UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL SERVICE PRACTITIONER'S DECISIONS FOR FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Although guidelines are available, social service practitioners (SSPs) are regularly required to make recommendations for financial assistance at their own discretion. In this paper, we investigate Singapore SSPs' decision-making process towards low-income households applying for financial assistance using a survey on 282 practitioners. The study employs a factorial survey method, where each SSP recommended the suitable amount of financial assistance for three randomly selected fictitious clients. The survey also collected SSP's personal information, general attitude and perception of poverty. We find that variation in the amount of financial assistance recommendations at the client level can be explained by SSP's general impression of the client, formed by client's individual and household employment status. SSP's perception of the role of financial assistance also resulted in differences in the decision-making process. This finding raises concerns regarding the fairness of financial assistance recommendation resulting from SSP's discretionary decision-making.