Ruth Patrick
Biographic Data
| ID | 3976167 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Patrick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Patrick |
| SIGNATURE | PATRICK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3284-6313 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 175 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
An impossible move? Households’ experiences of trying to escape the UK’s benefit cap
Recent governments, both in the UK and internationally, have increasingly used their power to attempt to alter the behaviour of people in receipt of social security benefits. This can be seen in the case of the UK’s benefit cap, a policy introduced with the specific goal of changing behaviour by capping social security support at the household level. Alongside promoting transitions into employment, there was also a focus on encouraging households…
“I Feel Like I am Part of Something Bigger Than Me”
This article details methodological reflections and implications for future work from an innovative, participatory research project that started life during the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. We reflect on the practice, ethical considerations, and challenges of this (necessarily) online participatory research program, which featured intensive, prolonged collaboration with parents/carers living on a low income within the UK. We discus…
The scales never seem to balance’
Since late 2021, the term ‘cost-of-living crisis’, indicating decreased disposable incomes, has gained prominence in the UK. This study draws on the long-running online participatory research project Changing Realities, involving over 100 low-income parents and caregivers across the UK, to provide deeper insights into cost-of-living challenges. Focusing on transcriptions of spoken testimonies and written diary entries between February and June 20…
Does Cutting Child Benefits Reduce Fertility in Larger Families? Evidence from the UK’s Two-Child Limit
We study the fertility effects of restricting child-related social assistance to the first two children in the family. As of 2017, all third and subsequent children born on or after 6 April 2017 in the UK were made ineligible for approximately 3000 GBP of means-tested child benefits per year. Using a triple difference and regression discontinuity design, we leverage administrative births microdata to identify the impact of the two-child limit on …
Does Reducing Child Benefits Mean Parents Work More? A Mixed-Methods Study of the Labor Market Effects of the United Kingdom’s “Two-Child Limit”
Challenging welfare mythmaking
The alleged ‘welfare dependence’ of larger families has long been used as a symbolic anchoring point in seeking to legitimise British welfare reform. This article focuses on the Benefit Cap and Two-Child Limit, setting out how defences of both reforms framed impacted claimants as ‘workless’, ‘welfare-dependent’ and requiring welfare constraint and restriction to ‘activate’ them. Larger families are particularly sensitive to social security policy…
When we put our thoughts and ideas together, policy makers are listening to us
This article brings together a theorisation of hope with the everyday practices of participatory research against a difficult - often entrenched - policy context. We posit that 'hope-labour' can characterise engagement in participatory research, which can itself be generative of hope as part of resistance to the status quo. This novel analysis links, and is relevant to, broader theorisations of resistance and critical policy analysis. While there…
A time of need
Despite its significance in determining poverty risk, family size has received little focus in recent social policy analysis. This paper provides a correction, focusing squarely on the changing poverty risk of larger families (those with three or more dependent children) in the UK over recent years. It argues that we need to pay much closer attention to how and why poverty risk differs according to family size. Our analysis of Family Resource Sur…
Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy
Demonstrating the relevance of theory to political and policy debates and practice, this lively and accessible second edition helps students to grasp the real-life implications of social policy theory. It considers contemporary shifts in welfare ideologies in the context of global austerity and the UK Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 onwards). Updated with a new chapter on critical debates around disability, sexuality and the environm…
Capping welfare payments for workless families increases employment and economic inactivity
In this paper, we examine the labour market effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a working‐age non‐disabled household with no‐one in employment can receive in social security. We treat the sharp reduction in this benefit cap as a natural experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing on data from ~500,000 individuals, we find…
The sins of the parents
Financial transfers to families with children form a core element of welfare state provision. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation of this provision is significant, reflecting underlying perspectives towards children and families and the state’s role in supporting them. Daly developed a new typology of social policy for children, differentiating between ‘childhood-oriented’, ‘child-oriented’ and ‘family-oriented’ policies. In th…
