Presentation

The theme of this EUROCITIES Social Affairs Forum on 11-12 March in Murcia is “Social Services reaching out to hardest to reach groups”. The Forum will be introduced together with the Spanish Presidency of the EU and will launch the EUROCITIES activities in the frame of the 2010 year for combating poverty and social exclusion.

Social services today face a number of challenges with regard to reaching and serving citizens - demographic change and an ever-increasing diversity in European cities, diverse everyday-life-patterns, and growing social exclusion make a standardised one-size-fits-all form of service delivery seem unsuitable in many places.

In plenary sessions, workshops and site visits, the Social Affairs Forum will address innovative solutions to this challenge, guided by questions such as:

• Who is hard to reach in which local context and which field of service provision and what are the reasons for this? (from homeless to undocumented migrants)
• Which innovative instruments exist to better adapt services to the needs of service users (from mobile or more decentralised forms of service provision, to consultations with users and electronic service delivery?)
• How can cities renew the tradition of social work to reach out to the excluded population groups?
• What is the (cost-)effectiveness of more accessible services?

Cities are invited to propose presentations for workshops on hard-to-reach groups, specific instruments and innovative instruments for outreach and street work.

Please, send your proposal to dirk.gebhardt@eurocities.eu

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