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Written by leading experts from across Europe, this book provides a grounded exploration of innovation in the practice, research and education of social work. It focuses on the role of participation, collaboration and co-creation as key drivers of social innovation within these fields, providing practical examples of social entrepreneurship, people-centred design and participatory led innovation.The positive outcomes of local social innovations are analysed in the wider European framework, with reflections and recommendations for advancing innovation in policy, service provision, education and research.

This open access book contributes to ongoing discussions about how societies should respond to children who have experienced violence and abuse by delving into the Barnahus model: a multidisciplinary and co-located model whose aim is to provide both justice and recovery to victimised children. The promising model was first implemented in the Nordic region and is currently being diffused across Europe, although scientific knowledge about the model remains scarce: the Barnahus model's potential for delivering holistic services, the various tensions and dilemmas involved in the model, and how dual mandate of Barnahus can be managed all require further research. Continuing from the volume Collaborating Against Child Abuse (2017) which examined the process of Barnahus'diffusion in the Nordic countries, the current book digs deeper into the intrinsic institutional tensions of the model, as well as those that might arise during collaboration, in order to advance our understanding of what can be achieved through the model and thus improve the situation of child victims of violence and abuse. An institutional perspective is used in the book which is structured in four parts. The first three parts explore different types of institutional tensions –legal, organisational, and professional-ethical, while the fourth focuses on how these tensions may be balanced. The book's authors chart this new phase in the diffusion and translation of the Barnahus model. Their analyses will provide valuable guidance to countries that are currently considering or are already implementing the model.

La docencia y la práctica profesional se unen para presentar una obra dedicada a la Intervención Social Comunitaria. Partiendo de aspectos concretos y específicos del ámbito del Trabajo Social Comunitario se va adentrando en su objeto para, posteriormente, proponer un conjunto de modelos metodológicos aplicables a este ámbito, desarrollando de entrada el proceso básico de procedimiento desde la especificidad de lo colectivo, para complementarlo, de salida, con otros modelos metodológicos que lo enriquecen y amplían. Presenta además, un amplio muestrario de técnicas e intervención utilizables en este terreno de lo colectivo o comunitario. No sólo constituye un aporte básico y metodológico en el ámbito de la intervención integral comunitaria, sino que asume la importancia y el auge que en nuestra coyuntura actual tiene, y debe tener, el término'comunitario'. Este libro se convierte, por tanto, en un documento básico para estudiantes y profesionales de las distintas disciplinas de las Ciencias Sociales relacionadas con la acción comunitaria: trabajadores sociales, animadores socioculturales, educadores sociales, psicólogos, etc., que deseen desarrollar su actividad profesional en este ámbito de lo colectivo, profesionales que crean en lo que hacen y por qué lo hacen, y que estén dispuestos a acompañar a la comunidad y a sus miembros en un proceso de cambio y crecimiento.

Since the 1980s, neoliberals have openly contested the idea that the state should protect the socio-economic well-being of its citizens, making ‘privatization'their mantra. Yet, as historians and social scientists have shown, welfare has always been a ‘mixed economy', wherein private and public actors dynamically interacted, collaborating or competing with each other in the provision of welfare services. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of welfare by developing three innovative approaches. Firstly, it illuminates the productive nature of public/private entanglements. Far from amounting to a zero-sum game, the interactions between the two sectors have changed over time what welfare encompasses, its contents and targets, often engendering the creation of new fields of intervention. Secondly, this book departs from a well-established tradition of comparison between Western nation-states by using and mixing various scales of analysis (local, national, international and global) and by covering case studies from Spain to Poland and France to Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thirdly, this book goes beyond state centrism in welfare studies by bringing back a host of public and private actors, from municipalities to international organizations, from older charities to modern NGOs.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The growing economic fissures in the societies of Europe and Central Asia between generations, between insiders and outsiders in the labor market, between rural and urban communities, and between the super-rich and everyone else, are threatening the sustainability of the social contract. The institutions that helped achieving a remarkable degree of equity and prosperity over the course of several decades now face considerable difficulties in coping with the challenges presented by these emerging forms of inequality. Public surveys reveal rising concerns over inequality of opportunity, while electoral results show a marked shift to populist parties that offer radical solutions to voters dissatisfied with the status quo. There is no single solution to relieve these tensions, and attempts to address them will vary considerably across the region. However, this publication proposes three broad policy principles: (1) promote labor market flexibility while maintaining protection for all types of labor contracts; (2) seek universality in the provision of social assistance, social insurance, and basic quality services; and (3) expand the tax base by complementing progressive labor-income taxation with taxation of capital. These principles could guide the rethinking of the social contract and fulfil European citizens'aspirations for growth and equity.

This volume examines the role and function of religious-based organizations in strengthening associational life in a representative sample of West European countries: newly democratized and long-established democracies, societies with and without a dominant religious tradition, and welfare states with different levels and types of state-provided social services. It asks how faith-based organizations, in a time of economic crisis, and with declining numbers of adherents, might contribute to the deepening of democracy. Throughout, the volume invites social scientists to consider the on-going role of faith-based organizations in Western European civil society, and investigates whether the concept of muted vibrancy aids our theoretical understanding.

