Navigating family transitions: revealing the role of social policy in family resilience

Welfare states transfer different types of resources to families. These typically come in the form of time (as in paid or unpaid leaves or flexible working time), money (as in cash benefits and tax reliefs) and in-kind support (such as services for children and long-term care). Depending on how inclusive and flexible the design of these different policies are and on the extent to which they might complement each other, welfare states will have a stronger or weaker capacity to enable resilience among families. This paper critically compares three fields of policy -income protection, care and work-life balance to assess their degree of support families receive when confronted with unexpected change. For the purpose of this research, we define family resilience in agentic terms. That is, the ability of families to act and ensure wellbeing and safety to their members when confronted with a change in their status quo. The focus is on eligibility rules and regulations that govern access. We compare the six countries that are part of the Horizon Europe project rEUsilience: Belgium, Croatia, Poland, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. We undertake a qualitative methodological approach whereby we assess policy responses to families in different types of transitions signaling different tensions between care and work.