The morphogenesis of disability policies and the personalisation of social services. A case study from Italy.

ABSTRACT

Across Europe, and particularly since the 2008 Financial Crisis, new demands for tailor-made services came from different actors and perspectives: user-led organizations, intellectuals, policy makers, social workers, advocacy organizations, which call for a new way of programming, realizing and evaluating social policies. Personalization became a relevant part of the so called ‘welfare innovation narrative’, which concerns – to name but a few – English personalization agenda, Scottish self-directed support, Finnish education system, Norwegian cash-for-care policies. Even the European Commission is addressing new social services, reshaped through users’ capabilities. The aim of this paper is to critically explain, through a case study focused on the Sardinian disability policy, how social policy's morphogenetic cycles influence the governance of personalized disability plans and, consequently, the possibility of their implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Personalisation
• disability policies
• co-production
• morphogenesis
• governance
• social services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Riccardo Prandini is Full professor at the University of Bologna, Department of Political and social sciences.

Matteo Orlandini, Ph.D in Sociology and Social Research, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna.

ORCID

Riccardo Prandini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2581-3476

Notes

1. ‘The “morpho” element is an acknowledgement that society has no pre-set form or preferred state: the “genetic” part is a recognition that it takes its shape from, and is formed by, agents, originating from the intended and unintended consequences of their activities’ (Archer, 1995, p. 5). The morphogenetic approach is based on two propositions: (i) That structure necessarily pre-dates the actions leading to its reproduction or transformation; (ii) That structural elaboration necessarily post-dates the action sequences which gave rise to it.

2. The following research strategy has been deployed in order to ensure methodological rigour: • Electronic database search using a combination of key words (e.g. personalization; personalized plans; Sardinia Region; disability policies). • Relevant content of the following websites will be reviewed using the same key words: www.abcsardegna.org (Sardinia Children’s Brain Injury Association); www.sardegnasociale.it (Regional Office for Social Policies); www.handylex.org/ (database on Italian disability laws); www.disability-europe.net/ (Academic Network of European Disability experts); www.lavoro.gov.it/ (National Ministry for Social Care). • Grey literature review.

3. Spending per capita has grown from 101.3 euro in 2004 to 229.9 euro in 2012. The Regional Government invested in disability policies: its social expenditure increased from 2170 to 8517 euro for each disabled person (ISTAT, 2009, 2015a, 2015b).

4. In the analysis below, we use arrows and nodes as represented in Figure 2: letters correspond to nodes; numbers to arrows.

Additional information

Funding

This research has received funding from the European Commission, Horizon2020 Programme Societal Challenges: European Societies After the Crisis - under grant agreement [649189]. The research was realized within the project ‘Innovative Social Investment: Strengthening communities in Europe’ (InnoSI).