As the world moves from crisis to crisis, resilience has become a focal point in the discussions on crisis response and recovery. Social services carry the responsibility to support those made vulnerable in times of crisis as well as their ongoing duty of care. However, after years of underinvestment, social services have been stripped considerably of the financial, human and infrastructure resources needed to provide continuing quality care. Nevertheless, amid ever-evolving environmental and political contexts, change will continue to happen all around us causing turbulence and uncertainty. For social services to rise to these and future challenges in a sustainable manner there is an urgent need to invest in resilience.

This briefing is the output of the first meeting of ESN's Social Services Transformation and Resilience Working Group which took place in July 2022.  It contains an expanded definition of what resilience means for social services and different approaches to the issue, a snapshot of current resilience-building capacities of social services in Europe and recommendations to build the resilience of social services in the future.

An Executive Summary of this briefing is available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish