ESN seminar: Promoting high quality long-term care
The theme for the European Social Network (ESN)’s annual seminar on 12 and 13 November is promoting quality in long-term care (LTC) making best use of procuring and contracting possibilities. The sessions taking place throughout the two days will provide a valuable opportunity to share experience and gain in-depth knowledge about social planning for home care, outcome-based commissioning and socially responsible public procurement.
ESN Launches its EU Semester Report for 2021 Social Services are Essential to Recovery
On the 29th of October, ESN launched its 6th annual EU Semester Report, which captures the perspective and recommendations of our members on the implementation of EU social policy priorities and recommendations at the national level as to be considered for inclusion within Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) developed by the European Commission (EC) for Member States.
ESN welcomes the commitment and progress of the European Commission towards the development of a European Child Guarantee. ESN is in favour of the European Commission’s intent to launch the Child Guarantee in the form of a Council Recommendation that should be accompanied by a roadmap for implementation and a specific monitoring framework.
The European Week of Regions and Cities: ESN’ calls for public social services to be defined as essential
Public social services empower people - ESN’ calls for public social services to be defined as essential during the 18th European Week of Regions and Cities entitled ‘Empowering Services’.
Entries to this year’s European Social Services Awards (ESSA) came from numerous impressive projects across Europe and beyond, and we look forward to opening the online vote on Thursday 5 November that will give an opportunity to the public to celebrate social services, express their views and help select the winners for each category.
Ensuring that digital public social services leave no one behind
Public social services leaders and frontline staff alike have much to learn from embracing digital technologies. At a recent ESN’s seminar in cooperation with IBM Watson Health, we learned that new tools like virtual reality (VR) or artificial intelligence (AI), can be very valuable to improve public social services, but also that they should be adopted when they can genuinely make systems more efficient for staff and end users.
Supporting those most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic: EU Recovery Funding for Public Social Services
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become clear that recovery from the crisis will require effort at European level through the use of EU recovery funds to support the most affected economic sectors across Europe. ESN members call for public social services to be included in the recovery instruments designed at European and national levels.