ESN seminar on social planning
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The European Social Network (ESN) organised the seminar ‘Social planning – developing more cohesive local communities’ together with our Austrian member, the Department for Health Care and Social Welfare Planning of the City of Vienna, on 6-7 November.
The seminar, attended by over 80 representatives from local and regional authorities across Europe, provided a platform for knowledge exchange on the social planning process, models and tools.
The speakers’ presentations, linking policy, practice and research, covered a wide range of themes, from integrated planning (including financial, health and social planning) to service planning for different societal groups (children, adults with disabilities, older people). The presentations also showcased hands-on approaches and models of social planning at local, regional and national level (with examples from Vienna, Catalonia, Germany, Portugal and Poland to name a few).
“Especially against the current socioeconomic background in Europe, this form of integrated social planning is not a nice to have, but a must have.” Lars-Göran, ESN Chair
Tools for social planning
Edeltraud Glettler, Austrian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and representative in the EU Social Protection Committee, described the European social policy landscape, emphasising that “social planners at local or regional level have several helpful tools at their disposal”, including the European Social Funds and the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions.
Ken Simler, a Senior Economist from the World Bank, presented the poverty maps as a useful tool for effective social planning that provide precise and comparable information about the rates and the density of poverty across territories. A concrete example of using maps for social planning came from Rita Valadas, from Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa; she presented a successful public-private partnership – the use of geo-mapping to target social interventions to certain areas and selected user groups such as the elderly.
Gabriela Sempruch from the Mazovian Social Policy Centre in Poland elaborated on their Calculator of the costs of inaction, a tool advocating smarter social interventions, which is now being introduced to local authorities in the Polish region of Mazovia to help them with their development of social policy strategies.
Social planning models from local, regional and national level
Peter Stanzl from the City of Vienna presented their local planning structures, which are based on a cyclic approach and give prominence to evaluation and intense stakeholder cooperation in the fields of data collection and aggregation.
Marc Viñas i Artola from the Regional Government of Catalonia illustrated how community development plans across a range of social issues were an effective stakeholders’ participatory platform.
John Farrell from Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Board presented recent innovative initiatives in integrated health and social planning, including Integrated Care Partnerships, a Single Assessment Tool for the elderly, and an Electronic Care Record.
The afternoon session on the first day dealt more in depth with services’ planning for three selected societal groups: children and families, adults with disabilities, and older people.
Social planning – an ongoing process
On the second day, the seminar continued with group discussions that touched upon the key elements of social planning, its main barriers and success drivers, and enabled participants to share their views and experiences.
In the concluding panel debate, the Austrian Federal Minister for Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection of Austria, Rudolf Hundstorfer, commented on the right approach of social planning: “Obviously, social planning is an ongoing process that must not take a top-down form.”
Resources
- Video webstreaming of the first day
- Presentations and resources (ESN members only)
- Photos
- A report from the event will be available early 2015