InnoServ · Innovative Social Services platform

Our consortium will investigate innovative approaches in three fields of social services: health, education, and welfare. To do so, we will focus on two levels: (i) the status quo of research in these fields and (ii) the input from practitioners who have developed innovative social services. Special attention will be paid to the transferability of elements, the European value, effects on gender and migration issues as well as on promoting equality and building sustainability, future scenarios involving the quality of services in different perspectives (policy makers, service organizations, user groups etc.), and the accessibility and affordability of services. Thus, our proposal will combine the practical knowledge of praxis organizations with the input from research findings in order to unclose new perspectives and future trends. In a rather unique way using new media and innovative technologies, we will produce distributive material (videos, picture samples, case study brochures) to discuss innovative case studies from all over Europe with stakeholders and researchers. Our main communication tools are based on information technologies, completed by regional workshops. The involvement of many and various national and international stakeholders is the decisive feature of the proposal. We plan to use a peer recommendation approach as well as a snowball sampling method in order to collect and identify good practice examples of innovative services. The disseminating strategy will follow a twin-track approach so that all different kind of stakeholders can benefit from the process as well as from the final product of the project. The final product will be a report indicating the key trends and key elements of innovative services in the fields of health, education, and welfare. It can be used to identify further research agendas as well as to develop new models of social services or to implement existing innovative approaches.