Summary - Social support: choices of clients and local policy

What choices do people with a physical disability make regarding their support

Original title: Maatschappelijke ondersteuning: keuzes van cliƫnten en beleid van gemeenten

What choices do people with physical disabilities make as regards their support, and how much influence do differences in individual background characteristics and local authority policy have on these choices? That is the general research question addressed in this thesis. The main focus is on informal support and support provided in the context of the Dutch Social Support Act (Wmo). Ample attention is devoted to the operational scope of the Wmo at macro, meso and micro-level.

Specifically, the thesis homes in on three options: whether or not to make use of support; opting for informal support, formal support or a combination of the two; and whether to receive support in kind or in the form of a personal budget.

Finally, the study investigates whether people with a personal budget experience more independence, participation and quality of life than people who receive the same sort of help in kind. For some of the constituent studies, policy data from local authorities were linked to data on people with disabilities, enabling the influence of policy to be investigated. The analyses presented in this thesis cover the period 2008-2014.

Anna Maria Marangos is a sociologist. She works as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP).