In Canada, all provinces have stressed the role of work as the best way of avoiding benefit dependency, and some provinces have also cut benefit levels and restricted access to benefits. The success of Canada in reducing social assistance benefit dependency stands out in an area of social protection where across the developed world there are remarkably few such successes. The Battle against Exclusion Volume 2 - Social Assistance in Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Norway Institutions whose goal is to help those at the margins have been a feature of social life for centuries. Today, social assistance institutions have integration and encouragement as their goal. They seek to avoid exclusion and stigmatisation.
Poverty can tear at the fabric of society.
However, preventing hardship among those with no resources while reducing exclusion and marginalisation is no easy task. This book compares the social assistance policies of Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Norway. Although at first sight these countries appear very different, in fact the same policy dilemmas exist in the four countries. That local action is necessary to identify and help the excluded is accepted, but the balance between ensuring that sufficient resources are available at the local level while limiting budgets so as to ensure efficient use of resources is a continuing preoccupation. Governments stress their commitment to combat poverty, but benefits cannot be raised too high because this would harm work incentives.