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Last week we held our conference “Investing in services for people’s well-being – from good practices to better policies”. We wanted to show that investing in high quality social, health, employment services and social infrastructures is an investment in people and the future. For us, services should be tailored to the individual’s needs and promote users’ fundamental rights and their empowerment.

With our members and partners we developed sixteen case studies from thirteen EU Member States, many of which were presented at the conference. Investing in services is not just about the amount of money that is invested; it is first and foremost about the approach taken in service design and delivery.

In fact, by focusing services on users’, families’ and communities’ empowerment and by building partnerships among different actors, it is possible to make services more innovative and effective in meeting users’ needs. The three examples we chose to illustrate this point also show how civil society has been successful in initiating a paradigm shift in policies. Hope and Homes for Children achieved a reform of the child protection system in Romania based on de-institutionalisation and service provision to prevent a child’s separation from his or her family. Starting from the collection of unsold food in local markets, “Fa bene” showed the added value of  community engagement in facing poverty and lack of social cohesion in local communities in Italy. With the help of Health Mediators belonging to Roma communities, the “Healthy Communities” programme provides a systemic solution to the alarming state of health and social conditions of disadvantaged groups in Slovakia.

Le Mat hotels in Italy and Sweden, Magdas Hotel in Austria and Artenave in Portugal testify how the social economy and social enterprises can successfully contribute to the social and professional inclusion of people that otherwise might find it difficult to find a job: people with mental health problems or addictions, refugees and older low-skilled long-term unemployed people. Le Mat, for example, succeeded not only in providing them with a job, but also in making them social entrepreneurs. Gabriela Sonnleitner, CEO of Magdas, revealed their secret: focus on people’s talents and what they can do, instead of their weaknesses.

We also discussed how empowering and giving equal rights to migrants and refugees brings benefits to hosting communities, too. The Humanitarian Health Consultation Centre in Frankfurt started by providing health care to migrant families and undocumented migrants. Now it provides health care to people who are without health insurance, whether they be German, citizens from other EU countries or third-country nationals. The French Protestant Platform for refugees works with public authorities to support refugees from Syria and Iraq throughout the asylum application procedure and in finding temporary accommodation with host families. Mobilearn is an application developed by Swedish entrepreneurs to help migrants and refugees solve administrative problems and to get acquainted with the language, culture and labour market of the host country.

All these examples testify that profound positive transformations are happening in service delivery across Europe. In the final panel we discussed how the EU could contribute to making these transformations more systemic. The measures proposed by Social Platform include fighting tax evasion and avoidance to increase public funding; reversing budget cuts and promoting social investment in these services through Country-Specific Recommendations; supporting managing authorities and stakeholders to make better use of the European Structural and Investment Funds to improve service provision; and lastly, better tailoring the European Fund for Strategic Investments to the investment needs of the social sector. This could be done by setting an earmark for social investments and by decreasing the threshold of projects. We will continue this dialogue next year with institutions and stakeholders to make investment in services a reality. All the case studies, the myth buster on services and the key findings from the conference will be available in January.