Program Overview
Thursday, May 24, 2012            14:30 - 16:00
Panel on WILCO
Welfare Innovations at the Local Level: Intermediate conclusions from the WILCO project
Room	GREEN HALL Hotel Metropol
Related to	Panels and Forums
Chair:	Taco Brandsen, EAPAA (European Association for Public Administration Accreditation), Enschede, Netherlands
Panel on Welfare Innovations at the Local Level: Intermediate conclusions from the WILCO project Panel Abstract Social innovation is becoming a priority for an increasing number of academics, policy-makers, and practitioners. In many cases, innovation in services offers the opportunity to balance the demands of cutting public expenditure with better delivery of services that aim to reduce social exclusion. Cities offer a unique environment for researchers to observe and understand how bottom-up approaches and initiatives emerge. However, many innovations that emerge at the local level (e.g. by municipalities, citizens, third sector organisations) are not picked up more broadly within the city, in other cities and in other countries, either their relevance is not recognised, or because they fail after they have been introduced, due to a limited understanding of the contingencies that accounted for their original success. The topicality of the subject of social innovation at the European level is demonstrated, amongst other things, by its increasing prominence in the European debate (e.g. the launch of the Social Innovation Europe Initiative by the European Commission), by its repeated appearance as a key theme in the European Framework Programmes and by an increasing number of publications and events devoted to it. The project Welfare Innovations at the Local Level (WILCO, www.wilcoproject.eu) is a three-year European Union-funded project (2010-2013) that brings together universities from ten European countries and the research networks NISPAcee and EMES. It compares innovations in ten countries aimed at the young unemployed, women and migrants. The goal is to understand how these innovations affect social inequalities, favour social cohesion and can be transferred to and implemented in other settings. The aim of this panel is to present some of the intermediate results and conclusions to a scientific audience and to exchange insight on different approaches to such complex issues. Adopting a European geographical focus, the panel will present the ongoing academic discussion and research around innovation in local welfare services, with a focus on the role of civil society organizations and institutional developments stemming from the resulting arrangements. The evidence is based on a multi-methodological design, with the following research conducted at the time of submission (with more to follow): 1. Documentation research at the national and city level. 2. A total of 60 interviews with experts on the latest trends in social innovation and exclusion, specifically in fields of employment, housing and child care. 3. Statistical analysis of Eurostat data on patterns of social exclusion, specifically with respect to young people, migrants and single mothers. 4. A total of 360 interviews with members of the three target groups mentioned above, conducted at the street level. More information about the WILCO project and its members can be found on the project website www.wilcoproject.eu. Panel format and composition The panel will take the form of a round table, in which short presentations will be followed by a general discussion. Each presentation will in no more than 10 minutes discuss the evidence from the research in European cities, focusing on the following questions: - What are the major social issues on which social innovation in cities focus? - What role is there for citizens and the third sector? - What are the major challenges and opportunities for social innovation? The presentations include two CEE countries (Croatia, Poland) and one Western European country (The Netherlands). Following the presentations, referees will pick up general points from the evidence and discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of the findings. Participants: Gojko Bezovan / Jelena Matancevic, University of Zagreb, Croatia Taco Brandsen, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Renata Siemienska / Anna Domaradzka, University of Warsaw, Poland Discussants: Veronica Junjan, University of Twente, The Netherlands ; NISPAcee Working Group on Public Administration Reform Gabor Soos, Institute for Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest; NISPAcee Working Group on Local Government