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22nd European Social Services Conference

 

The European Social Network (ESN) has been diversifying its membership year on year, now connecting more than 100 member organisations in 34 countries. At our annual conference in Rome, ESN members were out in numbers, representing close to half of the total participants. The event is always a unique opportunity for members to come together through both formal and informal settings, meet new members and reconnect with peers.

 

 

ESN’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place on the 7th of July and was attended by over 170 delegates representing 50 ESN member organisations from 22 countries. Members of the Business Committee and Secretariat staff presented the new programme of activities launched this year, having secured a new Framework Partnership Agreement with the European Commission for 2014-2017. The AGM was preceded by ESN’s second Board Meeting of the year. The members’ lunch concluded the first morning of the conference and set the tone for a busy three days packed with networking opportunities.

 

 

The participation of our members in the conference programme this year was equally high, with 15 ESN member organisations taking part in workshops looking at a range of issues, from participative care models for the disabled and elderly people in Odense, Denmark, to innovative local active inclusion strategies in Germany, presented by the Federal Employment Agency.

 

 

It was also the first year that different ESN member organisations presented joint workshops, bringing together different perspectives on some of ESN’s key thematic areas, thereby making the most of the opportunity to share their experience, learning and examples of good practice. One of these workshops presented four different management approaches to social and elderly care services during the crisis, shared by members of ESN’s working group ‘Leadership, Performance, Innovation’ (download presentations). You can read more about their experiences in our recent series of ‘Contemporary issues in the public management of social services in Europe.’

 

 

One workshop stood out for bringing an interactive and evocative approach to a technically challenging process: the transition from an institutionalised form of care to person-centre community-based services. Starting off with two contrasting perspectives from ESN members in Denmark and Poland (download presentation), participants were asked to think of the key aspects that should be in place to build a ‘house of deinstitutionalisation’...with lego! Through playful symbolism, the exercise challenged participants to rethink the concept of community care from its roots: what constitutes a ‘house of deinstitutionalisation’ in practice? And what change of attitude is required to achieve it?

 

 

Thank you to our members for supporting the European Social Services Conference and for their valuable input over the three days of discussions in Rome. See you next year in Lisbon!

 

 

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