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HELSEVEL-Gode og effektive helse-, omsorgs- og velferdstjenester

Uptake: Socio-spatial inequality among families with children with disabilities who are entitled to cash benefits and welfare services

Alternative title: Uptake

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

The research project Uptake will provide insight into the uptake and delivery of benefits and services among parents of children with disabilities. Uptake focuses on to what extent families' socioeconomic status, immigration background and their geographical location affect the access and use of compensatory benefits and services. It also explores how health and care services work to provide adequate and efficient services for families with children with disabilities and how the involved agencies work together with the families to improve user involvement. The implementation of the project Uptake is important for two reasons. First, more knowledge about which factors ensure adequate user pathways in health and care services is crucial for developing specific, targeted policies. Second, if benefits and services fail to reach their objectives and the coordination between them is insufficient, then we need more knowledge about the collaboration between the family and health and care services to ensure improvement. The project will provide insight that is relevant for Norway's 2023 reporting to the UN on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It will provide knowledge important to the Government's strategy for the equality of persons with disabilities, e.g., ensure that all residents of Norway have access to equal health and care services of good quality. The project will utilize user expertise by actively involving representatives from the Nav, Health Agency in Oslo, Oslo University Hospital, the Norwegian Association of Disabled, the Norwegian Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, the Parents Association of Disabled Children and Abloom. Researchers from the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University (US), the National Institute of Research and Training on Disabilities and Adapted Teachings (France), Nord University (Norway), the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and University of Antwerp (Belgium) will also participate.

The purpose of the proposed project, “Uptake,” is to examine the uptake and delivery of benefits and services among parents of children with disabilities applying a socio-spatial perspective. In the Norwegian welfare system, there is a variety of health and care-related benefits and services available to these families. However, they encounter a unique set of challenges, such as struggling to uptake benefits and services that may extend beyond the intense need for caregiving itself. “Uptake” asks the following questions: When caring for a child with a disability, to what extent do socio-spatial factors affect families’ uptake of relevant compensatory benefits and services and the delivery process? And, what kind of factors can account for the identified socio-spatial gradients? The particularly novel aspects of this project are: i. The objectives of providing insight into the uptake and delivery of benefits and services by and to parents of children with disabilities, applying both a cross-national and national comparison ii. The use of (in an international context) a unique linked register database iii. The implementation of a mixed-methods strategy to understand to what extent structural, economic, organizational, and municipal conditions reinforce socio-spatial inequality in uptake and delivery of benefits and services by and to parents of children with disabilities. “Uptake” is composed of three sub-studies, or work packages (WP), to answer the research questions. We will employ empirical strategies ranging from intensive and qualitative case studies to extensive register analyses involving representative population data combined with survey data.

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Funding scheme:

HELSEVEL-Gode og effektive helse-, omsorgs- og velferdstjenester