ESN secretariat participated in the three day annual conference of the Swedish Association of Social Directors (FSS) that started on 30 September in Västerås, Sweden. The conference was a rather large event with 330 delegates including social directors from across Sweden as well as commercial representatives investing in social services.

The FSS conference is organized on an annual basis and every year a different municipality takes responsibility for organizing it and inviting local politicians to participate. This year it was held in Västerås, about 100 kilometres from Stockholm. It hosted 24 different workshops in total, of which two were held in English.

ESN presented at the workshop on Building modern social services: Two decades of transition in Central and East Europe, moderated by Per-Olof Forsblom, senior advisor for quality and development of care in the Uppsala municipality and former president of FSS. Dorota Tomalak, ESN policy and development officer presented the process of de-institutionalisation in Central Eastern Europe and the newly established ESN group on Developing Community Care and their working plan.

“I think it is very important to have workshops in FSS conference presenting the European view reflecting on common challenges such as: deinstitutionalisation of care, decentralisation of services and the development of quality social service,” said Mikael Johannsson, FSS member participating in the ESN working group on Developing Community Care.

According Lotta Persson, FSS President the theme of the conference this year was leadership and innovation. Therefore, the conference included inspiring speakers like the former vice chariman of the united nations Jan Eliasson who talked about the global perspective, Sweden in the world and the world in Sweden. "This was one of the absolute best conferences where 335 persons listened to inspiring seminars and workshops for three days. They got inspiration and knowledge from one-another and had a good time together in the evenings with eating and dancing to the music, " Persson said.

“Post-conference evaluation revealed that it was a real success. What I personally was particularly pleased about was the programme: it addressed the issues of how social services need to develop to be regarded as useful and up to date by the users,” said Lars-Goran Jansson, FSS secretary and chair of ESN. According to Jansson, an important theme covered in the conference were the use of modern technology with a presentation by Mikael Dahlén, about technical innovations as robots and how they can be a complement to the help that best is made by staff.