Service design for welfare services

Project status: concluded

Description

Social cooperatives, and more generally all organizations (profit and nonprofit) that produce welfare services, operate in a context that is both critical and full of opportunities. On the one hand, the crisis of their traditional business model is increasingly evident, on the other hand there are equally evident requests on the demand side for social protection services. All this happens in a environment in which on the one hand the growth of the number of competitors (other social enterprises, third-sector entities, for-profit companies) and, on the other, the progressive emergence of spontaneous phenomena. aggregation of need-holders, thanks also to the use of digital platforms inspired by the sharing economy paradigm.

Faced with these requests, social cooperation – a business services model that has a strong competitive advantage in some sectors of social welfare – is called to undertake a process of change management that mainly concerns the production processes of goods and services. For these enterprises, in fact, it is increasingly necessary to redesign their offer, using for this purpose service design techniques thanks to which it is possible to introduce innovations that are measured from the point of view of the beneficiaries (direct and indirect) of the activities (user centered design).

Objectives

The aim of the project is the regeneration of the offer of social cooperation in two particularly significant areas of activity – childcare and home care services for people with disabilities – thanks to the activation of a training, study and laboratory pathway inspired by the services design, then testing the innovations introduced on the field.

Main results

A training course was set up divided into four days and addressed to the volunteers and workers of all the social cooperatives involved in the project and the thematic laboratories of service design which, in an initial opening phase, envisage the start of a micro-survey aimed at reconstructing a case study in the two different areas of services. Subsequently, the survey will be discussed in the design laboratories composed of professionals, researchers and social entrepreneurs of the cooperatives, in order to define a solution that will then give life to a tested service prototype to verify its effectiveness.

Partner

Consorzio solidarietà sociale Parma

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