When social services coordinate with others, such as health, education, and employment, they can ensure that interventions are better organised, person-centred by addressing a user’s whole range of needs, and possibly more efficient by merging into an integrated set.
Our work with members
We are engaging with our members to identify effective strategies for implementing integrated care and support in practice. We are doing this in the framework of a working group on ‘Integrated Care and Support’ which runs from 2018-2021, with ESN members meeting each year to share their practices from across Europe on the coordination of social services with other services. This includes for example multi-disciplinary teams, shared technology platforms or full integration with other organisations.
2018 MEETING 1: Integrated care and support for children
2019 MEETING 2: Integrated care and support care leavers
2020 MEETING 3: Integrated care and support for adults with complex needs
2021 MEETING 4: Integrated care and support for older people
This follows our previous work, the 2015 seminar ‘Integrated Services: Working together to improve lives’. In this event we brought ESN members and external participants together to discuss local and regional models of integrated social services. As a follow-up, we published the report ‘Integrated Social Services in Europe’.
Our contribution to the European level
With this work, we support the European objectives to develop more integrated and personalised services, as outlined in the European Commission’s 2013 Social Investment Package.
ESN resources
- ESN seminar (2015) 'Integrated Services: Working together to improve lives'
- ESN report (2016) ‘Integrated Social Services in Europe’
- ESN 2018 Working Group meeting on Integrated Care and Support for Children
External resources
- European Commission & Budapest Institute: Literature review and identification of best practices on integrated social service delivery (Part I)
- European Commission & Budapest Institute: Literature review and identification of best practices on integrated social service delivery (Part II - Country case studies)