It's the kids that suffer
The benefit cap and the two‐child limit reduce entitlement for households claiming means‐tested benefits and disproportionately affect households with dependent children. This article explores the harms the policies are doing to children through drawing upon data collected from interviews with parents affected by the benefit cap and the two‐child limit. To investigate the impacts of these policies we draw on the Investment Model and the Family St…
Living on a low income during the cost-of-living crisis
Drawing upon data from Changing Realities, an online participatory research project collected between September-October 2022 and March-April 2023, this article generates new knowledge on the lived experiences of low-income families in the UK during this turbulent political period and particularly through the (ongoing) cost-of-living crisis. Utilising the work of Wright and McIntosh, we articulate the ‘shared typical’ discernible of lived experien…
The two‐child limit and fertility decision making
The UK's two‐child limit restricts the child element in Universal Credit and Tax Credits to two children in a household. Given that the policy aims to influence the fertility decision making of parents in (or at risk of) poverty, it is important to explore the impact it has here. This article contrasts the policy rationale for the two‐child limit with everyday realities of fertility decision making. We share new empirical findings from qualitativ…
A Year Like No Other
Money was already tight for UK families living on a low income before the COVID-19 pandemic, but national lockdowns made life much harder. Telling the stories of these families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic for families who were already in poverty before COVID-19, as well as those pushed into poverty by the economic fallout it created. Drawing on the Covid…
Covid-19 Collaborations
The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone – but, for some, existing social inequalities were exacerbated, and this created a vital need for research. Researchers found themselves operating in a new and difficult context; they needed to act quickly and think collectively to embark on new research despite the constraints of the pandemic. This book presents the collaborative process of 14 research projects working together during COVID-19. It document…
Research synthesis in times of crisis
COVID-19 immediately and radically necessitated changes in the way we worked as social researchers; not only in terms of fieldwork, but also in terms of collaboration. In this paper, we outline the rationale, processes, and potential of a collective of 14 research teams both inside and outside of academia working together across the UK to synthesise findings on the experiences of over 4,000 families parents and carers living on a low-income durin…
Does capping social security harm health? A natural experiment in the UK
In this paper, we examine the mental health effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a household with no‐one in full‐time employment can receive in social security. We treat the reduction in the cap as a natural policy experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not, and examining the risk of experiencing poor mental health both before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing o…
It's Our Story
Parents and carers taking part in the Covid Realities research programme came together to create a zine about their experiences during the pandemic, as well as focusing on what needs to change in the future and why. The zine was developed and designed collaboratively by participants and artist Jean McEwan, and supported by the research team, at a series of three virtual zine-making workshops during February and March 2021. The aim of the zine is …
The Early Warning System
This article reports on the Child Poverty Action Group Early Warning System (EWS), a database of case studies representing social security issues reported directly by frontline benefits advice workers and benefit claimants. It outlines what data from the EWS can tell us about how the social security system is functioning and how it has responded during the pandemic. It further details how insights from the EWS can be used by researchers and polic…
Introduction Qualitative Longitudinal Research for Social Policy – Where Are We Now
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Some Useful Sources
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Qualitative Longitudinal Research
Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) has grown in prominence and popularity since the 2007 themed section on the subject in this journal. This new themed section reflects on how QLR has been mobilised and made sense of in recent times. This article showcases QLR’s distinctive way of knowing and understanding the social world and how it can illuminate the processes through which policy can enhance, or indeed inhibit, the well-being of individua…
Journeys on Universal Credit and through participatory, visual research
Poverty2solutions
Living with and responding to the 'scrounger' narrative in the UK
In the UK, a dominant narrative operates to stereotype and stigmatise out-of-work benefit claimants as inactive welfare dependents who require activation if they are to enter paid employment and behave responsibly. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative longitudinal study into lived experiences of welfare reform, this paper explores how out-of-work claimants respond to this dominant narrative. The paper illustrates the reach of benefits stigma, a…
