Browsing by Author "Dunn, Andrew"

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    2021 Report of the Evaluation of the Work.Live.Leicestershire Programme
    (De Montfort University, 2021-01-31) Blair, Krista; McGill, George; Gkiontsi, Dimitra; de Vries, Kay; Brown, Jayne; Clayton, David; Coleby, Dawn; Dunn, Andrew; Oviasu, Osaretin; Padley, Wendy
    The Work.Live.Leicestershire (WiLL) programme provided help to economically inactive or unemployed people in Leicestershire to move into job search, training, or employment. The programme aimed to help people into work or learning by improving their health and wellbeing, social engagement, and skills and work experience, and by supporting people as they volunteered, job searched or started a business. The programme was open to residents of rural Leicestershire who were economically inactive or unemployed, and targeted the areas of Hinckley and Bosworth, North West Leicestershire, Melton, and Harborough. As of November 2020, the programme had registered details of 535 participants1 (263 men and 266 women) across all age groups. 152 participants were 24 or under, and 158 participants were 51 or over. Of the participants registered, some will have just joined the programme, some will be part way through the programme, and some will have left the programme at various points after their initial engagement with WiLL. This report discusses findings from the second year of De Montfort University’s evaluation, focussing on programme results and how the programme supported people to address barriers to moving into work or learning. The programme is ongoing, and this report draws on data from both participants who had left the programme and those whose support was in progress.
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    Relative Poverty, British Social Policy Writing and Public Experience
    (Cambridge University Press, 2017-08-03) Dunn, Andrew
    Relative poverty, a concept developed by left-wing social scientists, categorises as ‘poor’ those who fall seriously behind normal nationwide material standards. This article argues that the widespread view that the word ‘poverty’ means ‘relative poverty’, which in left-dominated social policy academia often extends to implying that those who do not define poverty this way are necessarily misguided, has led to an incomplete portrayal of poorer British people's lived experience. The article examines published empirical work, before presenting findings from British Social Attitudes surveys and interviews with forty unemployed Jobseeker's Allowance claimants and thirty employed people. Both the existing and new findings exposed aspects of public attitudes and experience which resonate with unanswered academic criticisms of defining poverty as relative poverty. These public contributions have tended to be glossed over or treated dismissively by social policy authors, despite them attaching importance to Left-friendly aspects of poorer people's experience and attitudes.
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    Review: Introduction to Social Policy Analysis: Illuminating Welfare
    (Wiley, 2018-10-19) Dunn, Andrew
    This is my review of Stephen Sinclair's introductory Social Policy textbook
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    Unemployment and attitudes to work: asking the ‘right’ question
    (Sage, 2014-08-04) Dunn, Andrew; Grasso, Maria; Saunders, Clare
    Attitudes research has repeatedly demonstrated that the vast majority of unemployed people want a job and that their employment commitment is generally at least as strong as employed people’s. However, until now it has not asked if they are more likely than employed people to prefer unemployment to an unattractive job. While this oversight reflects a noted widespread reluctance to respond directly to right-wing authors’ assertions, this article argues that it is partly attributable to existing studies using survey questions inappropriate for researching unemployment. Responses to the British Cohort Study/National Child Development Study agree/disagree statement ‘having almost any job is better than being unemployed’ were analysed. Being ‘unemployed and seeking work’ associated strongly with disagreeing with the statement across all recent datasets in both studies, even when a number of relevant variables were controlled for.
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    Voluntary unemployment and the UK Social Policy literature
    (Economic Affairs, 2014-01-24) Dunn, Andrew