Digital services vs physical outreach: their implications and effects on the financial well-being of welfare recipients

This project compares how digitalisation (online services, virtual meetings, and telephone conversations) and physical outreach (in-person face-to-face meetings) based encounters enhance the relationship between the Citizens Advice (CA) and clients, and their implications on the financial well-being of clients. It contributes to Bangor University's aim of strengthening and promoting economic, social, and civic impact. The CA provides an essential support network for individuals and society and its effectiveness may be influenced by how their services are provided, whether, via digitalisation and/or physical outreach, hence a deeper understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches will enhance the support network. Welfare policy and administration cuts across several disciplines including economics, accounting, social policy and taxation. This project focuses on accounting and economics and falls within the ESRC's social sciences remit. The benefits system and benefits advisory services will be viewed as accounting technologies of governance. The impact of digitalised benefits services will be examined and compared to physical outreach benefits services in the following areas: financial well-being; distribution of wealth; labour activity; and changing needs/resilience of recipients, also taking into account (changing) recipient profiles and demographics. There is limited accounting and economics research on how the UK benefits system impacts on the financial well-being of recipients based on lived experience, spanning across multiple social domains, such as the third sector (CA organisation), the state (government and society) and the home (welfare recipient's life), and the project adopts a granular, ground-level approach to address this.