Introduction

In recent decades, active labour market reforms within the European Union have reshaped the landscape of the welfare state. The transformation has involved policy and governance reorientation. The retrenchment is understood as both cost cuts and recalibration of social support aimed at improving its economic efficiency (Pierson, 2001), limiting universal social entitlements (Taylor-Gooby, 2009), placing pressure on work-based remuneration and establishing individual providences as the main sources of financial security. Governance reforms have also strengthened decentralisation and the autonomy of local institutions in shaping social policy. The findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Venn, 2012), for example, prove that eligibility criteria are indeed flexible. Numerous case studies show differentiation in responding to social needs in various local contexts (for example, Jewell, 2007; Liwiński et al, 2008). Regardless of how these transformations are assessed, the literature on the welfare state seems to be dominated (Van Berkel, 2013) by analyses focusing on governance and the formal dimension of reforms. In the first mainly case-legislative efforts, historical aspects and systemic path-dependency are discussed, usually in a comparative approach (for example Palier, 2010). The emphasis on governance means studying the structure of dependencies between different levels of government, and the relations between public administration and other actors (Halvorsen & Hvinden, 2016). The third significant dimension of reform – the functioning of street-level activation policy – is usually overlooked, and research on this subject is rather limited.

This chapter is an attempt to address that deficit; it shows which features of the locally implemented social assistance reforms enhance the adverse effects and latent functions of activation policy. The chapter focuses on the consequences of layering of social support institutions from social workers’ point of view, on their experiences in the implementation of governance and activation measures that have been modified and adjusted to local realities. The analysis focuses on the effects and organisational factors related to how social workers perform as implementers, how local social assistance centres operate, and the effects of social work.

The case of Poland seems interesting here for several reasons. First, Poland is a ‘high social risk’ country, which sets the context for activation policy in general and social work in particular. Although both income poverty and unemployment rates have been declining, the stabilisation of in-work poverty and precariousness remains problematic for Poland (Nolan et al, 2011; Employment and Social Developments in Europe, 2016).