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

自“紧缩时代”开始以来的十年里，英国公共部门的格局发生了巨大变化，许多公共服务被取消或减少。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，这在提供服务方面留下了明显的差距，因为不同的机构收紧了门槛。一线工作人员的任务是驾驭这一不断变化的环境，并理解公众、政府和机构管理者相互冲突的需求。最近的研究发现，住房服务中的这些条件促使专业人员使用非法的守门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条件，但非法把关的普遍程度和影响尚不清楚。这项建议提出了原始的定性研究，将探讨由儿童和成人的社会关怀协调的多机构会议内非法守门的流行和影响的情况。审查多机构会议将提供一个宝贵的洞察力，从法定和非法定服务的专业人士在这些具有挑战性的公共部门的时间走到一起。这将有助于确定非法守门在社会护理的机构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许多参与公共服务设计和提供的行为者和利益攸关方具有重要意义，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.