Young adults’ service disengagement: Not applying, refusing to participate, or dropping out of welfare services

Abstract We examine young adults’ service disengagement in the context of welfare services including social, health care and employment services. By service disengagement we mean young adults’ refusal of help, with three manifestations: not applying for services, refusing to participate, or dropping out of the services available to them. This theme has rarely been addressed in social work research, but it is a common phenomenon in the field of social services. We discuss service disengagement from the perspective of young adults themselves. We interviewed twenty-four Finnish young adults with experiences of social services. The data were analysed using content analysis and the results were interpreted within Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach. Our results suggest that young adults’ service disengagement cannot be understood as a solely individual choice; there are many factors in their encounters with street-level bureaucrats and service arrangements deterring young people from accepting the help they need. Our findings help to comprehend this widely recognized, but poorly understood problem of young adults’ service disengagement in welfare services.