Comparative case study investigating illegal gatekeeping practices within Children and Adult's Social care multi-agency spaces.

在“紧缩时代”开始的十年里，随着许多公共服务的取消或减少，英国公共部门的格局发生了巨大变化。除此之外，福利改革和住房短缺等更广泛的问题导致对某些服务的需求增加。在一些地方，由于不同的机构收紧了门槛，这在服务提供方面留下了明显的差距。一线工作人员的任务是驾驭这种不断变化的环境，并理解来自公众、政府和机构管理人员的相互冲突的要求。最近的研究发现，住房服务中的这些情况导致专业人员使用非法把关策略来阻止申请人登记为无家可归者。公共部门也存在类似的压力和情况，但非法把关的普遍程度和影响尚不清楚。本提案提出了原始定性研究的案例，该研究将探讨由儿童和成人社会关怀协调的多机构会议中非法把关的普遍性和影响。在公营部门面临挑战的时期，研究多机构会议，可以让我们深入了解法定和非法定服务部门的专业人士如何聚集在一起。这将有助于确定非法把关在社会关怀制度文化及其支持机构中发挥作用的程度。这项研究的结果将对从事公共服务设计和提供的许多行动者和利益相关者具有重要意义，并将影响多个学术和专业学科，并将与社会科学中关于紧缩、社会不平等、治理和福利的现有辩论联系起来。

In the ten years since the start of the "Austerity Era", the UK public sector landscape has changed dramatically with the removal or reduction of many public services. Alongside this, welfare reforms and wider issues such as housing shortages have led to increased demand for some services. In places this has left visible gaps in service provision, as different agencies have tightened their thresholds. Frontline workers are tasked with navigating this changing landscape and making sense of conflicting demands from the public, the government and institutional managers. Recent research has found these conditions in housing services have contributed to professionals using unlawful gatekeeping strategies to discourage applicants from registering as homeless. Similar pressures and conditions exist across the public sector, but the prevalence and impact of unlawful gatekeeping is not known. This proposal puts forward the case for original qualitative research which will explore the prevalence and impact of illegal gatekeeping within multi-agency meetings co-ordinated by children's an adults' social care. Examining multi-agency meetings will provide a valuable insight into the coming together of professionals from statutory and non-statutory services during these challenging times for the public sector. It will help to establish the extent to which unlawful gatekeeping plays a factor in the institutional culture of social care and it's supporting agencies. Findings of this research will have significance for many actors and stakeholders engaged in public service design and delivery and will impact across multiple academic and professional disciplines and will tie into existing debates embedded within the social sciences on austerity, social inequality, governance, and welfare.