The RESPONSIVE project aims to enhance the responsiveness of Europe’s social services to input from diverse citizens. This is important because it is hard to speak of democracy within Europe’s social sector. Youth at risk of exclusion, families involved in the child protection system and citizens using disability services are typically confronted with approaches, programmes and interventions developed within ministries or NGO offices, especially at the stage of decision-making and final approval.
The project will help citizens, social services and EU policy structures to better understand, utilise and innovate with the knowledge, experiences and ideas of citizens through six core objectives:
1. Analyse the normative, legal, policy and practice contexts shaping how social services respond to the perspectives of diverse citizens.
2. Assess citizen experiences of participatory mechanisms in social services (advisory groups, consultations, complaints, evaluation mechanisms).
3. Analyse public actions by citizens to change social services (protests, campaigns, social media, social enterprise, artistic production).
4. Identify the factors shaping changes by social services in response to the input of diverse citizens who use social services.
5. Co-design and test tailored innovations to expand the utilisation of citizen knowledge by social services.
6. Promote uptake of innovations through dissemination of project results.
The project focuses on citizen participation in the organisation and delivery of four types of social service: disability inclusion, mental health, child protection and services for youth at risk.
Social work, sociology, and political science are core disciplines in the project because they illuminate social service delivery, lived experiences and legal-policy structures respectively. Organisational management helps to understand the functioning of social services whilst media analysis provides important perspectives on knowledge generated by citizens.