Working on Welfare
This paper presents findings from a qualitative longitudinal study into the lived experiences of welfare reform in the UK. The study set out to explore how individuals directly affected by changes to the benefits system experienced and responded to these reforms. A small group of out-of-work benefits claimants were interviewed three times between 2011 and 2013. The research found that 'getting by' on benefits often entailed substantial hard 'work…
Welfare Conditionality in Lived Experience
Punitive welfare conditionality, combining tough sanctions with minimal self-directed support, is a defining feature of contemporary UK working age social security provision. This approach has been justified by policy makers on the basis that it will increase the numbers in paid employment, and thereby offer savings for the public purse that are also beneficial for individuals who are expected to be healthier and better off financially as a resul…
Disabling or Enabling
This article considers the defensibility of the extension of conditionality to disabled people through a qualitative investigation of welfare service users’ opinions on the applicability of conditionality for disabled people. Three focus groups took place, with participants segmented according to whether or not they were disabled, to enable a comparison between the attitudes of those who would and would not be directly affected by the extension o…
Wither Social Citizenship? Lived Experiences of Citizenship In/Exclusion for Recipients of Out-of-Work Benefits
Drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study that examined experiences of welfare reform among a small group of recipients of out-of-work benefits, this paper considers how individuals’ social citizenship rights, responsibilities and status are all affected by processes of welfare reform. It discusses the ways in which welfare conditionality impacts upon targeted individuals’ citizenship status, noting a trend towards ‘conditioning’, where people …
Introduction
Since the global financial crisis in 2008, an ‘austerity consensus’ has emerged across many advanced capitalist economies (Farnsworth and Irving, 2012). Despite differing institutional settings, there has been a notable degree of convergence on fiscal consolidation (Farnsworth and Irving, 2012; Taylor-Gooby, 2012). Alongside this, political administrations have repeatedly claimed that welfare profligacy and dependency are key causes of public sec…
Unsettling the Anti-Welfare Commonsense
Drawing on participatory research with people living in poverty, this article details the possibilities inherent in this research tradition and its particular applicability and as yet often unrealised potential for poverty and social security research. The dominant framing of 'welfare' and poverty foregrounds elite political and politicised accounts, which place emphasis on individual and behavioural drivers of poverty, and imply that the receipt…
All in it together? Disabled people, the Coalition and welfare to work
This paper critically explores the Westminster coalition government’s efforts to assist disabled people off benefits and into paid employment, focusing on the ongoing migration of Incapacity Benefit claimants onto Employment and Support Allowance. Drawing on the social model of disability, it is argued that the current reform agenda individualises the problem of disability; placing too much emphasis on disabled people’s employability while neglec…
Debate
Qualitative Longitudinal Research
Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) has grown in prominence and popularity since the 2007 themed section on the subject in this journal. This new themed section reflects on how QLR has been mobilised and made sense of in recent times. This article showcases QLR’s distinctive way of knowing and understanding the social world and how it can illuminate the processes through which policy can enhance, or indeed inhibit, the well-being of individua…
Introduction Qualitative Longitudinal Research for Social Policy – Where Are We Now
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The two‐child limit and fertility decision making
The UK's two‐child limit restricts the child element in Universal Credit and Tax Credits to two children in a household. Given that the policy aims to influence the fertility decision making of parents in (or at risk of) poverty, it is important to explore the impact it has here. This article contrasts the policy rationale for the two‐child limit with everyday realities of fertility decision making. We share new empirical findings from qualitativ…
Introduction to themed special issue
It's the kids that suffer
The benefit cap and the two‐child limit reduce entitlement for households claiming means‐tested benefits and disproportionately affect households with dependent children. This article explores the harms the policies are doing to children through drawing upon data collected from interviews with parents affected by the benefit cap and the two‐child limit. To investigate the impacts of these policies we draw on the Investment Model and the Family St…
It's Our Story
Parents and carers taking part in the Covid Realities research programme came together to create a zine about their experiences during the pandemic, as well as focusing on what needs to change in the future and why. The zine was developed and designed collaboratively by participants and artist Jean McEwan, and supported by the research team, at a series of three virtual zine-making workshops during February and March 2021. The aim of the zine is …
