Working paper series FVeP 32ISSN: 2240-3272

Andrea Conficoni*Marco Emilio*

Nicola Vendramin*

Participatory

Processes and Local

Communities

Promoting New Social Subjectivities in Territorial Wel-

fare Policies and Services

Selected, presented and discussed at the interna tional conference

“Participatory local welfare, citizenship and third sector organiza-

tions. What is at stake?” Pisa, 31st January – 1st February 2013

Abstract

In the last years in the Region of Veneto, Italy, specific local laws, national

strategies and European Community Programs have spurred many participatory

processes in different social policy areas. The results of these interventions were

significantly heterogeneous with respect to the effects on the participants and

the local communities. In this context this paper provides a comparative analys-

is of what was experienced by a third sector organisation, Cooperative Il Sest-

ante of Treviso, in welfare policies addressed to families. Within diverse rela-

tional environments, this subject has conducted participatory processes accord-

ing to largely homogeneous approaches, which are identifiable in the com-

munity work paradigm and in the methodology of Action-Research, aiming to

empower individuals, groups, and communities.

In relation to the experimentation of local policies that try participatory pro-

cesses this paper aims at analysing these different participatory projects invest-

igating if and how they were able to build innovative relations between citizens

and institutions within the communities and at trying to review the logic behind

the models of intervention and the patterns of managing the social policies.

Key words: Third Sector Organisation; Governance; Family Policies

*Il Sestante Cooperativa Sociale ONLUS - Treviso (Italy)

Andrea Conficoni: andreaconficoni@ilsestante.eu

Marco Emilio: marcoemilio@ilsestante.eu

Nicola Vendramin: nicolavendramin@ilsestante.eu

2

IntroductionOne of the most recent areas of development of local welfare1 in Italy pertains to

intervention on family policies, activated by various public bodies which often

have very different goals and institutional mandates. This paper tries to exam-

ine some local participatory projects run by a Third Sector Organisation, il Sest-

ante2, that involved citizens, families, public institutions and other social actors.

This research aims especially to investigate the following aspects in depth: a.

how the interventions have promoted participation among the subjects in-

volved; b. how the intervention can create new potential types of governance re-

lated to the territory or to a specific welfare area (interventions aimed at famil-

ies); c. how the interventions can cause a risk of exclusion as well as an oppor-

tunity of inclusion; d. the role played by the third sector actor Cooperativa Il

Sestante concerning the first three dimensions in relation to the Public Admin-

istration (PA) and to the citizens.

This paper will start explaining the meaning of participation, social exclusion

and governance, by means of references mentioned in the bibliography. After

achieving this, it will analyse the projects and the related participatory processes

initiated within the family policy area, following two main streams: progress

made in communication between citizens and institutions on the one hand, and

the evolution of the types and methods of intervention on the other.

The last section of the paper will identify some thoughts, potentially valid in

general, about the analysed participatory processes, their consequences in terms

of exclusion/inclusion and the governance models of welfare policies with refer-

ence to the relationship between third sector operators and public administra-

tions. The paper will try to outline useful key elements to explain the change

factors within institutional policies and within the third sector's role in the local

community welfare.

1 See www.osservatorionazionalefamiglie.it 2 The social cooperative Il Sestante has been active since 1989 planning and managing interventions in-volving youth, family, community and underage policies, mainly in the provinces of Treviso and Padua. It avails itself of the expertise of professionals especially youth and social workers. It manages various pro-jects related to youth and community policies. The authors of this paper are social workers and trainers of the Cooperativa Il Sestante and they have been in contact with the former and current supervisors/co-ordinators of the three projects before drafting the contents of this paper.

3

1. Participation, exclusion and governance in a relational

and processual framework

Defining the conceptual framework for the analysis of participation, the main

goal of exclusion and governance is to place future reflections along certain dir-

ections of the present literature on welfare3. The aim of this research suggests

considering the aspects of the concepts that evaluate the relational and systemic

side of the processes. This particular interpretation is linked to the general vis-

ion of the interventions promoted by Il Sestante, focussed on goals that propose

a change as commonly understood nowadays in the social work sector. With

reference to the definition4 used in the year 2000 by the International Federa-

tion of Social Workers, social work aimed at the promotion of participatory pro-

cesses is understood by Il Sestante within a logic of change that acts and com-

petes with the context that relates to the forms of acknowledgement and of in-

teraction between different subjects, to the criteria used to access resources, to

the social and economic opportunities, etc.5. In this perspective, the relational

and processual dimensions of the concepts are defined in order to explain the

system of actors and the empowerment levels of the various subjects6.

