This series of WILCO Project local studies of policy orientations and values contributes to the understanding of the role of policy ideas, orientations and values in the interplay with innovations for social cohesion. Innovative approaches are usually not mainstream but can be linked to mainstream politics as part of a reform approach in the political administrative system (PAS), be co-funded by it or simply link to it as criticism, suggestions and messages that come from the innovators.

Certain concerns shape inquiry and analysis of welfare innovation in its political context:

• Plurality of discourses: for understanding the interplay of politics and innovations it is important to see them in a tension field structured by the juxtaposition and rivalry of different discourses;
• The impact of history: practices and values that guide action and politics are very much coined by historical developments and experiences;
• Differences between policy fields: While there may be often a kind of overarching narrative, shaped by national politics and dominating local coalitions, due to a number of factors, situations in different policy field may vary;
• Political administrative system and welfare system: understanding a welfare system as large and mixed, comprising of the fields family and community, business sector and third sector of associations we look at welfare developments and their role as part of a mixed and encompassing welfare system.

Warsaw City Report 492KB

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Local contexts are important in order to understand innovations and change on the local level:

Innovations are embedded in local welfare discourses that can be about classical welfare issues, managerial or encourage participation and pluralism. Such discourses will influence the political opportunity structures for social innovation.

In addition to that, there is a level of historical path-dependency that determines innovation success to some extent.

Welfare is a complex system that encompasses different administrative welfare units as much as the general political system. Innovations should be understood in relation to this complex environment.
Finally, innovative ideas might be restricted by the locally prevailing general discourse but may get much endorsement by a community of experts in a special policy field and thus reduce limits for innovative concepts.

Among the many context factors that have an impact on innovations and their further development, the strategies and value orientations of the local political administrative system are still of central importance. Local politics and governance include increasingly interactions with partners reaching from casual arrangements and agreements in networks over to cross-sector partnerships and corporatist frameworks.

Even though welfare innovations are in many ways nationally and locally specific, there are traits of innovations that are international in character:

Innovations entail approaches and instruments that enrich and change the classical tool kits of social welfare and service policies, e.g. developing services that give personalized bundles of support or creating new forms of social investments into people’s capabilities.

They entail innovations in public governance to various degrees, i.e. when networks and coalition are built across departments and sectors are part of many innovative projects and sometimes even “meta-governance” takes new forms of deliberation and consent finding in search for the public good.

Shared features point to the links between these innovations and post-traditional welfare concepts: services that address the strengths and not merely the weaknesses of their target groups are examples for enabling welfare concepts and the ways new services are more family minded, personalized, but tie in people’s support networks contributes to an upgrading of the role of communities in mixed welfare systems

What role can innovative organisations play within these forms of governance and policy-making? Pointing at the innovative quality of organisations and projects can give additional support for developing policies that give social innovation a place in the overall changing architecture of welfare governance. This series of city reports offers an insight in many inspiring social and public innovations that offer plenty food for thought and further analysis.

Warsaw report on innovations 758KB

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May 13^th, 2013
Warsaw University
Warsaw, Poland

Event Description

The objective of the WILCO grassroots conference titled “Social innovations in the welfare policy of the cities and activity of the third sector – as the means of counteracting/ prevention of social exclusion” was to present the results of research conducted within the framework of the WILCO project.

The panel discussion was dedicated to the subject of “Experience in implementation of innovative solutions of the local authorities and NGOs of Warsaw and Płock, aimed at counteracting and preventing social exclusion”.

Invitated were members of the Polish Parliament, representatives of the central and local administration, NGOs and the scientific community working on social exclusion.

The key speakers of the conference included:

• Agnieszka Kozłowska-Rajewicz, The Secretary of State, Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment;
• Professor Taco Brandsen, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, coordinator of the WILCO project;
• Professor Annette Zimmer, Münster University, Germany.
• Professor Renata Siemieńska, University of Warsaw, Academy of Special Education, supervisor of the Polish part of the WILCO project

The conference programme
12:00–12:30 Opening of the conference
• Agnieszka Kozłowska-Rajewicz, Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment
• Professor Renata Siemieńska, University of Warsaw, Academy of Special Education, supervisor of the Polish part of the WILCO project

12:30–13:00 Assumptions, objectives, achievement of the international WILCO project. Local welfare policy innovations for cohesion, professor Taco Brandsen, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, coordinator of the WILCO project

13:00–13:30 The economic crisis and local initiatives of the social policy to counteract social exclusion in Germany, professor Annette Zimmer, Münster University, Germany

13:30–14:00 Discussion

14:00–14:45 Lunch

14:45–15:30 Are there specific problems and means to counteract social exclusion in Poland? professor Renata Siemieńska, Anna Domaradzka, Ph.D, Ilona Matysiak, Ph.D, R.B. Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw

15:30–16:45 Panel discussion: Experience in implementation of solutions proposed by local authorities and NGOs of Warsaw and Płock to counteract and prevent social exclusion
• Anna Anuczak, Monopol Warszawski Association
• Roberto Cobas Avivar, social worker cooperating with tenant movement
• Małgorzata Falis, president of „Moms’ Cooperative” (Warsaw)
• Beata Puda, president of Centrum Innowacji Społeczeństwa Informacyjnego (Płock)
• Iwona Tandecka, president of the Management Board of the Grant Fund for Płock
• Magdalena Wojno, Center for Social Communication of the capital city of Warsaw

16:45–17:00 Discussion

17:00–17:10 Summary of the conference, professor Renata Siemieńska.

