-
Home
-
European Projects
-
Co-creation - A method to develop sustainable welf..
Co-creation - A method to develop sustainable welfare solutions
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Aug 31, 2019
PROJECT
FINISHED
The “Co-creating Welfare” project is motivated by a broadly political acknowledged need for re-organisation within the welfare sector in order to obtain a more sustainability and cost effectiveness. Local authorities are currently struggling with budget cut-downs in the welfare sector, mainly due to consequenses of the hardly ended worldwide financial crisis. As a response to the need for re-organisation, co-creation has started to become an acknowledged concept to create a more sustainable set-up and organisation of the welfare sector. Introducing co-creation as a new method to develop and implement welfare solutions, will challenge old structures and all stakeholders must redefine themselves in this new collaboration concept. The traditional linear planning will be dropped in order to give more room for common identification of challenges and possible solutions through brainstorming, creativity and impulsive ideas. This calls for a new approach of preparing and training the professional practitioners working within health and social care, welfare, education and youth. In order to prepare and manage local co-creation processes, professional practitioners will need to learn how to become multidisciplinary process facilitators instead of “just” being a civil servant doing “caseworking” based on clear guidelines. The purpose of the project is to develop, test and propose efficient ways of implementation of a common European set of training materials, which will assist professional practitioners on local level around Europe, to qualify themselves to carry out co-creation processes on local level, which can push forward the needed re-organisation and effectiveness of the public welfare sector. The consortium consists of 5 partners from 4 countries; University College Lillebælt and Southdenmark European Office from Denmark, Lyon University from France, Minho University from Portugal, Coventry University from UK. Together, the partners represent a substantial pool of knowledge within co-creation pedagogies, development of training/educational courses, practical work with NGOs, citizens and volunteers and practical and process oriented collaboration and coaching of local authorities and professionals in the public sector within welfare, health and education. A pool of knowledge, which will ensure a successful and qualitative implementation of the Co-creating Welfare project.The Co-creating Welfare project is a action research project with active participation from all partners throughout the entire project, as well as close collaboration with main target groups, being professional practitioners and local stakeholders like citizens, NGOs and civil society organisations. The project consists of 4 project phases; preparation, development, testing & trial out and conceptualisation.The activities in the "Co-creating Welfare" project are the following; a) engagement with 4 local pilot authorities in each participating country, b) development and presentation of a training needs analysis, c) development, testing and presentation of Co-creation course material, d) training of 40 professional practitioners in each participating country, e) development and implementation of 2 local co-creation pilot projects in each participating local authority, f) transfer of results to two partners outside the partnership, g) dissemination and mulitiplier events such as seminars and conferences, newsletters, articles in local media and an academic article in a European academic Journal.