The latter is a further interpretation that takes into account the “empowerment

experience”7 that participatory processes experience and understand. Em-

powerment, according to M. Zimmerman, carries with it a specific pre-under-

standing of the interventions that promote participation and social change, pay-

ing attention in particular to the way resources are accessed and to changing

their unequal distribution8.

3 This paper is not meant to offer an overview of the various meanings attributed to participation, social ex-clusion and governance.

4 “The social work profession promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the em-powerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and so-cial systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work”. See Hare (2004).

5 See Hare (2004), Villa (2011).

6 Among others Schulz, Israel, Zimmerman and Checkoway (1993) and Zimmerman (1999). The empower-ment of subjects (individuals, groups and organisations/communities) can only be considered from the point of view of the processes. With empowering processes, the subjects will express specific empowered levels.

7 See Laverack and Wallerstein (2001), p. 181.

8 See Zimmerman (1999), p. 11 on the role of professionals in relation to the community.

4

1.1 Participation

There are several references to the meaning of participation because this term

has also gained an ambivalent functional value, according to the analyses made

by the related literature9: on one hand it is true that social policies and interven-

tions carried out with higher degrees of involvement and participation do give

better quality results; on the other hand participation can often become a useful

“cover/mask” to legitimize interventions that might otherwise create a conflict10.

In our opinion, the three phases detailed below are relevant in order to achieve a

fertile background for the following analyses.

The first one, developed through fieldwork, underlines the fact that linking par-

ticipation and empowerment enables the reading and identification of various

participation levels and processes. These different levels and processes lead to

different degrees of active citizenship or, in other words, to different roles for

the citizens, the local community and the institutions when it comes to defining

the social policies and to planning social work (Branca 2005 and 2007). These

levels are also described in literature as passive participation, problem-solving

participation and problem-setting participation11, or, more generally as pass-

ive, functional, active or promotional12. All these classifications express both the

way in which power (and its management) is or is not redistributed, and also the

model of proximity between citizens and institutions in relation to subsidiarity13.

The second phase thoroughly contextualises social work in relation to the con-

nection between citizens and institutions: promoting participation demands to

“recognise social processes as a legitimate source of expression, information,

orientation, decision, evaluation”, with the added possibility of “rediscussing

9 See Borghi and van Berkel (2005) p. 4 and following, Villa (2012) p. 2.

10 The use of the word “participation” with a “validating” function is also found in the remarkable “scientif-ic” effort to define the participatory interventions carried out by the World Bank. Even if the subject matter is totally different, it is interesting to see how the dynamics of the semantic construction of speech (See Foucault 1988) connects, in the redefinition of the legitimated system of actors with a confrontation on land distribution. See Conficoni (2007). See Commission of the European Communities (2001) and OECD, (2001).

11 See Borghi and van Berkel (2005), p. 7.

12 See Villa (2011), p. 5.

13 Ibidem, pp. 4 and following.

5

routines and operating logics”14. On the one hand this directly links participa-

tion and change; on the other it requires looking at participation as develop-

ment and interdependence of the various empowerment levels15.

The third and last phase is to identify16 participation as “1) a process, 2) interac-

tion, 3) in which the actors involved can potentially influence the type and out-

come of the process itself, and therefore also power distribution and its existing

differences”17. In our opinion the importance of this perspective is crucial as it

facilitates a dynamic and systemic vision of the analysed subjects and objects.

This enables an understanding of power in its relational dimension (Raffestin

1980, Crozier and Friedberg 1978) and the ability to look at the interdependence

between the various subjects, the intervention logics and the related legitimiza-

tion processes18. Based on our analysis of the perspective of participatory pro-

cesses, this interaction process gains relevance from the point of view of the Ac-

tion Research as methodological approach for the process development19.

1.2 Social exclusion

Within the current debate of social research and when looking for new welfare

models, the concept of social exclusion appears to be a reference point and a dy-

namic, multidimensional and relational category that focuses on the “processes”

and not on the “conditions” that push individuals and social groups to a state of

vulnerability, marginality and poverty20.

This semantic perspective attempts to find a relational definition of the concepts

within a systemic perspective that links subjects, context and actions. The indi-

14 See Villa (2012).

15 See Zimmerman (1999) to understand the essential value of the three concepts that, in the Author's opin -ion, build the structure of an empowerment theory: control, critical consciousness and participation.

16 See Villa (2012).

17 For the Author this “sociological, formal and dynamic” definition helps one to understand, among other things, the minimum sociological conditions of the involved actors (first of all the citizens) in order for them to contribute to the decision-making functions of the territory, recognise themselves, be recognized and make decisions, express and define needs and the related interventions and build a legitimate in -formation together. In Villa (2012), p. 24.

18 See among others Villa (2011 e 2012). This last phase helps one to understand the role of our organisa-tion in the participatory processes that it promotes. See the third section of this paper.

19 Branca and Colombo (2003), p. 29. 20 See Benedetti (2009), Villa (2003) and in particular Saraceno (1999).

6

vidual and social dimensions are therefore permanently connected, “recalling

the relation between subjects and institutions by the definition of intervention

strategies”21. The processional nature of social exclusion can therefore be seen as

relative, in relation to the specific features of each territory and its dynamics

(Kronauer 2002).

Through multidimensionality different contexts for the policies against exclu-

sion, with different models of coordination, integration and even management

can be visualised. On the basis of the concept of exclusion that we refer to, we

conceive social policies and interventions as processes that try to create new

forms of inclusions that are matched in today's debate to the concepts of activa-

tion and participation22.

1.3 Governance

Recalling an influential definition within the international framework (UNDP),

governance can be defined as: “a neutral concept comprising the complex mech-

anisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and

groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and medi-

ate their differences”23.

This term explains both the processes with which decisions are made and the

processes with which these decisions are put into practice24. This concept con-

sistently fits the framework we are trying to build for the analysis of the parti-

cipatory processes mentioned above. On the one hand it recalls the formation of

the relational system of the actors involved in social policies and interventions,

on the other it can bring into focus the local, territorial dimension of such inter-

ventions25.

Furthermore, when considering participatory processes, it is important to view

21 Benedetti (2009), p. 38.

22 See among others Borghi (2002), van Berkel and Hornemann Møller (2002), Borghi and van Berkel (2005), Villa (2005).

23 Definition of “governance” found on the website InterActive Terminology for Europe, which refers to “Governance for sustainable human development - A UNDP policy document. Glossary of key terms. In http://mirror.undp.org/magnet/policy/glossary.htm. Accessed on 20-12-2012.

24 “The process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemen-

ted)”. In UNESCAP (2012).

7

governance as a reflexive self-organisation of actors that are in an interdepend-

ent relationship for the development of common projects (Jessop 2002)26. From

this perspective it is possible to go beyond a dichotomy relationship between the

rulers and the ruled, taking into account the involvement and the proactivity of

all actors directly involved in the policy definition and implementation27.

In our opinion it is important to point out that this framework can be read and

explained from a relational perspective as the processes aimed at promoting

participation and the creation of interventions in the local welfare at a micro

level. Specifically dimensions that are not just linked to the citizen participation,

but also to the way that the system of “formal” actors and their interactions

changes from a governance perspective during the projects can be found.

On the basis of the defined interpretation, we will now critically explain the pro-

cesses and projects from the perspective of the third sector organisation28,

which has been active operationally and methodically in the welfare sector of

family policies.

25 “Since governance is the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemen-

ted, an analysis of governance focuses on the formal and informal actors involved in decision-making and implementing the decisions made and the formal and informal structures that have been set in place to ar-rive at and implement the decision. Government is one of the actors in governance. Other actors involved in governance vary depending on the level of government that is under discussion”. Ibidem, p. 1.

26 See Jessop (2002), p. 1.

27 “Governance is an important means to overcome the division between rulers and ruled in representative regimes and to secure the input and commitment of an increasingly wide range of stakeholders in policy formulation and implementation”, in Jessop (2002), p. 3. See also Castells (1996 and 1997).

28 From now on TSO.

8

2. New social subjectivities: participatory processes with

families and institutional contexts

2.1 Family policies as experimental setting of municipal welfare and

participatory processes

Participation, exclusion and governance take on particular interest in the parti-

cipatory social processes in the sectors of municipal welfare which are innovat-

ive or of recent activation, as is the case of family policies. In this field it is pos-

sible to analyse interventions that arise in a fragmentary legislative framework,

which, due to its incompleteness, has enabled the development of original ex-

perimentations of participation paths and of new actions that involve collective

actors (families, trade associations, etc.) and not just single citizens in relation

to the local institutions.

It must be clarified that family policies can play a relevant role in the local wel-

fare systems: the municipal administrations, when dealing with a family in its

entirety, act (directly and indirectly) on the issues of its members as minors -

the elderly, the disabled, etc. 29. The local authorities have been activating these

policies in a variety of ways which match the variety of definitions attributed to

the concept of “family”. The interventions promoted by Il Sestante as TSO, have

been carried out following two main guidelines.

According to the first guideline, the family takes on the role of primary network

that builds a relational bridge between the individual and society. When enact-

ing this role, the family can generate a social capital as long as it manages to en-

dorse both the internal relations and the relations to the outside30. This generat-

ing ability of the family turns the family itself into a potential “common good”

that should be promoted, instead of seen as a bearer of problems that need to be

solved.

The second guideline is based on the principle of horizontal subsidiarity, rather

considering families as bearers of resources, ideas and intentions that can con-

tribute to the community well-being which cooperate with the institutions. With

29 Pozzobon and Michelon (2005), p. 66.

30 Donati P., La famiglia come capitale sociale primario, quoted in Pozzobon and Michelon (2005), p. 72.

9

this interpretation, the new interaction between citizens and institutions does

not just take on a relational value, but it becomes in fact “a different way to pur-

sue the common interest, therefore to administrate”31.

Following these guidelines, the interventions on family policies analysed in this

paper reflect on the pragmatic meaning that the concepts of participation, exclu-

sion and governance can acquire at a local level, and on the role that the TSO re-

sponsible for the intervention's organisation and methodology can acquire when

promoting these interventions.

In order to expound such reflections, we will outline a short description of three

different projects, coherent in terms of the methods used and the type of initial

commissioner. On the basis of this contextual data we will form the meaning for

the concepts of participation and governance in relation to the analysis of two

different variables: 1) the type of communicational interaction between citizens

and administrations and 2) the method used to develop the various processes.

The choice of these variables and the analysis itself do not claim to be complete.

They do, however, aim at spotlighting some key elements in order to analyse the

interrelations between TSO, citizens and public administrations with regard to

promoting participation processes, organisational structures, risks and oppor-

tunities for the resolution of complex social problems.

2.2 Description and analysis of the interventions

The projects described in the following have been carried out in the towns of

Montebelluna and Asolo, in the province of Treviso, and in the town of Isola Vi-

centina, in the province of Vicenza, in the Veneto region. These municipalities

show some interesting similarities and differences. Firstly , in relation to their

dimension: Asolo and Isola Vicentina are similarly sized, with approximately

9.500 inhabitants, whereas Montebelluna is much bigger32, with approximatelty

30.000 inhabitants.

In relation to previous cooperation experiences with Il Sestante, both the muni-

cipality of Montebelluna and that of Asolo had already been cooperating for a

31 See Arena (2005), pp. 18 and following.

32 Particularly in relation to the context of the Veneto Region, where the municipalities have an average of about 8.500 inhabitants (source ISTAT 2011).

10

few years in the promotion of youth and community policies, whereas Isola Vi-

centina did not have such a strong background. It is important to underline this

at the beginning of our analysis, as on the one hand it means that the TSO

already knew the territory, on the other hand it shows that some administra-

tions are more prone to use a certain methodological approach when developing

a local project. This would then lead to an already active and somewhat well-es-

tablished cooperation.

In all three examples, the local administrations appointed Il Sestante with the

operational and methodological implementation of the intervention. The goals

of the three different interventions are similar and consistent with the logic of

community work33 and with the model of multileveled empowerment34. All focus

is on family as the acting subject that enters a relation with other subjects in or-

der to take charge of the well-being of its own community at a local level. The in-

terventions are therefore aimed at adult citizens in their own municipality. In all

cases, the expected results are placed in a trial dimension and not in a content

one, favouring the outcome with respect to the output.

The projects of Montebelluna and Isola Vicentina have activated macro pro-

cesses of Action Research35 repeated for more cycles. Starting with contacting

the territorial gatekeepers, the projects have then tried to involve potential par-

ticipants, outlining and defining their needs, putting their needs in an order of

priority and trying to single out actions that can answer the needs considered as

primary. These actions have then been negotiated with the administration

(political and administrative representatives), implemented and then evaluated.

