vulnerable life situations. 4. Interpreting vulnerabilities facing women in urban life: a case study in Madrid, Spain. 5. Risky mothers: state-family relations, risk and the gendered reproduction of vulnerability in Canadian child welfare. Part 2 Women's encounters with the welfare service system. 6. The right to have a child: an institutional response to the motherhood of drug users in Slovenia. 7. Incarcerated women, welfare services and the process of re-entering society in Finland. 8. The reform of the Finnish income benefit system from the standpoint of lone mothers. 9. Social framework for understanding women-s substance abuse, treatment and vulnerability. Part 3 Contradictions of informal support. 10. Low-income breadwinning Israeli mothers negotiating economic survival: the exchange of sex for material resources. 11. Vulnerability and agency: women after prison in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. 12. Peer support among female substance users in Finland. 13. Concluding remarks: a need for women-specific services