A central assumption in social policy research and practice is that a strong working alliance between caseworkers and clients produces the best outcomes. There is, however, limited empirical evidence to support this assumption. This is especially the case within Active Labour Market Policies, where existing research focuses on programme effects rather than relationship effects.In this article, we examine whether strong working alliances produce higher employment and education outcomes for disadvantaged jobseekers. The case is a Danish municipality that invested in reducing the caseloads of caseworkers working with disadvantaged social assistance recipients. The data combine survey data on social assistance recipients with outcome data from national administrative registers. Based on linear regressions, the analysis indicates that strong working alliances are positively related to subsequent employment and education outcomes. We discuss the implications, limitations and generalisability of this finding and the conditions for providing stronger working alliances in employment services.

中文翻译：

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关系很重要——工作联盟对就业服务的影响

社会政策研究和实践的一个核心假设是，个案工作者和客户之间的强大工作联盟会产生最佳结果。然而，支持这一假设的经验证据有限。在积极的劳动力市场政策中尤其如此，现有的研究侧重于计划效应而不是关系效应。在本文中，我们研究了强大的工作联盟是否会为处境不利的求职者带来更高的就业和教育成果。该案例是丹麦的一个市政当局，该市政当局投资减少了与弱势社会援助接受者一起工作的案例工作者的工作量。这些数据将社会援助接受者的调查数据与国家行政登记的结果数据相结合。基于线性回归，分析表明，强大的工作联盟与随后的就业和教育成果正相关。我们讨论了这一发现的含义、局限性和普遍性，以及在就业服务中提供更强大的工作联盟的条件。