First published in 1998, this edited volume reflected on the role of universities and aimed to improve the preparation of social welfare professionals by the University of Warsaw for employment in the new market-oriented society that was being created in Poland after the end of ‘real socialism'in 1989. Many of its articles were previously published in Polish and were published, revised and updated, in English for the first time in this collection. The contributors discuss two key issues. First, should universities worry about the employment of their graduates and the skills that are needed by the wider economy and society or just focus on transmitting advanced learning? Second, they considered the modernisation of the welfare state. The Polish experience, and the Western partners'reaction to it, has proved an excellent case study for these issues.

This book explains the increasing demand for evaluation as a result of the increasing frequency of reforms to local services, influenced by the New Public Management doctrine, the severe austerity policy in many European countries, and the wish to increase quality and reduce costs of public services, especially at the local (sub-national) level. Positioned at the interface of local services and evaluation research, it will enable the utilization of evaluation-generated knowledge in evidence-based policy making by focusing on the lessons learned from evaluation of local service delivery. It encompasses local public and social services (including waste, water, public transport, healthcare, education and eldercare) and examines the hypothesis that there is a North-West–South-East divide in Europe in terms of the evaluation of local service reforms. Particular attention is devoted to the explanatory function of evaluation. Providing fresh insight into the functioning of local government machinery in contemporary Europe, this book will appeal in particular to practitioners and students of local government, public economy, public administration and policy.

Across Europe, there is an intense search for new and sustainable approaches to providing welfare. Demographic change, new social risks and other factors call for new ideas to maintain and enhance the performance and quality of social services and to enable the participation of all citizens in an inclusive society.Against this background, and based on the findings of the EU research platform INNOSERV and empirically obtained research results from text and video material, this book provides insights into current approaches and practices to improve and transform social services.

Published in 1998. Social provision in all European countries has faced increasing scrutiny during the 1990s. Focusing on gendered aspects of welfare state restructuring, each contributor examines the way in which the welfare state of his or her country has been restructed over the past decade, concentrating on services for elderly people and for children. Each chapter outlines the shifts in the mixed economy of welfare and describes the degree to which there has been greater decentralization moves towards a different style of public management or the introduction of market principles. The changes in the provision of services for elderly people and children is described for the same period. Finally, women's position as paid providers of services, as unpaid carers and as recipients of services is analyzed. This book investigates the idea that the move towards'marketization'in many countries is having a disproportionately detrimental effect on women whose leverage on the market tends to be weak.

This collection provides new insights about current welfare professions in a number of European countries. Focusing on research representing different types of European welfare states, including the Scandinavian and the Continental, the book offers in-depth understandings of professionals'everyday work within different contextual conditions, explored from empirical and theoretical perspectives. Subjects covered include knowledge and identity, education and professional development, regulation, accountability, collaboration, assessment and decision making. This is a valuable contribution to the discussion of professionalism and welfare professions, offering lessons learned and ways forward.

In der Sozialen Arbeit hat sich ein folgenreicher Wandel in den handlungsleitenden Orientierungen vollzogen: Eine Politik der Verhältnisse, die strukturelle Bedingungen von sozialer Ungleichheit und Ausschließung problematisiert, wird von einer Politik des Verhaltens verdrängt. Diese fokussiert in erster Linie auf die ‚Diagnose‘ und ‚Behandlung‘ von individuellen Verhaltensdispositionen, Wertorientierungen, subjektiven Einstellungen und Fähigkeiten. Aus einer strukturbezogenen Politik, die Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse thematisiert, wird so eine auf individuelles und kollektives Verhalten bezogene Politik, die Fragen des Lebensstils, der Moral, der Normkonformität und damit personalisierende Konzepte der Verhaltenssteuerung und -kontrolle in den Vordergrund rückt.

Die internationale Staatengemeinschaft sieht sich mit immer neuen Krisenherden konfrontiert, in denen schnelle Hilfe und sogar militärisches Eingreifen notwendig erscheinen, um humanitäre Katastrophen zu vermeiden. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage, welches Engagement in fragilen Kontexten zerfallender Staaten von der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit erwartet werden kann.

The impetus for this book is the shift in welfare policy in Western Europe from state responsibilities to individual and community responsibilities. The book examines the ways in which policies associated with advanced liberalism and New Public Management can be identified as influencing professional practices to promote personalisation, participation, empowerment, recovery and resilience. In examining the concept of ‘responsibilisation'from the point of view of both the ‘responsibilised client and welfare worker', the book breaks from the traditional literature to demonstrate how responsibilities are negotiated during multi-professional care planning meetings, home visits, staff meetings, focus groups and interviews with different stakeholders. The settings examined in the book can be described as on the ‘margins of welfare'- mental health, substance abuse, homelessness services and probation work, where the rights and responsibilities of clients and workers are uncertain and constantly under review. Each chapter approaches the management of responsibilities from a particular angle by combining responsibilisation theory and discourse analysis to examine everyday encounters. Taken together, the chapters paint a comprehensive picture of the responsibilisation practices at the margins of welfare services and provide an extensive discussion of the implications for policy and practice.Drawing upon both the governmentality literature and everyday encounters, the book provides a broad approach to a key topic. It will therefore be a valuable resource for social policy, public administration, social work and human service researchers and students, and social and health care professionals.

