Education, Welfare Reform and Psychological Well-Being: A Critical Psychology Perspective

ABSTRACT

There are established links between education and well-being, and between poverty and education. This article draws on interviews with parents of school-aged children impacted by a policy in the UK commonly referred to as the ‘bedroom tax’. A critical psychology perspective to education is put forward, acknowledging the complex interrelationships between psychological well-being, sociopolitical factors and education.

Keywords:

• education
• critical psychology
• psychological well-being
• welfare reform

5. Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester. Additional thanks to the wider research team who have not specifically contributed to this paper: Jo Bragg, Anat Greenstein, Ruth Lupton and Kate Sapin. Furthermore, this research would not have taken place without the support of many local organisations and our participants, to whom we express particular gratitude. Laura Winter would also like to extend special thanks to Jack Winter who has provided many helpful comments and aided the development of the ideas within this article.

6. Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 It should be noted that, although this policy has been referred to by multiple names, both for ease of reference and because this was the term most commonly used in public discourse and publications, we have chosen to refer to it as the ‘bedroom tax’ throughout (Gibb, 2015).

2 The final sample for the project included 14 parents as noted in the project report (Bragg et al., 2015). The project as a whole included longitudinal data collected over two time points, and the time two data is not represented in this analysis. The time one data included 12 parents; however, one individual was excluded from this analysis due to not being financially impacted by the ‘bedroom tax’.

3 In order to be eligible to take part in the research, however, all parents had to have at least one school aged child of 18 years or under.

4 To preserve anonymity, pseudonyms have been used throughout this article.

⁵ We do not have the space to explore here material in the data relating specifically to race and potential racialised impacts of the ‘bedroom tax’, which might suggest that there may not be a shift from discrimination against one group to another group as Bev describes, but rather a complex presentation of a variety of discriminations.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester.