12_TheSpacesofSocialServicesasSocialInfrastructure:InsightsFromAPolicyDrivenInnovationProjectinMilan_Bricocolo,Marani, Sabatnelli

Question 1

What are welfare spaces?

Answer 1

“… a broad spectrum of urban facilities ranging from collective meeting places to parking lots and churches”.
(secchi 2005)

“…all the urban facilities that guarantee the citizen’s well-being and considers them products of the welfare state.”
(Caldarice, Renzoni 2018)

“… a comprehensive reference to those services and infrastructures that shape people’s lives in cities, referring, among others, to green areas, parks, and open spaces.”
(Tosi, Munarin 2009)

(p.382)

Question 2

Two thematic shifts which reshaped spaces for welfare at the beginning of the 2000s

Answer 2

(1) “From quantity to quality”
(2) From structures to processes”

1) providing a high quantity of services proved inadequate when the quality of those services couldn’t address changing social needs in contemporary cities
2) traditional structures were reinterpreted to make more flexible and diverse solutions

(p.383)

Question 3

What characterises the “post-qualitative era” of service planning?

Answer 3

• emphasis on the differences between private and public services
• questioning how public disinvestment and devolution might have affected localisation strategies
• opening up debate on how third-sector actors might contribute to reshaping public services’ geographies

(p.383)

Question 4

What is “sense-making” in a spatial context?

Answer 4

The way organizations create and acknowledge their environment (Weick 1995)

(p.383)

Question 5

What defines “social infrastructures?”

Answer 5

“those spaces that, besides hosting a functional use, can foster inclusion, publicness, and coexistence among different social groups (Klinenberg 2019)

“long-term physical assets in the social sectors that enable goods and services to be provided” (institutional definition, Fransen et.al. 2018)

… vvv
space for inclusion and coexistence among different social groups + enable goods and services to be provided

(p.383)

Question 6

How has public financing in Italy been distributed historically?

Answer 6

Social services have been a minor focus of public financing, as these needs are seen as the responsibility primarily of the family and local bodies when support is lacking; most public financing has gone to old-age pensions and healthcare services

(p.383)

Question 7

How are social assistance services currently financed in Italy?

Answer 7

The National Fund for Social Policies (Fondo Nazionale per le Politiche Sociali) and by regional and municipal budgets

The National Fund for Social Policies underwent significant reductions after the financial crashes of 2008 and 2011); because of this, the provision of social services is still primarily assigned to municipal admin, who plans and provides services with resources based on national and regional norms and transfers

(p.383-384)

Question 8

What is the basis of the Milanese local welfare system?

Answer 8

Long-term inheritance of enlightened charity activities

(p.384)

Question 9

How did the Department of Social Policies of the City of Milan reorganize its local welfare system (starting in 2011) to face challenges posed by the reduction of transfers from the national level and increase/diversification of social needs?

Answer 9

FROM: traditional organization of social assistance services in rigid category-based system; each category representing a socio-demographic profile or a specific condition of need, each with a corresponding specialised municipal office with its own staff/facilities/budget

TO: (two systems) (1) three new transversal areas, corresponding to the types of interventions of social assistance services: residential, territorial, and home-based; (2) a parallel system was implemented with two forms of access, the first level being universally accessible and the second level of specialised services for citizens if deemed necessary or appropriate

(p.384)

Question 10

What was the aim of WeMi (“Welfare Milan”)

Answer 10

• overcoming the disconnected nature of services provided in Milan
• find innovative answers to increasingly challenging social needs
• extend access to services to a broader range of citizens, including those who may not be “entitled to means-tested support” but still need guidance and assistance access services “through co-payment or home-based services”
• focus on home-based services

(p.385)

Question 11

Which modalities of access were tested by WeMi (two)?

Answer 11

1) Online platform, offering information on all the home-based service providers certified by the municipality of Milan

2) WeMi Spaces, “territorial platforms” which were hybrid and low-threshold places where people can find info and share info they know

(p.385)

Question 12

Why were WeMi spaces introduced?

Answer 12

• to combat digital divide
• support citizens expressing their needs, to therefore increase the capacity for social services to grasp those needs
• bring providers and users into the same space to reduce production cost of services and increase development of social bonds
• enable experimentation of new models of giving access to services (example: the spatial features of such a place)

(p.385)

Question 13

What were aims of the co-design activity led by the authors with the municipal service employees and third-party partners at the initial stages of implementing WeMi spaces (two aims)?

Answer 13

(1) to share knowledge of the current organization, working practices, and spatial features (especially weaknesses)
(2) to collectively identify the goals to be pursued through the experimentation of WeMi spaces and to provide references/case studies/field visits/open discussions to feed design orientations

(p.385)

Question 14

Which stakeholders worked with the author who spent one year in participant observation to gain in-depth understanding of the service methodologies in the pilot WeMi space (San Gattardo)?

Answer 14

• the architect designing the space
• managers of the social cooperative who ran the bar
• WeMi social workers

(p.386)

Question 15

What are the major strengths of “collaborative research?”

Answer 15

• Access to invaluable sources of information
• the possibility to produce knowledge that concretely contributes to innovation

(p.386)

Question 16

What is one of the main limitations of “collaborative research?”

Answer 16

“… the shift from a role that is external to the observed process, to one that is embedded in the innovation process itself”

(p.386)

Question 17

What countermeasures did the authors adopt to combat against the limitation of “collaborative research?”

Answer 17

To combat against the shift from a role that is external to the observed process, to one that is embedded in the innovation process itself, the authors constantly considered several diverse standpoints, and maintained “transparency in the authors’ positionality in all the research phases, including dissemination.”

(p.386)

Question 18

What does involving different actors in social services provision lead to?

Answer 18

Involving different actors in social services provision leads to diversified spatial needs and outcomes that challenge traditional localization strategies and planning tools.

(p.386)

Question 19

Discovered through the first co-design phase, in what ways were the existing spaces for welfare in the city inappropriate?

Answer 19

• unwelcoming settings and aesthetics
• scarce functional compliance and visibility
• (sometimes) severely decayed conditions of structures/internal spaces/equipment

(p.386)

Question 20

What are the requirements to become a WeMi space?

Answer 20

• formal approval from the municipal admin
• follow specific standards concerning activities
• conform to brand identity guidelines, which include spatial configuration, defined by the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano

(p.387)

Question 21

What benefit was gained by the visual identity of WeMi spaces?

Answer 21

“These artefacts immediately communicate the presence of the social service and of those organizations involved in their provision.”

Artefacts: plates on the building facade, signs in the halls, interactive panel

(p.393)

Question 22

Why was it important for the hybrid WeMi spaces to be flexible?

Answer 22

The WeMi spaces could host various activities at different hours of the day, even simultaneously. This makes it possible to serve a variety of functions and uses, and broadens the possible range of services provided. It also allows for a mixing of users with different profiles.

(p.393)

Question 23

What was the key strategy used in this experimentation to branch out to a broader arena of users and discourse services’ categorisation and users’ stigmatisation?

Answer 23

Acess

(p.393)

Question 24

What was the purpose of developing the WeMi platforms (digital and physical)?

Answer 24

• to orient citizens through increasingly complex offers of welfare services and providers
• identify undetected social needs
• foster direct contact between citizens and social workers
• promote shared service provision as well as the users’ active involement

(p.393)