Area-Based Partnerships and Social Welfare: Innovations and Challenges

Abstract

Partnership is one of the most repeatedly used terms and concepts in public policy. Yet its meanings and interpretations vary, and despite its apparent popularity, some policy-makers and agencies are inclined to be fearful of the whole notion of partnership. What began as a proposal for a more effective way of supporting subsidiarity in decision-making about three decades ago, has now developed into sets of institutional arrangements and frameworks, whereby government, the social partners and the community and voluntary sector come together to address issues of mutual and common concern. This chapter looks at the growing importance of partnership and endogenous approaches to aspects of social welfare. It notes how partnerships have piloted new methods of social welfare provision and service delivery, based on local flexibilities and tailored responses to client needs and potential. Over time, many pilot approaches have become mainstreamed, and lessons from the local have come to impact on and influence the national. Other partnership initiatives have however faltered and waned, mainly due to the inabilities of agencies to make the transition from traditional and hierarchical government to multi-lateral and flexible governance processes and arrangements. Across Europe, partnership governance is most imbedded in institutions at the regional and sub-regional tiers, and Area-Based Partnership organisations tend to provide social welfare services as part of a suite of local development actions that include training and up-skilling local populations, supporting new enterprise development and animating the community and voluntary sector. Thus, social welfare has become integrated into broader territorial development strategies.