Service user's and provider's perspectives on welfare needs

Oakley, Ann and Popay, Jennie and Williams, Fiona (2005) Service user's and provider's perspectives on welfare needs. In: Welfare Research : A Critical Review. Taylor and Francis, pp. 136-160. ISBN 9781857282696

Abstract

Earlier chapters have stressed the importance for research, policy and practice of understanding people's own definitions and experiences of welfare needs and risks and their preferred ways of dealing with these. But they have also highlighted the dearth of research directly addressing these issues. In Chapter 3, for example, Julie Seymour describes how stress and life events are conceptualized across disciplines as context dependent processes-processes which are best defined by the person experiencing them. Yet relatively little of the research reviewed so far allows people to express their own views on the stress and life events they are experiencing in their own words. Similarly, several authors have identified the relationship between providers and users of welfare services as key to our understanding of issues of appropriateness and effectiveness. However, relatively few studies have explored the relationships between the perspectives of these two groups. The research that does exist highlights the importance of this area as a focus for future work.