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The University of Warsaw, founded in 1816, is the largest university in Poland; 19 faculties, 25 interdepartmental study and research centres; 37 major fields and over 100 specializations in the Humanities, Earth, Social, and Natural Sciences; ca. 60,000 students, 3,000 academic staff, incl. 849 professors, ca. 2,800 other staff; studies at BA/BSc, MA/MSc, and doctoral level; degree programmes in English, courses in foreign languages, vocational training, E-learning, Summer Education. In 2007 UW – chosen by the European Commission out of 2.500 HEIs as one of 20 Erasmus Success Stories for its participation in the Programme in 2000-2006. The Institute for Social Studies (ISS) at the University of Warsaw is affiliated with the Institute for Social Research (University of Michigan, USA); an interdisciplinary research oriented institution focused on applied and cross-national studies, training for graduate students and scientists.

The research team took part in cross-national studies as head of the Polish team in: (1) the World Values Survey (in 83 countries) since 1980 -, (2) ”Functioning of local communities and local governments (USA, Poland, Sweden) 1976-1990, (3) the ”Polish-American study on ethical reasoning of councillors and civil servants of local governments”1993-1997, (4)”Gendering economic and political elites in 27 industrialized countries” 1996- 2004, (5)EC project:”Women in European Universities” (in 7 countries)2001-2003, (6)EC project: ”Work & Care” (in 6 countries)2005-008. She also was a member of (7) the EC expert group “Gender and Excellence” (evaluation of gender distribution of research grants given by national institutions) 2008. In Polish projects: (8) “Governance in Local Communities” 1976-1988; (9) “Social Map of Warsaw” (with focus on local governance) 2001-2003.

Renata Siemienska-Zochowska

Professor Renata Siemienska-Zochowska will be the head of the team. She is a full professor, past chair of the Dep. of Sociology of Education, UW, director of the Institute for Social Studies and head of the Center of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, ISS UW and chairholder of the UNESCO Chair “Women, Society and Development”. Ex – president of INSTRAW. She took part in the research projects mentioned above and the National System of Monitoring of Equal Treatment of Women and Men, EU projects “Work and Care”, CINEFOGO project “Third Sector organizations” giving her broad experience in empirical sociological and political science studies. She organised many interdisciplinary conferences for academic and non-academic audience. Her publications include: Siemienska R., -1997, Ethical Reasoning in a Time of Revolution: A Study of Local Officials in Poland (co-authors D.Stewart, N.Sprinthall) Public Administration Review. Vol.57, no.5.445-453;- 1999, Women and Men in the Project of Reform. A Study of Gender Differences Among Local Officials in Two Provinces in Poland. Am. Review of Public Administration. vol.29. no.3. 225-239.(co -authors D. W. Stewart, N. Sprinthall). – 2001, Process of Democratization and Local Governance in Poland. In: A. Farazmand (ed.) Handbook of Comparative and Development of Public Administration (2d Edition), Marcel Dekker, Inc., 345-362; 2009, Gender: changing conception, changing reality in the context of social politics from the perspective of new EU members. W F.Brezzi, M. Ferrari-Occhionero, E. Strickland (eds.) Equal Opportunities and Human Rights. Rome: .Universita degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”.57-70.

Anna Domaradzka-Widla

Anna Domaradzka-Widla- Ph.D., sociologist, is assistant professor at the ISS UW. She took part in the international research projects e.g. WVS 2005 in Poland, National System of Monitoring of Equal Treatment of Women and Men, Demographic policy scenarios for Poland, CINEFOGO project “Third Sector Organizations facing turbulent environments”, EC project “Work and Care”. She specializes in gender and civil society issues.

Ilona Matysiak

Ilona Matysiak, Ph.D., sociologist, is assistant professor at the Robert B. Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw, and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, The Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of Special Education, Warsaw. She graduated in sociology, the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Warsaw. She took part several international research projects, e.g. WORKCARE SYNERGIES (FP7), “ENRI-East. European, National and Regional Identities” (FP7-SSH collaborative research project). Her academic interests include gender, social capital and grassroots activities in the local contexts of urban and rural areas.

Contact information:

• Renata Siemienska
• Anna Domaradzka-Widla
• Ilona Matysiak – ilona.matysiak _at_ uw.edu.pl

Website: www.uw.edu.pl/en

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This city report maps the problems of social inequality and cohesion at the local level, as the background for the research on local social innovations in the subsequent part of the project. The report includes

• (1) an analysis of the main characteristics and trends of the local labour market (main sectors, employment and unemployment levels, groups of population mainly affected by long-term unemployment);
• (2) an analysis of demographic structure of the population and of the trends taking place in the preceding ten years (proportion of the elderly, fertility and natality rates, proportion of immigrants and their distribution in the urban territory, etc.);
• (3) an analysis of the housing market, with special attention to critical situations such as overcrowding, difficult affordability, evictions, homelessness;
• (4) an analysis of migration trends, of migrants’ flows into the city, of the composition of migrant population, its features, changes and possible risks of exclusion and segregation.

Social Welfare in Warsaw 917 KB

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