News

Last week the Skåne Region in Sweden, in a seminar on social economy and social innovation, presented an agreement on cooperation between the Region and the third sector in Skåne.

This agreement is very interesting as it illustrates the principle that in many member states the third sector and non-profit social service providers are public authorities’ partners that contribute to the definition, planning, implementation and evaluation of social policies and services.

The parties involved in the cooperation agreement in Skåne see a particular value in the non-profit-distributing types of activities represented by non profit organisations. They clearly affirm that the aim of the agreement is not to reduce costs of social policies and services, but to contribute to opening up possibilities for ventures leading to increased participation and reduced isolation of the people living in that region. The Region commits to foresee adequate resources in the budget to support for coordination and development work of the non profit organisations involved in the agreement. Areas of cooperation include social enterprises, volunteering, public health, welfare development, culture. One of the objectives of the Region is to explore possibilities for other forms of operation through changed procurement procedure.

Social Platform has long been calling for the development of a partnership approach between public authorities and NGOs, which is essential to plan and deliver quality social policies and services. NGOs: for example, the latter have a direct link with users on the ground, are able to detect new social needs, bring social innovation to new social problems, can collect data that are not available to authorities (e.g. on undocumented migrants; on new poverties).