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Logics of Welfare Bricolage among UK Service Providers

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by Simon Pemberton and Lucy Doos (UPWEB)

As part of delivering the Welfare Bricolage project (UPWEB), a team of researchers from the UK have published a WSF Working Paper which explores the ways in which health service providers in the UK have engaged in practices of ‘bricolage’ in order to meet the needs of local populations living in super-diverse neighbourhoods.

The research highlighted how super-diverse neighbourhoods can present particular challenges to service providers in terms of the targeting and tailoring of their services, and the ability to respond to evolving needs. These include issues such as population churn and legal status shaping service access, as well as cultural and language barriers, a lack of local knowledge and differential levels of trust in services being provided. In turn providers had developed a number of approaches to address challenges of provision, such as the recruitment of interpreters, an emphasis on continuity of provision and engagement with users over a long period of time to improve levels of trust and to develop highly individualised/personalised care.

In addition, it was evident that ‘third sector’ providers were particularly important in acting as navigators to facilitate connections to multiple agencies, and were helping to construct integrated packages of provision. From a provider – user perspective, there was also evidence of bricolage practices in terms of community leaders associated with particular migrant groups being used by providers to co-design and co-deliver services to improve engagement with those who were argued to be more difficult to reach.

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