Social work and social innovation: the need of liable indicators

Abstract

This communication is framed in the research project entitled Frontline Innovative Practices Bank, under UNA4CAREER Programme of the Complutense University of Madrid (MSCA-Cofound)2. Our research project assumes that innovative practices are permanently generated during the frontline interventions, producing, disrupting and/or reconfiguring institutional routines and increasing the quality and impact of social policy. But those initiatives stay hidden, out of visibility and, thus, inaccessible to analysis and measurement. The paper offers a brief review of the state of the art on the relationship between welfare, social work and social innovation, seeking to highlight the urgency of building liable indicators to identify, account and measure social innovation in welfare field and in social services’ frontline intervention. Results: the results refer to the exploratory phase, as this is the initial phase of the project, which is planned to be developed over the next three years. Those innovative practices will be crucial in the coming years to face the new risks in the social field, and appropriate indicators to catch them as well as reliable instruments to collect and share them are needed. Our project focuses on welfare frontline interventions at local level -Social Services of Madrid- in order to identify and collect innovative practices that will be stored and shared in the Frontline Innovative Practices Bank, a collaborative and open access platform to disseminate innovative practices to improve both social intervention and welfare as a system, helping to disseminate successful experiences and smart solutions for increasingly complex social issues.