22nd European Social Services Conference workshops
Good leadership and management are essential for delivering change in social services and responding to the ever-changing needs of citizens and their communities. It requires strong leadership to be able to transform structures and workforce management to involve service users in the design of services; to look beyond traditional ways of delivering care by integrating and sharing services and settings; to manage the transition from institutional to community-based care and empower people to lead independent lives. The European Social Network (ESN) offers some insights into leadership and management in social services in its new working paper. The discussions will continue at the 22nd European Social Services Conference, taking place in Rome on 7-9 July. The workshops selection below offers a taster of good examples of leadership and management from ESN members.
Re-ablement for disabled and elderly people – Reshaping services, delivering better outcomes (Denmark)
The Municipality of Odense, an ESN member, have changed the way they provide services for elderly and disabled people from a passive service provision to a participatory approach. This sees ‘disabled’ people as ‘enabled’ people and provides connected services to address individual needs, using workforce management and training to implement rehabilitation. This has resulted in 85% of the included elderly people (aged 65+) in Odense regaining the ability to live independently without or with significantly reduced assistance from professionals. Workshop participants will discuss the opportunities and challenges of changing structures and workforce management in services for people with care needs and the perspectives of other citizen/target groups, such as psychiatric or disabled citizens under the age of 65. Find out more about policy developments in Europe and ESN’s work on ageing and care and disability.
Innovation and experimentation – Guidelines to design contemporary social and healthcare services and facilities (Italy)
This research project coordinated by ESN member, the Lazio Region, and the Architecture & Design Department of the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ stems from the ever closer relation between changes in contemporary urban society and new needs of social and health services. These include demography, new forms of poverty, exclusion and dependency (unemployment, separate fathers, immigrants, former inmates, etc…), all highlighting the need to be bold, to overcome established ideas and to promote, for example, integration and sharing services and settings whilst emphasising new therapeutic and care requirements as well as the need to lower management costs. Through the analysis of best practices, workshop participants will be given guidelines, drawn from the Italian context, for services’ design and organisation and for architectural design and evaluation. Finally, they will be invited to construct a ‘contemporary social service’ proposal that is an innovative space targeted at a segment of population with social needs. You can find out more about innovation in social services in ESN’s recent paper ‘Innovation, research and evidence-based practice’.
Building a comprehensive strategy for de-institutionalisation (Denmark, Poland)
The development of inclusive communities and services is the vision of many social services departments across Europe. Managing the transition of care from segregating institutions to person-centred community or family settings – also known as deinstitutionalisation – is a key part of this process. Using a whole system approach, the workshop, coordinated by ESN members, the Municipality of Aarhus in Denmark and the Institute for the Development of Social Services in Poland, aims to explore the key steps in implementing deinstitutionalisation as a transition process that involves much more than just the closure of large-scale institutions. The workshop will bring together the experiences of social services in the two countries to look at how the deinstitutionalisation process can be managed in practice on different levels of government and across various social sectors. Find out more about ESN’s work in deinstitutionalisation and developing community care.
Read more about the wide range of workshops at the 22nd European Social Services Conference (in English, français, español, italiano, deutsch)