Ausgehend von Liberalisierung und Ökonomisierung sozialer Dienstleistungen werden in dieser Bilanzierung der europäischen und deutschen Dienstleistungspolitik die Folgewirkungen für die Sozialwirtschaft, die Organisationspolitik im Sozialsektor und die Gestaltung von Beschäftigungsbedingungen aufgezeigt. Eine theoretische Standortbestimmung zeigt, dass soziale Dienstleistungspolitik jenseits ihrer Marktöffnung sozialpolitisch bestimmt bleibt.

Social Change and Social Work discusses and examines how social work is challenged by social, political and economic tendencies going on in current societies. The authors ask how social work as a discipline and practice is encountering global and local transformations. Divided into three parts, topics covered include the changing social work mandate throughout history; social work paradigms and theoretical considerations; phenomenological social work; practice research; and gender and generational research. Taken together, the chapters in this anthology provide an authoritative and up-to-date overview of current discussions within the European social work research community.

EU member states have seen high levels of unemployment in recent years especially amongst young people. At the same time the fiscal crisis of welfare states has made it difficult for them to invest in new jobs and new economic growth. The EU, at least since the enactment of the Amsterdam treaty, has had a focus on how to support member states'development of an employment policy which aims for higher levels of participation, lower levels of unemployment and more gender equal approaches. Through exploring patterns in the recent development of financing and governance of social services and developments of social services and employment in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany and the UK, this volume provides readers with new knowledge and evidence of the options regarding social innovation in social services. Furthermore, it provides a comparative European perspective on how the interplay between a public and private mix of social service on the one hand might help in creating jobs, and, on the other, be a way of coping with the needs and expectations of higher level of services in the core areas of the welfare state.

Focusing on care workers for the elderly, this book examines the paradoxical position of irregular migrants in European society, who are often labelled as'illegal'residents but who in fact provide much needed, essential support to welfare systems.

Cet essai est un appel à se mobiliser au service de la solidarité pour les pauvres de notre monde. Depuis l'origine des institutions européennes, la solidarité avec les plus démunis des pays en développement et d'Europe interpelle la conscience européenne. C'est l'un des principes fondateurs de l'Europe unie. Comment ne pas agir quand l'espace des pauvretés a tendance à s'élargir et à s'aggraver dans le monde? Ce livre témoigne de l'engagement de fonctionnaires des institutions européennes.

Působení sociálního pracovníka sahá od práce s jednotlivcem přes rodiny, skupiny a komunity až k ovlivňování celého národního systému sociálních služeb nebo i politického rozhodování ve prospěch znevýhodněných skupin. Kniha Sociální služby seznamuje čtenáře s různými podobami společenských služeb, s možnostmi jejich plánování a hodnocení. Předkládá kritickou analýzu současného stavu sociálních služeb v ČR a poukazuje na možnosti dalšího vývoje. Jednotlivé kapitoly pojednávají o základních typech společenských služeb, o jejich historii i současných vývojových trendech u nás i v západní Evropě. Kniha se zabývá plánováním služeb, hodnocením potřeb klientů, cílových skupin a místních potřeb i hodnocením výsledků poskytnutých služeb a představuje kvantitativní a kvalitativní metody tohoto hodnocení. Je určena pracovníkům v pomáhajících profesích, profesionálům zabývajícím se sociální politikou a studentům sociální práce.

This book provides insights into the theoretical framework of'tensions'related to care for children and the elderly. It analyzes if, and under what conditions, welfare state reforms have contributed to strengthening existing tensions, creating new tensions, or relaxing such tensions.

An essential perspective on the latest shifts in roles of the health and welfare professionals throughout Europe

The book offers explanations and clarifications for the bewildering variety of titles and job profiles in the social professions in Europe. It presents them both as a product of specific national welfare arrangements and as a sign of a special kind of professional autonomy that so far helped to correct national welfare trends. Now this autonomy is once more called for in the light of the complete re-structuring of all European welfare states and a European model of social work could deliver impulses for real alternatives to growing exclusion and inequality.

This book provides invaluable descriptions and comparative analyses of the now complex and highly varied arrangements for the care of children, disabled and older people in Europe, set within the context of changing labour markets and welfare systems. It includes analyses of the modernisation of informal care and new forms of informal care, topics often neglected in the literature. Issues of gender, family change, social integration and citizenship are all explored in a series of chapters that report on original empirical, cross-national research. All contributors are high-ranking experts involved in the COST A13 Action Programme, funded by the European Union. Care and social integration in European societies is essential reading for social policy and sociology academics, particularly those who are interested in comparative policy analysis, gender, labour markets and families. It is also recommended reading for graduate level students in these fields and policy makers, for whom the book provides a unique resource on the latest European developments in this critical policy area.