Socio-spatial Inequality among Families with Children with Disabilities who are Entitled to Cash Benefits and Welfare Services (UPTAKE)

The research project will provide insight into the uptake and delivery of benefits and services among parents of children with disabilities.

These families may encounter a unique set of challenges, such as struggling to uptake benefits and services that may extend beyond the intense need for caregiving itself. 

Uptake focuses on to what extent families’ socio-economic status, immigration background and their geographical location affect the access and use of relevant compensatory benefits and services. It also explores how health and care services work to provide adequate and efficient services for families with children with disabilities and how the involved agencies work together with the families to improve user involvement in the provision process. 

The implementation of the project Uptake is important for two reasons. First, more knowledge about which factors ensure adequate user pathways in health and care services is crucial for developing specific, targeted policies. Second, if benefits and services fail to reach their objectives (as some studies have indicated) and the coordination between them is insufficient, then we need more knowledge about the collaboration between the family and health and care services to ensure improvement.

The project will provide insight that is relevant for Norway’s 2023 reporting to the UN on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Moreover, it will provide knowledge important to the Government’s strategy for the equality of persons with disabilities for the period 2020–2030, in particular its goal “Ensure that all residents of Norway have access to equal health and care services of good quality”.

The study will utilize user expertise by actively involving representatives from organisations as well as additional researchers.

Active user involvement and an interdisciplinary research team (including anthropology, economics, human geography, law, medicine, nursing, psychology, social policy, and sociology) will ensure practice relevant and academic knowledge of excellent quality. 

The overall objectives of the project aim to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals within good health and well-being (target 3.8), decent work and economic growth (targets 8.5 and 8.8), reduced inequalities (targets 10.2 and 10.3).