As can be seen in both cases, the evaluation phase was essential for the continu-

ity of the processes.

The process activated in the municipality of Asolo, even if consistent with the

other two from the point of view of the method used, is different in that it did

not invite the citizens to express themselves and to get together in relation to

their needs, but it asked them to subscribe to one specific need attributed to the

community by the administration itself (supporting the vulnerable members of

33 See Martini and Torti (2003).

34 See Zimmerman (1999).

35 See Branca and Colombo (2003a,b).

11

the society). Thus, the initial connection developed from the intention to do

something in order to answer a need defined by the institutions, not a need that

the participants felt as their own. The rest of the process was carried out in a

similar way to the other ones (for a detailed description of the projects, please

see chart 1).

12

Chart 1

13

In all three cases, the role played by the social workers was to design, together

with the commissioning administration, the whole process in the start-up phase,

to put together the tools with which to define the method to follow, to facilitate

the group and assembly activities, to promote an active role of the groups within

the local community, and to finally renegotiate their own operational role to-

gether with the participants and with the administration.

The two variables used for the analysis of the project (the type of communica-

tion between citizens and institutions and the methods used) need to be clari-

fied in order to fully understand their meaning in the context.

Communication is considered, not so much for its syntactic and semantic fea-

tures, but principally for its pragmatic role as vehicle of the relation between the

parts that make the system. What matters is not predominantly the content of

the messages, but rather, the pragmatic way in which communication influences

behaviours, decisions and positions of the various actors36, defining the type of

interaction. From this perspective, the communication between the participants

and the supervisors, in this case between participating citizens, TSO and admin-

istration, takes on a central role to define the forms of participation37, exclusion

and governance that develop during the process.

The interest for the methodology is based on the hypothesis that the presence of

social workers in the process definition does not guarantee a higher degree of

proximity to and among the citizens and, therefore, a higher degree of participa-

tion. In fact, “the intervention logics, the implementation, management and

realisation models also bring in this case different possibilities, favouring vari-

ous degrees of pre-structuring and of chances to feel considered for recipients

and citizens”38.

To sum up, the two variables can lead to a qualitative analysis, (see chart 2),

even if somewhat limited, of how the processes have worked between different

participation forms, with the pertaining risks-opportunities of exclusion-inclu-

sion, and in relation to the process governance.

36 See Watzlawick et al. (1967).

37 Villa (2011), p. 14.

38 Villa (2011), p. 10.

14

Chart 2

If we look at communication between the various subjects involved in the de-

scribed processes, we will see that in the starting phases of the projects there is

no direct communication between the citizens and the administrations. At the

beginning communication moves from a decision-making, political level, (i.e.

the local administration), to a technical, operational level, represented by the

TSO, which has the task to put the project into practice. The social workers,

therefore, have to mediate communication between citizens and institutions, re-

porting the decisions taken from one level to the other.

On one hand this mediation role protects, from a relational point of view, the

15

citizens' expression of needs and problems and allows the process to develop in

times suitable for a collective structuring of the citizens, on the other hand it

considerably strengthens the relation between operators and participants, pos-

sibly increasing the risk of manipulating the activated processes, with the risk of

placing the operators in an advocacy position which is far from the empower-

ment logic.

In the reported processes of Action Research, participants and administrations

start to interact directly when the participants define the actions that need to be

carried out and negotiate such actions, helped by the operators, with the admin-

istration in order to obtain the resources to implement them. From the moment

that a form of communication, even if somewhat partial, between citizens and

institutional representatives is started, the processes develop towards a growing

interaction between the various subjects, even if with interesting differences in

the outcome.

In the process activated in the municipality of Montebelluna, the communica-

tion between the three subjects (families, operators and administration) comes

across as direct, and it circulates within a co-ordinating table, made out of a rep-

resentative for each involved party (theme groups for each area of need), that

has the task to guide the whole process. The supervision of the process, accord-

ing to the project’s intentions, aims at being shared, following the perspective of

horizontal subsidiarity, where the resources of the administration, the voluntary

resources of the families and the expertise of the operators appear to become in-

terdependent when everyone is formally granted the “relational power” to influ-

ence each other. In this context, an interesting step of the process is the attempt

of the operators to allow a progressive acquisition of communication tools by

the families (with ad hoc trainings) to facilitate the interaction between the dif-

ferent levels.

