Welfare to Work: the local dimension

Welfare systems in the European Union and in other OECD countries are under pressure. In response, governments have embarked on major reforms aimed at creating work-based welfare systems. The new approaches involve radical changes in traditional welfare and employment agency bureaucracies. In most countries this has been coupled with decentralization and the increased use of local partnerships and organizations in designing and implementing new 'Welfare to Work' programmes. This article assesses these broad developments and describes the implementation of recent Welfare to Work strategies in three countries – Great Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands. The article compares and contrasts the approach of each country and outlines some of the key developments and implementation problems that have emerged. It briefly assesses the evaluation evidence so far available and analyses the potential and problems that more flexible local delivery arrangements are likely to generate.