Presentation to Social Frontiers by Adalbert Evers and Benjamin Ewert

1. Social innovations for social cohesion. What
welfare politics can learn from them.
Findings from a transnational study
Adalbert Evers and Benjamin Ewert
Social Frontiers Conference, London, November 14

2. The two points our contribution deals with
What are recurrent patterns of approaches
and instruments in social innovations, that
public welfare policies could learn from?
Minding the gap between welfare reform
discourses and the social innovation talk
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3. Background: the WILCO research project
the project has looked at contributions by
social innovations to local welfare systems
coping with challenges of social cohesion
The project has been given a double task
(a) finding across Europe models and trends of local social
innovations in support of social cohesion
(b) looking at the difference, local contexts and welfare
systems make for upgrading and impact of such innovations
Empirical basis:
About 75 cases of social innovations in 10 countries and 20
cities
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4. Concepts and methods
Defining social innovations
As approaches and projects that are seen as “promising” by
experts and relevant stakeholders in the field
An international project
Not for comparing national “regimes” but for creating a wider
basis of evidence for studying transnational trends
Compared to what?
The difference innovations make against historical givens:
industrial and managerial welfare and service patterns
Looking at recurrent approaches and
instruments
“Read” the common traits and messages of the many case studies
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5. Point 1
Recurrent patterns of approaches and
instruments in social innovations, that public
welfare policies could learn from
(more specifically: policy makers in local welfare systems)
With respect to:
social services
regulations and rights
ways of governance
modes of working and financing
the entity of (local) welfare systems
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6. Service innovations
Investing in capabilities
Strengthening people‟s competences and self-esteem rather than
spotting deficits
Open approaches
Avoiding targeting with stigmatizing effects through less directive
forms of addressing people
Bridging gaps
Reconciling professional services and people„s life worlds
Bundles of personalized support
Connecting service offers in order to meet users‟ complex needs
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7. Innovations in regulations and rights
ad hoc support
Offering time-limited loans, individually tailored combinations
of services and benefits to curb new social risks
“social contracts”
Relating access to welfare support to people‟s commitment - to
work for themselves and the community
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8. Innovations in governance
Networking
Fostering units and types of organization that operate in more
embedded ways
Giving groups a voice
Involving new risks to be faced, new groups and their concerns in
the public domain
Issue related coalitions
Building partnerships among plural stakeholders that work on „hot‟
items
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9. Innovations in modes of working and financing
Flexicurity
Working in projects − less institutionalized and below traditional
standards of social security but in more self-determined ways
Mixed and extended working collectives
Establishing forms of multi-professional teamwork that include
volunteers and the civic commitment of supporters
New professionalism
Combining formerly fragmented knowledge through dialogue with
and involvement of users
Creative funding
Mixing resources from stakeholders across sectors
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10. Innovations concerning the entity of (local)
welfare systems
Welfare mixes
Reaching out to all sectors of local welfare systems
Diversity
Aiming at less standardized, more diverse and localized welfare
arrangements
Rebalancing welfare systems
Upgrading the community component in mixed welfare systems
Integration
Bridging economic and social logics as well as welfare and urban
politics
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11. Point 2
Mind the gap - reform discourses and the
social innovation talk
social innovations may be supported just as
applications and complements
…but may be seen as well as blueprints whose
approaches may be worth mainstreaming
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12. Mind the gap!
Learning about the history of welfare as a
history of mainstreaming social innovations
From cooperatives and mutuals to social security and services – over
and again social innovations have prepared state based welfare
Rethinking the balance between equality and
diversity
Time to think about the ambivalence of standardized and hierarchical
systems – innovations need to respect rooms for diversity
From policies that impose reforms to programs
and pilot schemes that prepare them
Prepare reform not only by debate but as well by trying out new
devices by programs that put innovative ideas to test in practice
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13. Thanks for your attention!
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tripletsisters/6932000465/
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