The project Fa.Re. Sostegno of Asolo has also had, in parts, a similar develop-

ment. In the end the three involved subjects co-managed the process, by putting

together an organisational form of reciprocal interdependence in the definition

of the welfare service policy, but at the same time maintaining specific roles and

tasks as regards the interventions. In this case the process supervision was dep-

utized to an entity made out of the group of families, the social workers and the

administrative representatives of the municipal social services. At this level of

16

organisation, the communication between the subjects appears to be direct. The

subjects interact together with the political representative of the administration,

which remains the decision-making entity when it comes to allocating the re-

sources. While the technical and political levels are kept clearly separated, the

“re-structuring” of the “technical” organisational level appears to be rather sig-

nificant, in that very different subjects relate to the political representatives in a

collective way, independently from the group or organisation they belong to, in

order to define some procedures to support the most vulnerable subjects in their

territory.

In a different way, the process activated in Isola Vicentina has seen the estab-

lishment of a Forum that then became an independent body (formally and also

from the point of view of its organisation), that relates to the administration in

an independent way. In this case the families took over the process supervision

from the operators, establishing a collective entity that acts between local com-

munity, families and local administration, with the aim to co-operate, but also

negotiate, with the public entity about the development of specific actions.

When analysing the projects we can identify two main methodological aspects

which are common to all three cases and that influenced the process develop-

ment in a relevant way.

The first aspect concerns the passage from individual to group, that is, the

transition from being a single family to becoming part, as a family, of a group

context in which to share needs and projects for the future. The change of meth-

od39 from single family to group of families aims at legitimating individual needs

(as single family) in a group context (promoting the legitimacy and the acknow-

ledgement of the individual) and at developing a collective vision of the com-

munity, a key step towards community empowerment40. As the individual posi-

tion becomes a “group” position, it can then take on a legitimacy that allows it to

interact with the institutions. This facilitates the transition from groups of fam-

ilies to the Forum and structures a relationship between groups of families and

the community.

The second methodological aspect that appears to influence the process devel-

39 This becomes a change of method when the operators use a group context as a tool for expression and sharing, allowing the participants to see new possible outcomes.

40 See Zimmerman (1999).

17

opment is the introduction of specific occasions for an empowerment evaluation, according to the empowerment evaluation41 model,

among the families and between families, operators and administrations.

In all cases these occasions of empowerment evaluation aimed at developing a metacommunicational value42, establish the condi-

tions to be able to talk about the process and not just within the process. The intentions of Il Sestante operators, is to encourage this

type of reflective action so the different subjects will question what is taken for granted, for example even the premises at the basis of

the intervention. In this way the conditions for achieving a change are established, that is, in Bateson's words, “a change in the defin-

ition of things in order to reach a new definition of the same things43”. These occasions of partaken evaluation have allowed a re-

definition of the different roles played until that moment and the establishment of new interaction forms between families, operators

and administrations.

As shown by the variety of the outcomes of the different projects, the developments of the participatory processes according to the

approach of Action Research and of the empowerment model do not appear to progress in a consistent way, on the contrary they are

affected by the contextual variables. It is, therefore, essential to establish moments of evaluation as metacommunicational occasions

to review past decisions and to find new solutions44.

In conclusion we would like to analyse the processes within the framework of the concepts and guidelines defined so far, identifying

41 See Fetterman, Kaftarian and Wandersman (1996).

42 For the concept of “metacommunication” see Watzlawick et al. (1967).

43 See Sclavi (2003), pp. 26-27.

44 In the case of Isola Vicentina, for example, the redefinition of the operator's role from facilitator and supervisor of the process to consultant for the forum led the forum itself to a deadlock, because the families were unable to independently lead the assemblies and to manage the decision-making. For this reason the implementation of a micro-process of evaluation enabled the expression of such difficulty in dealing with the managing tools, which had remained unstated until that moment, and new actions were identified to solve this issue.

18

the key elements to understand the complex of relations between social workers on one side and institutions and citizens on the oth-

er side (see also chart 3).

Chart 3

With reference to participation, it is interesting to

note the progressive increase of involvement of the

citizens, from a problem-solving to a problem-set-

ting participation, in which families define the

problems and the related causal context. The act-

ors of the local community involved in the process

19

appear to be progressively able45 to collectively influence, in a structured way, the processes, their outcome and the initial power dif-

ferences.

