Welfare states are built on the idea of social rights related to social security, employment protection, housing, education, health and social care. By safeguarding these aspects of human life, an acceptable standard of living is considered non-negotiable and should be guaranteed through social policies and social services. In reality, however, there is a clear discrepancy between the promise of social rights and the degree to which these are realized for everyone. This situation is defined as non-take-up. Although non-take-up creates unjustifiable disparities between citizens and undermines the welfare state’s ambition to provide a safety net to those in need, our empirical and theoretical understanding of this phenomenon is still rather limited.
In this seminar, I discuss the process and results of a research project on ‘Integrated Rights-Practices’ in Belgium. We conducted a realist evaluation of pilot projects experimenting with this approach and aimed to explain how and why the non-take-up of social rights could be overcome through social work interventions.
