What is social innovation? The paradigm shift and its relationship with Social Work

Innovation is a fundamental part of social work. In recent years there has been a shift in the innovation paradigm, making it easier to accept this relationship. National and supranational policies aimed at promoting innovation appear to be specifically guided by this idea. To be able to affirm this hypothesis, it is necessary to review the perception that social workers have of their duties. It is also useful to examine particular cases that show how such social innovation arises.

Respuestas sindicales ante el desafío de la empresa-red: sector petroquímico y nuclear

El modelo de empresa-red constituye un desafío para los sistemas de relaciones laborales. Dicho modelo cuestiona el papel de las instituciones colectivas de trabajo, concebidas históricamente en el marco de una organización integrada verticalmente según el modelo fordista. En efecto, la empresa dispersa o el recurso a la subcontratación son contextos cada vez más habituales, en los cuales la organización del trabajo se encuentra disociada de la empresa en sentido jurídico y patrimonial, y donde se establecen relaciones de trabajo triangulares de facto entre empresa principal, empresa de servicios y trabajadores. La búsqueda de respuestas a esta problemática apunta a la reconstrucción de solidaridades entre los trabajadores, pasando por la acción de los representantes de los trabajadores. A partir de un estudio de casos llevado a cabo en dos industrias de flujo, la industria nuclear y la petroquímica, este artículo se propone analizar los efectos de la triangulación de la relación salarial a nivel de planta, y dos procesos experimentales de organización sindical y de negociación colectiva territorial que buscan dar respuesta a la problemática de la subcontratación. El artículo analiza los resultados y límites de dichas experiencias para reconstruir una “comunidad de trabajo” inclusiva de los trabajadores subcontratistas.

Market reforms and privatisation in the English National Health Service

The article examines developments in the marketisation and privatisation of the English National Health Service, primarily since 1997. It explores the use of competition and contracting out in ancillary services and the levering into public services of private finance for capital developments through the Private Finance Initiative. A substantial part of the article examines the repeated restructuring of the health service as a market in clinical services, initially as an internal market but subsequently as a market increasing opened up to private sector involvement. Some of the implications of market processes for NHS staff and for increased privatisation are discussed. The article examines one episode of popular resistance to these developments, namely the movement of opposition to the 2011 health and social care legislative proposals. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these system reforms for the founding principles of the NHS and the sustainability of the service.

Health reforms in Latin America: processes and results

Two types of health reforms in Latin America are analysed: one based on insurance and service commodification and the one referred to the unified public systems of progressive governments. Health insurance with explicit service packages has not fulfilled their purposes of universal coverage, equal access to necessary health services and improvement of health conditions but has opened health as a field of profit making for insurance companies and private health providers. The national health services as a state obligation have developed territorialized health services and widened substantially timely access to the majority of the population. The adoption of an integrated and wide social policy has an impact on population well fare. It faces some problems derived from the old health systems and the power of the insurance and medical complex.

The press for seniors, an emerging sector that doesn’t quite take off

This article is a description and analysis of the press of seniors in Spain, from two points of view: 1. media mapping, and 2. study of the advertising and editorial content that offer two important magazines of the sector: Sesenta y Más, magazine of the IMSERSO, and Senda Senior, as a commercial proposal. As well, of the study is that the sector does not go through its best moment, lack of advertising interest, but headers offer models of life that best fit the new times, profiling a person who without worrying about their health, be more active in the communication field, in the playful and especially in the cultural.

The elderly care and domestic services sector during the recent economic crisis. The case of Italy, Spain and France.

Over the past ten years in Italy, Spain and France, the demographic pressure and the increasing women’s participation in labour market have fuelled the expansion of the private provision of domestic and care services. In order to ensure the difficult balance between affordability, quality and job creation, each countries’ response has been different. France has developed policies to sustain the demand side introducing instruments such as vouchers and fiscal schemes, since the mid of the 2000s. Massive public funding has contributed to foster a regular market of domestic and care services and France is often presented as a “best practices” of those policies aimed at encouraging a regular private sector. Conversely in Italy and Spain, the development of a private domestic and care market has been mostly uncontrolled and without a coherent institutional design: the osmosis between a large informal market and the regular private care sector has been ensured on the supply side by migrant workers’ regularizations or the introduction of new employment regulations . The analysis presented in this paper aims to describe the response of these different policies to the challenges imposed by the current economic crisis. In dealing with the retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduced households’ purchasing power, Italy, Spain and France are experiencing greater difficulties in ensuring a regular private sector of domestic and care services. In light of that, the paper analyses the recent economic conjuncture presenting some assumptions about the future risk of deeper inequalities rising along with the increase of the process of marketization of domestic and care services in all the countries under analysis.