• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.203-229
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• 2012

This study aims to analyze fundamental dilemmas of welfare-to-work programs, which aim to introduce labor market principles to the welfare system. Through a qualitative case study of a South Korean welfare-to-work program (the self-sufficiency program), this study demonstrates that various institutional problems are an inevitable consequence of such welfare-to-work programs because they have tried to combine two contradictory values and principles of the labor market system and the social welfare system in one policy. The analysis of the collisions between social welfare and market labor in the self-sufficiency program suggests that not only institutional reforms, but also profound debates on the values and principles underlying welfare-to-work programs are necessary to solve the phenomenal conflicts and problems with such programs.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.37
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• pp.171-197
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• 2008

This study focuses on the following question; self-supporting training program increases participants' income compare to non-participants who have similar characteristics. This question is based on counterfactual assumption. In other words, this study concentrates on what the outcomes would have been if the participants were to be absent. This study adopts a quasi-experimental design. To overcome previous study's methodological weaknesses, especially selection bias, I applied matching procedure based on a propensity-score matching. Matching process was performed by using 'MatchIt' software. The major findings are as follows From Least Squares Regression analysis, I found the poor's income are significantly different according to age, pre-intervention earning, material status, and participation of training. Since the poor have homogeneous education level, education variable was not statistically significant. From the Simulation Quantities of Interest analysis, I also found that treatment group's expected incomes are lower than control's expected incomes. In other words, participation of training has a negative effect on the participants' earnings.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.251-277
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• 2015

This qualitative study is designed for the reconstruction of the experience of single mothers in poverty based on the bottom-up approach. Welfare dependency is identified as vital help to protect their own and children's lives, through their stories telling that welfare services provided by government and community take care of them "in place of their husbands", and "raise them up by hand." What is self-sufficiency to them is more of a process-orientation through welfare dependency than a state out of it, and a way to look through building their self-esteem and working to discover their self-worth except their economic power. Restoring their potential to self-sufficiency through dealing with their psycho-social stresses and expanding services for them related to child-care(education) and occupation ability development for long-term self-sufficiency, rather than hasty focusing on welfare exit, should be built on the foundation of helping them self-sufficient. In order for the self-sufficiency program to overcome the participant's images of "subordination and stigma" and to convey the original meaning of "welfare to work", the performance and evaluation system of self-sufficiency programs that reflects the insider's perspectives on their participation motive and process, and the self-sufficiency program customized for their needs and interests should be encouraged to develop.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.607-618
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of family resilience on willingness for self-sufficiency in self-sufficiency program participants and to verify the mediating effect of mental health in the relationship. The survey subjects were 283 participants from a local self-support center in Gangwon-do. As for the analysis method, descriptive statistics and difference verification were performed. Also, hierarchical regression analysis and mediating effect method were performed to verify the research model. First, as a result of the difference test, the level of self-support was higher when there was a caring family. The level of family resilience was higher in those who were in their 40s and 50s than in their 30s or less, married than unmarried, had normal or excellent health conditions than deplorable health conditions, and had a caring family. Mental health quality was higher in very healthy people rather than in people who had poor health. Also, people with no dept had a higher mental health quality. Second, as a result of analyzing the relationship of influence on self-support, the higher the age, the more caring families, the higher the level of family resilience and mental health, the higher the self-sufficiency. Third, as a result of the mediating effect analysis, mental health had a partial mediating effect between family resilience and willingness for self-sufficiency. Therefore, we discussed the implications for improving family resilience and mental health as a factor in improving the level of self-sufficiency in self-sufficiency program participants.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.5-33
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• 2018

A self-sufficiency service has worked as a typical workfare policy combined with public assistance in Korea since 2000. Despite of its long history, three core pillars in administrating the self-sufficiency service, policy, research, and practice, have respectively understood the meaning of self-sufficiency in terms of their own interests. As a result, the self-sufficiency service has recently faced with its own identity issues by showing failures to its environmental changes. The current situation makes it necessary to reconceptualize the definition of self-sufficiency by exploring its in-depth understanding perceived by service providers. Specifically, we analyzed practical reflections on 35 service providers' experiences which were collected via focus group interviews for two hours. The study findings presented that service providers had two antithetical approaches towards self-sufficiency. While a dominant approach to self-sufficiency has been concentrated on improving clients' economic outcomes such as employment, job retention, the escape from welfare trap, and increasing earnings and assets, the other approach has been extended to empower clients and achieve their well-being and quality of life. Yet, these contrary perspectives have led to suffer from their role confusions and identity crisis between the work-ready process and the employment-oriented outcomes. Specifically, they described self-sufficiency in terms of psychological, social, and integrated aspects. The psychological aspect included a process of developing inner strengths, intensifying job motivation, and coping with barriers of employment. The social aspect meant a path toward social integration through recovering human relationships. The integrated aspect covered more comprehensive support for their recovery of daily life and autonomy to make a decision for their own life. In conclusion, the study findings suggest that self-sufficiency should be more extensively considered as a stepwise process towards work-ready preparations beyond ultimate economic outcomes. Such an extended concept of self-sufficiency could contribute to restructuring the whole practice of self-sufficiency including organizational and program changes in the fields.

