To mark the close of the Innovative Social Investment: Strengthening Communities in Europe (INNOSI) project we are holding a conference in Brussels.

This free one-day event will draw on all of the different strands of work undertaken during the 30 month project and focus on the challenge of making new social rights real.

The keynote speech will be by Prof. Anton Hemerijck, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at European University Institute and author of “The uses of social investment” (OUP, 2017).

For more information about the event and for details on how to register click here.

About Innovative Social Investment: Strengthening Communities in Europe (INNOSI)

The premise for this 30 month pan-European project was that European welfare states were designed to offer support against Twentieth Century social and economic risks, but societies are changing in a number of interlinked areas including demography, globalisation, family structure and employment. Governments need to adopt distinctive social welfare reforms to improve the resilience of their citizens and prepare for future economic and social risks. Social investment is a well-established concept and involves using welfare spending and social policy to strengthen people’s current and future capacities, in contrast to a straightforward redistributive approaches to social policy. However, to date, implementation of Social Investment approaches has been uneven across Member States and much remains to be learned, especially with regard to the regional and local realities of Social Investment. Many models of Social Investment are possible depending upon how policy, social and managerial roles are distributed between the public, private and third sectors and the specific legal and financial frameworks that are used.

The Horizon2020 funded project looks at innovative approaches to social investment across 10 European countries drawing on 20 in-depth case studies, econometric analysis and user voice. It also included a foresight project to look at future directions in European social policy.

Findings

Our project has highlighted variation in regional and local implementation of social investment policies and the limited role of financial and regulatory innovation in funding new approaches to social investment. It has also identified some important future directions for social investment policies including a greater role for user voice in policy development; the importance of rigorous policy evaluation; the potential role of social innovation in the design and implementation of social investment policies; and, the potential for more personalised ways of delivering social investment policies.