Special Issue Regional inclusion policies in Spain: new approaches and keys to their effectiveness – Winter 2019

Políticas regionales de inclusión social: de la comparación a la innovación social y el aprendizaje mutuo

Inclusion policies involve programmes and services of different types and nature. This diversity has been an obstacle to analyze in a comparative way these actions, not only in Spain but also in Europe. The economic and employment crisis shows the ineffectiveness of many of these policies. This article presents new approaches that seek to adapt these actions and are key to their effectiveness. For this, five autonomous regions of Spain will be taken as a case study. The results presented are part of the INCLUSIVE project (CSO2014-51901-P) funded by MINECO.

La Rioja and Region of Murcia are two single-province Autonomous Regions that have been governed by the Spanish conservative party (Popular Party) since the mid-90s. Although they have developed different social inclusion models, they share common elements. This paper analyses their social inclusion models by means of a comparative analysis, taking into account the different stages of development over the past three decades. The analysis includes the areas of social services, employment, education, and income. The common elements – similar documentary commitment in law, programmes, and benefits; excessive delegation in the social economy sector; limited planning and lack of coordination – outweigh the differences – Region of Murcia’s more unfavourable context; higher social risk, and lower spending on social protection.

In this article we analyse the transitions and impacts of regional social inclusion policies in disadvantaged urban areas in Andalusia conducting a longitudinal study (1989-2018). To do this, we analysed the regulations that have specifically arisen on social inclusion, weighing them against the perceptions of actors who took part in designing and implementing these policies. The results of the analysis allow us to present effective practices and approaches in these neighbourhoods. We conclude that social inclusion policies have swung from welfare approaches and insertion models based on income-employment guarantee programmes. Both approaches reveal new limitations in today’s context of job destruction and precarity.

The social protection system in Castilla y León is characterized, as in the other regions of the Spanish State, by adopting a “welfare mix” model in which public and private agents collaborate with different roles and from different positions. This paper analyzes the role played by the Third Sector (voluntary sector) and its relationships with public administrations within the framework of social inclusion policies in Castilla y León. The way in which the public-private relationship takes place in this particular area of public management constitutes a differentiating fact that distinguishes the case of Castilla y León in relation to other Spanish regions.

Barriers for social inclusion of vulnerable groups respond both to the socioeconomic context of each territory and to the orientation and institutional design of public policies. In this regard, the collaboration between social services and employment services is crucial to improve social inclusion. However, the difficulty of coordination between systems is manifest. This article proposes keys to analyze the institutional relationship of services oriented to the socio-labor incorporation of excluded people. The results arise from a comparative analysis of the institutional models of social services and employment services in five autonomous communities of Spain. On that basis, the keys and challenges of services integration are identified.

Regions are the main responsible for the social assistance policy in Spain. Recently, the Valencian Region has reformed its system, establishing the so-called Valencian Inclusion Income. In this paper, the economic impact of this program is calculated, based on an ex-ante estimation of the public expenditure to be made. The estimation allows to quantify the number of beneficiaries and the budgetary cost of this measure, and to compare these results with the other Autonomous Regions. The Valencian Region would be placed among the Spanish regions with the highest coverage rate and highest per capita expenditure.

Based on this budgetary cost, we calculate the economic impact of this measure over the Valencian economy, using the methodology of Input-Output Tables. If the direct, indirect and induced effects are taken into account, their impact will be very relevant in terms of production of goods and services and job creation. In addition, this program will have a noteworthy tax return for public administrations, which includes consumption taxes, but also income taxes and social contributions of the new jobs generated.

Over the last few years, owing to the privatization of public policy and the deterioration of social services, the framework of what is “common” is becoming an analytical reference used to set up innovative programs in the area of social protection. Although this provision has only recently been dealt with from a “community” perspective in the academic literature, several initiatives based on the clear activation of the closest social ties have started to be applied. This article focuses specifically on care services, the area in which we attempt to examine the common and community aspects as a way to promote public action. The purpose is not to withdraw the “public” element, but rather to give it a “common” meaning, incorporating cooperative ties into its activities. We argue that the combination of “public” and “common” elements could increase the attention of the social services and offer greater flexibility in meeting the demands of personal care assistance.

Italy is one of the countries with the oldest population in the world. In spite of that fact and the alarming estimates about future demographic trends, long-term care (LTC) policy is still struggling to be acknowledged as a relevant issue in the public debate and political agenda. In sharp contrast with the policy inertia prevailing at the national level, in recent years, many territories have been experimenting with new solutions in the field of LTC, addressing the challenge of building more inclusive local care environments for frail (dependent) elderly people and their families. Building upon this, the current paper aims at dealing with the most recent academic literature on social innovation and the policy discourse elaborated by the European Union to i) develop a “working definition” of social innovation, with specific reference to LTC and elderly care; ii) provide a comparative analysis of a set of selected innovative solutions, which fall between full institutionalization and full family-based care, implemented in two Italian regions, namely, Lombardy and Piedmont; and iii) discuss the factors behind the adoption of socially innovative policy solutions at the local level, thereby shedding light on the key role played by new actors and multistakeholder networks.

The core aspect of the child welfare and protection thought focusing on the family and channelling commu­nity resources, is that in order to preserve the unity of the family, it is necessary to widely introduce from the local community the services into the family’s life, thus mobilizing the internal resources of the family, and acknowledging parenting, as a social value. Integrative child protection safeguards and maintains the family’s responsibility focused on care, while it promotes the protection and widespread social acceptance of the rights of the child. Giving support is understood as a multidisciplinary and multidimensional process, aimed at the promotion of the well-being of children, the improvement of the life quality of each member of the family, and on long term the social integration of families with multiple problems. The present study examines which are the new directions in the Hungarian child protection system centred on social inclusion and foreseeing a system of complex services. In order to perform this inquiry, we present the professional experiences of two model programs: 1) parental skill development programs; 2) mobile application supporting the successful social integration of children and young adults in child care. The success of the presented innovations in child protection is further enhanced by the fact that these initiatives are built on the cooperation of several actors, addressing target group members (children/young people and their parents), professionals working in child welfare and child protection system, representatives of associated fields, and decision-makers. The joint iden­tification and interpretation process of various issues include researches applying complex methodologies, developed for the assessment of the results.