• 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.605-620
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• 2002

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.52
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• pp.5-32
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• 2003

This paper examines the labor entry of conditional welfare recipients. This paper focuses on two questions. First, what is the percentage of conditional welfare recipients who have labor entry? Second, what are the predictors in the labor entry and the duration to the entry? Using Data about 917 welfare recipients who participated in the self-sufficiency programs of the Offices for Secure Employment in Seoul, this paper attempts to answer the above questions. Logistic regression analysis and survival analysis are adopted to identify variables predicting labor entry of conditional welfare recipients. This paper also utilizes a multiple imputation method to deal with the limitation of data by the missing values in some variables. The major findings are as follows: about 43.8% of the conditional welfare recipients have successful labor entry; and in the labor entry and the duration to the entry, gender, household, information and referral services for employment, health and willingness for self-sufficiency are the predictors that are statistically significant. Among these variables, health and willingness for self-sufficiency are more noticeable; it is recognized that programs to care for health of welfare recipients who want to have the labor entry and counseling programs to strengthen welfare recipients' willingness for labor entry are very important for them to be successful in the labor entry. This paper provides a basic knowledge about realities of the conditional welfare recipients' labor entry, identifies research areas for further research, and develops policy implications for their self-sufficiency.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.65 no.2
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• pp.255-285
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• 2013

The aim of this study is to demonstrate how Self-Sufficiency Promotion Centers (SSP Centers) run by social movement groups have struggled to defend their voluntary identities in conflict with SSP Centers operated by professional social welfare centers. Since political democratization, social movement groups have been increasing invited to run frontline public welfare agencies in South Korea, and Self-Sufficiency Program is one of the representative policies in which social movement groups have actively partaked. But many critical scholars have warned that such institutionalization of social movements into social welfare system is likely to dampen their voluntary nature and force them to render their hegemonic power to professional social welfare institutions. In contrast to the critical viewpoint, however, this study unveils how social movement-based SSP Centers have strived to tackle the professionalization pressure by deploying various survival strategies at the micro level. Through a historical discourse analysis on the frontline conflicts between social movement-based and social welfare-based SSP Centers, this study contends that social movement groups in Self-Sufficiency Program can still maintain their traditional spirit despite the obvious professionalization phenomenon.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.263-276
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• 2013

The research analyzed to verify that self-support center employee's internal marketing, social exchange relation and personal characteristic effect on self-support program which is essential to provide job and to progress self-support ability for workable low-income group. The research used questionnaires of 156 substances to analyze in self-support center employee within Gwang-Ju area. The questionnaire was analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences(SPSS) program and it used factor analysis, reliability analysis and especially hierarchical regression multiple analysis for hypothesis test. The result of research that self-support center employee's education, training, delegation of authority and job efficacy effect on maximize business result through mediated effect of emotional immersion. Therefore, the research proposes improvement of self-support center employee's education, training, delegation of authority and job efficacy.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.87-95
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• 2016

Housing benefits service that was implemented according to the National Basic Livelihood Security Act in 2002 has been changed with the enactment of "Housing benefits Law"(2014.1.24). Though the service was conducted for 13 years to improve the living environment of recipient households and create self-supporting jobs for low-income, there was a limit to ensure the efficiency due to variations in the administrative act and implementation in local governments. For that reason, the sales account and the profits of self-supporting enterprises and their cooperative in housing welfare sector that played a pivotal role had gone through many ups and downs and that is why the national coalition of self-supporting enterprises that were newly formed are forced to take self-effort and play a leading role for the improvement of future beneficiaries' satisfaction, namely to develop the level of service to keep the decent jobs consistent for low-income while responding institutional policy change and the demands for improving the home-amelioration system. Accordingly, this article has attempted to supplement existing research on housing-benefits service and determine how the field can keep pace with the new institutional environment. As a result, first, Central self-supporting enterprises provide high specialized-quality services to low-income families, second, central self-supporting enterprises induce to transition customized service agencies for improving the quality of residential housing benefits, Third, Housing self-supporting enterprises should correspondence with institutional change through the provision of explicit guidelines in relating to housing-service amelioration, the last, business practical process shall be accompanied by a consistent basis for innovative and procedural standards.