Salford academic awarded Postdoctoral Fellowship by the British Academy

Among the successful research projects in this year’s cohort is a study of the experiences of social security claimants in the paid care sector by Dr David Young, Research Fellow in the Sustainable Housing & Urban Studies Unit at our School of Health and Society.

Funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Academy’s flagship Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme offers early career researchers the opportunity to strengthen their experience of research and teaching in an academic environment.

Funding is spread over a three-year period, with the goal of completing a significant piece of publishable research. You can read more about David’s work below.

Caring about time and money: understanding the temporal experiences of in-work social security claimants in the paid care sector

A basic aim of the UK's social security system is to provide income security for those in and out of work with low or variable incomes. However, policy, academic and public understandings of claimants’ finances and lives can be static, focusing on one point in time and unable to fully understand temporal aspects of working claimants’ lives. This has led to policy design choices that do not reflect the realities of work for many. This is especially problematic for adult social care sector workers, who face particular temporal challenges.

To address this knowledge gap, this fellowship will combine analysis of secondary data with new data from innovative financial diary methods to: (1) provide a new and wide-ranging temporal understanding of the experiences of working social security claimants in the paid care sector; and (2) support the advancement of methodological strategies to capture the temporal nature of working claimants' experiences.

David said: “Paid care sector workers play a vital role within our economy and society but often face low and unpredictable pay and related insecurity alongside claiming social security benefits. My research will focus on what qualitative longitudinal and financial diary data can tell us about how changes in income, working hours and wider circumstances are experienced over time. I will also seek to better understand how social security and labour market policy can address the insecurity of paid care sector workers and improve their lives.”