Conceptualising dignity in the context of social security
Dignity and social security have been closely associated since at least the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but there is a lack of clarity around what dignity means in this context. This article explores how two key stakeholders—out‐of‐work benefit recipients and policymakers—understand dignity in the context of social security, drawing on qualitative research with each group. The evidence presented notes a relative absence of dire…
A time of need
Despite its significance in determining poverty risk, family size has received little focus in recent social policy analysis. This paper provides a correction, focusing squarely on the changing poverty risk of larger families (those with three or more dependent children) in the UK over recent years. It argues that we need to pay much closer attention to how and why poverty risk differs according to family size. Our analysis of Family Resource Sur…
Capping welfare payments for workless families increases employment and economic inactivity
In this paper, we examine the labour market effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a working‐age non‐disabled household with no‐one in employment can receive in social security. We treat the sharp reduction in this benefit cap as a natural experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing on data from ~500,000 individuals, we find…
The sins of the parents
Financial transfers to families with children form a core element of welfare state provision. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation of this provision is significant, reflecting underlying perspectives towards children and families and the state’s role in supporting them. Daly developed a new typology of social policy for children, differentiating between ‘childhood-oriented’, ‘child-oriented’ and ‘family-oriented’ policies. In th…
Living on a low income during the cost-of-living crisis
Drawing upon data from Changing Realities, an online participatory research project collected between September-October 2022 and March-April 2023, this article generates new knowledge on the lived experiences of low-income families in the UK during this turbulent political period and particularly through the (ongoing) cost-of-living crisis. Utilising the work of Wright and McIntosh, we articulate the ‘shared typical’ discernible of lived experien…
Research synthesis in times of crisis
COVID-19 immediately and radically necessitated changes in the way we worked as social researchers; not only in terms of fieldwork, but also in terms of collaboration. In this paper, we outline the rationale, processes, and potential of a collective of 14 research teams both inside and outside of academia working together across the UK to synthesise findings on the experiences of over 4,000 families parents and carers living on a low-income durin…
Does capping social security harm health? A natural experiment in the UK
In this paper, we examine the mental health effects of lowering the UK's benefit cap in 2016. This policy limits the total amount a household with no‐one in full‐time employment can receive in social security. We treat the reduction in the cap as a natural policy experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not, and examining the risk of experiencing poor mental health both before and after the cap was lowered. Drawing o…
Ianula
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Enrico Bonatti, Ursula M. Cowgill, Clyde E. Goulden, Elaine A. Leventhal, M. E. Mallett, Fiorenza Margaritora, Ruth Patrick, A. Racek, Selwyn A. Roback, Emilia Stella, J. B. Ward-Perkins, Thomas R. Wellman, Ianula: An Account of the History and Development of the Lago di Monterosi, Latium, Italy, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 60, No. 4 (1970), pp. 1-178
A Commentary On“what Is a River”
Streams and Lakes in the Pine Barrens
Gated Communities
Samer Bagaeen & Ola Uduku (Eds), London, Earthscan, 2010, 208 pp., £60.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781844075195 The shape and nature of our cities is constantly changing and, in recent years, there has been gr
A new welfare settlement? The Coalition government and welfare-to-work
This chapter tries to address three questions: First, what are the central features of the welfare-to-work programmes that were developed by New Labour and will now be expanded and intensified by the Coalition government? Second, what explains the apparent consensus around these programmes? Third, what impacts are they likely to have upon different groups of claimants? There seems to be a marked reliance by the Coalition on efforts to reduce welf…
Disabling or Enabling
This article considers the defensibility of the extension of conditionality to disabled people through a qualitative investigation of welfare service users’ opinions on the applicability of conditionality for disabled people. Three focus groups took place, with participants segmented according to whether or not they were disabled, to enable a comparison between the attitudes of those who would and would not be directly affected by the extension o…
Debate
All in it together? Disabled people, the Coalition and welfare to work
