Increasing responsiveness to citizen voice in social services across Europe

ongoing

The RESPONSIVE project aims to enhance the responsiveness of Europe’s social services to input from diverse citizens. It wants to increase the impact of citizen voice on the approaches, organisation and delivery of three types of social service: disability and mental health, child protection and services for youth at risk. The project will help 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 at local, national and EU level shaping how social services respond to the perspectives of diverse citizens 2. Assess the range, inclusivity, operation and impact of official channels of citizen input in social services (advisory groups, consultations, complaints, evaluation mechanisms) 3. Analyse the range, goals, content and approaches of 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 for citizens, civil society groups, social services and policymakers to significantly expand the utilisation of different sources of citizen knowledge by social services at different levels 6. Promote uptake of innovations through dissemination of project results This qualitative research project will be conducted in Austria, Denmark, France, Poland, Portugal and Romania by an interdisciplinary and multisectoral consortium of six research organisations, two civil society organisations, two social services departments and an international network of social work practitioners.