Social services across Europe are faced with diverse societal problems, to which they must find solutions. Although each context differs and brings its own set of challenges, as well as resources, several frameworks can guide professionals in designing, implementing, and evaluating services that effectively respond to complex social needs.
Most recently, a consortium of seven organisations from seven European countries developed and tested a new ‘Learning and Innovation Lab’ model and approach to the delivery of more integrated and person-centred health and social care services to particularly disadvantaged groups in the community, such as older people, families with young children facing multiple challenges, and youth with mental health conditions.
The model is named after the project within which it was created, the Learning and Innovation Network (LINK). A 36-month project funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and led by the Research and Development Centre in Linköping, Sweden, LINK has placed great emphasis on two elements: innovation and learning.
Innovation through local labs tailored to local needs
An initial study identified common trends in the needs of the target groups concerned and in the elements that influence the organisation and provision of integrated care, such as professional and structural barriers to change, service fragmentation, and an inadequate supply of frontline staff with the necessary competencies.
With this in mind, LINK developed the idea of a learning and innovation lab, which can be defined as a structure that invites and creates conditions for formal and informal actors (organisations, individuals, and communities) to collaboratively develop, evaluate, and spread new methods, tools, and ways of working.
The ultimate goal of such a lab is to promote social innovations, defined by the European Commission as “new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations”, and to facilitate learning for both those directly involved in the lab and the stakeholders outside of it who are nevertheless affected by the lab findings.
This approach was tested in practice through six local initiatives across Europe, involving over 100 individuals. In Serbia, for instance, the University of Belgrade established a lab designed to provide better support services for Roma families in the areas of parenting and early child development, which the baseline study had identified as being poorly available and not adapted to their needs and contexts. The lab mobilised an impressive range of stakeholders including UNICEF Serbia, the Municipality of Zemun, social care, health care, and preschool departments and institutions, and representatives of the Roma community.
A unique feature of this initiative was the involvement of an ‘influencer mom’ from the Roma community, whose social media posts on early child development and positive parenting garnered over 70,000 views within a six-month period. Furthermore, while earlier feedback suggested reluctance, the Roma community welcomed the support, leading to increased child participation in day care, primary health care, and immunisation programmes.
Learning through a one-stop resource available to anyone, anywhere
To ensure its learnings are not lost, LINK collated all the information about the different learning and innovation labs set up by the participating countries in an online platform, further enhanced by a free learning programme designed for anybody who wants to learn more about how to work with social innovations.
Through five separate units, the learning programme outlines the current and future challenges for social services, introduces the concept of social innovations, and provides step-by-step guidance on how to set up and run a lab, work with multidisciplinary teams and involve stakeholders and users, evaluate and effectively disseminate impact, and mainstream successful innovations. In the piloting phase alone, this course supported the professional development of over 250 individuals.
Furthermore, the learning and innovation lab model was featured in this year’s European Social Services Conference, organised by the European Social Network, where participants had the opportunity to join an interactive workshop highlighting how professionals, civil society, and the concerned population can work together to formulate, test, and evaluate new, creative solutions to complex societal problems, in line with the principles of cocreation and empowerment.
Although the project has now come to an end, the model remains as relevant as ever, especially as frontline professionals and managers continue to be faced with growing pressures and increased demand for social services. They do not need, however, to reinvent the wheel: existing frameworks, such as this one, can guide them in finding innovative ways to address the complexities of our ever-changing society, while ensuring services are person-centred, multidisciplinary, and efficient in both cost and effort.