This paper critically explores the Westminster coalition government’s efforts to assist disabled people off benefits and into paid employment, focusing on the ongoing migration of Incapacity Benefit claimants onto Employment and Support Allowance. Drawing on the social model of disability, it is argued that the current reform agenda individualises the problem of disability; placing too much emphasis on disabled people’s employability while neglec…
Social Policies and Social Control
Drawing on a wide array of policy domains and events, this book provides an innovative account of social control and behaviourism within welfare systems and social policies, and the implications for disadvantaged groups. This accessible collection reviews the controls, assumptions and persuasions applied to individuals and households and explores broader themes, including how 'new behaviourism' was consolidated during the New Labour and Cameron p…
Working on Welfare
This paper presents findings from a qualitative longitudinal study into the lived experiences of welfare reform in the UK. The study set out to explore how individuals directly affected by changes to the benefits system experienced and responded to these reforms. A small group of out-of-work benefits claimants were interviewed three times between 2011 and 2013. The research found that 'getting by' on benefits often entailed substantial hard 'work…
Living with and responding to the 'scrounger' narrative in the UK
In the UK, a dominant narrative operates to stereotype and stigmatise out-of-work benefit claimants as inactive welfare dependents who require activation if they are to enter paid employment and behave responsibly. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative longitudinal study into lived experiences of welfare reform, this paper explores how out-of-work claimants respond to this dominant narrative. The paper illustrates the reach of benefits stigma, a…
Introduction to themed special issue
Wither Social Citizenship? Lived Experiences of Citizenship In/Exclusion for Recipients of Out-of-Work Benefits
Drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study that examined experiences of welfare reform among a small group of recipients of out-of-work benefits, this paper considers how individuals’ social citizenship rights, responsibilities and status are all affected by processes of welfare reform. It discusses the ways in which welfare conditionality impacts upon targeted individuals’ citizenship status, noting a trend towards ‘conditioning’, where people …
For Whose Benefit?
For Whose Benefit?
Some Useful Sources
The below list provides a very brief list
Introduction
Since the global financial crisis in 2008, an ‘austerity consensus’ has emerged across many advanced capitalist economies (Farnsworth and Irving, 2012). Despite differing institutional settings, there has been a notable degree of convergence on fiscal consolidation (Farnsworth and Irving, 2012; Taylor-Gooby, 2012). Alongside this, political administrations have repeatedly claimed that welfare profligacy and dependency are key causes of public sec…
For Whose Benefit
Welfare Conditionality in Lived Experience
Punitive welfare conditionality, combining tough sanctions with minimal self-directed support, is a defining feature of contemporary UK working age social security provision. This approach has been justified by policy makers on the basis that it will increase the numbers in paid employment, and thereby offer savings for the public purse that are also beneficial for individuals who are expected to be healthier and better off financially as a resul…
Journeys on Universal Credit and through participatory, visual research
Poverty2solutions
Conceptualising dignity in the context of social security
Dignity and social security have been closely associated since at least the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but there is a lack of clarity around what dignity means in this context. This article explores how two key stakeholders—out‐of‐work benefit recipients and policymakers—understand dignity in the context of social security, drawing on qualitative research with each group. The evidence presented notes a relative absence of dire…
Unsettling the Anti-Welfare Commonsense
Drawing on participatory research with people living in poverty, this article details the possibilities inherent in this research tradition and its particular applicability and as yet often unrealised potential for poverty and social security research. The dominant framing of 'welfare' and poverty foregrounds elite political and politicised accounts, which place emphasis on individual and behavioural drivers of poverty, and imply that the receipt…
The Early Warning System
This article reports on the Child Poverty Action Group Early Warning System (EWS), a database of case studies representing social security issues reported directly by frontline benefits advice workers and benefit claimants. It outlines what data from the EWS can tell us about how the social security system is functioning and how it has responded during the pandemic. It further details how insights from the EWS can be used by researchers and polic…
Introduction Qualitative Longitudinal Research for Social Policy – Where Are We Now
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Political science (32 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Law (17 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Welfare (13 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (12 works) · Law (11 works)