Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG6: Evidence-Based Public Policy Making (Physical) Author(s) Olga Angelovska Charles University Praha 2 Czech Republic Veronika Stárová, Labour Office of the Czech Republic, Prague , Czech Republic Title Impact of the new legislation of state social support on target groups and street-level bureaucrats File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Olga Angelovska Abstract The last amendment of the Act No. 117/1995 Coll., On state social support, in 2020 brought changes in the Czech system of benefits that are often referred to in society as "family benefits", as most of them target social events of families with dependent children. The amendment changed mainly two out of five benefits, concretely parental and housing allowance. Our paper aims to effect the amendment on the street-level bureaucrats and its influence on the prevention of abuse of benefits. The amendment led to the authoritative implementation. Street-level bureaucrats could not interfere in the implementation in any way at the level of direct contact with the clients of the Labour Office of the Czech Republic, and they faced increasing administrative burden and ambiguity of conditions. They had to also react to insufficient resources that the street-level bureaucrats mainly referred to as information and time. Furthermore, they couldn't face these new working conditions through so-called coping mechanisms, primarily routine activities. The second aspect that we touched in our paper is the different impacts on the target groups. The policy mirrored the framing of the groups in public and political discourse. While families drawing parental allowance are framed positively by media, politics, as well as street-level bureaucrats, the families drawing housing allowance are framed negatively by all groups. They are perceived as those who abuse the system. The implemented policy reflected such framing, and while parental allowance became more benevolent, the housing allowance became stricter and more subject to control. We based our research on a qualitative approach. We obtained data through document analysis (legislative documents, stenographic records, internal materials of Czech Labour Office), media analysis using Newton Media Search), and semi-structured interviews with street-level bureaucrats working at Labour Office.
