Social and Health Services of General Interest in the European Union
Social services are undergoing important changes in European Member States. They adapt to demographic challenges and the need to improve quality and to become better targeted. Bernard Enjolras (ISF) is one of the contributors to a report on social and health services of general interest in the European Union.
Enjolras discusses modernisation in social service organisation, and the changing forms of regulation and governance. The report is based on a major study commissioned by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunity. The goal is to obtain essential knowledge of service providers and stakeholders, and social and health services in general, and conduce to dialogue between the Eu member states. The report proposes a strategy aimed at promoting the quality of social services.
The report suggests that the existing variety of quality assurance policies and quality development mechanisms in Member States can be used to learn from each other. It is
indispensable, however, to further invest in methods, institution building and training of staff to realise improvements in accountability and user-friendliness of social services.
In order to enter into a dialogue between EU institutions,Member States and stakeholders in the framework of multi-actor and multi-level governance of Social Services of General Interest, it is necessary to increase the accountability and transparency of institutional frameworks, the data base of the sector and its individual areas, and the description of quality indicators to support the role of the citizens as customers, beneficiaries and users in the definition, planning, assessment and
monitoring of service quality.
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Download the report here
The EU Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process
Bernard Enjolras
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