At the same time, the establishment of collective entities that are able to co-operate, to negotiate or even to potentially clash (as in

the case of the project in Isola Vicentina) with the public institutions, shows a somewhat interesting outcome in that it goes beyond a

functional logic46 of participatory processes in order to promote an effective increase in the citizens' capability to voice47.

There are, however, some open issues concerning adding new subjects (families) to the processes. It is still unclear as to how to in -

tegrate new families, especially socially vulnerable ones, in participatory processes that have already started. On the one hand the

defined structuring of the interventions shows the capability to improve the education of the families involved in terms of empower-

ment and in their relation to the administration, on the other hand it does not fully clarify the issue of the entrance condition and the

changes to the relational network, formal and informal, between public institutions and the families that are not involved in the pro-

cess.

This leads to some reflexions on social exclusion. The influence of processes on changing the way the public institutions relate to

families needs to be considered together with the apparently inadequate capability to influence the policies and general social ser-

vices supervised by the local entity. In other words it is interesting to pay attention to the risk of building a sort of “paddock for parti -

cipation”, in which the participatory processes develop new interventions, to involve families and to promote new processes, but

they do not always manage to work outside the area of “special” projects. In our opinion, there are two significant experiences con-

cerning the influence on Public Social Services: in the project of Isola Vicentina the Forum decided to donate their part of a regional

45 Consistently with the empowerment model.

46 See Villa (2011) e cit.

47 Bonvin and Thelen (2009). In social work, in terms of empowerment, the paths followed by individuals and groups can allow them to act with new consciousness, new levels of competence and sense of belonging. This impacts on the ability to stay in a relation to other subjects and in the context, acting directly in terms of voice.

20

prize (about 12.000 €) to Municipality Social Services to create a fund to support social disease and exclusion. The Asolo project

clearly demonstrates a structural connection between policies, institutional social services and participatory processes. In this case

there is an interesting attempt to build informal relational networks that are able to potentially reduce the risk of social exclusion for

the families of the local communities, whereas in other cases the structural social services of the public entity (and their method of

interaction with the recipients with a potential risk of exclusion) remain unchanged.

On the basis of these considerations we can discuss the developments of the projects from the point of view of governance. The par-

ticipatory processes have created the establishment of a reflexive self-organisation of actors in an interdependent relation for the

development of common projects (Jessop 2002). The attention paid to the establishment of communicational processes and the

methodological approaches described above have progressively enabled forms of governance between public entity, TSO and families

of the new implemented projects: the planning, negotiation and evaluation of the actions happens through a (new) legitimation of

the activated families. At the same time it is important to note two aspects.

Firstly, as already stated, governance in the welfare sector of services aimed at families remains limited to projects proposed by the

families and not to the complex of services developed by the local public entity for the families. We will get back to the permeability

of public institutions on the participatory processes in the third section of this paper.

At the same time there is an open issue concerning the real role of TSO between public entities and citizens on the co-ordinating

table and in general within the processes. There are at least two elements that should be examined in depth: the dichotomy

autonomy-dependence of the families involved and the TSO's position as supplier of services and, at the same time, as actor on the

co-ordinating tables and in the relation between families and public entities.

Concerning the first aspect, on one hand the TSO has aimed at promoting, within the empowerment model, the autonomy of the

family subjects in their relationship to the public entity, aspiring to delegate (explicitly or implicitly) to the families the functions of

21

process co-ordination and supervision at a certain level of development. On the other hand the setup of these tables foresees a struc-

tural role for the TSO itself. An interesting alternative to this role of TSO is the totally independent management of the Action Re-

search process by Isola Vicentina families. In this case the role of TSO is merely to deliver training and counselling services. TSO is

one of the actors involved by the families, but not the only one with which they are related.

This leads to discuss about the risks and opportunities that arise from the interaction between the goals of autonomy of the activated

families (pursued by TSO) and the roles acted by the TSO organization. At the same time it questions how families can be able, in

terms of tools and representation, to be legitimised in their relation to the public administration about the process development bey-

ond the TSO actor.

A first partial answer could be that this aspect merely concerns the processes, and it therefore needs to be supported with a constant

“participatory maintenance” through the help of an expert, in order to be able to interact with the complex institutions that deal with

welfare.48

Concerning the potentially dual role of TSO as supplier of the public entity and as actor in the processes, it is possible to formulate

some observations that might help clarify this ambiguous aspect for the institutions and for the citizens. First of all, the power of exit

within the participatory processes should be considered: from the start the TSO can plan a new configuration of its role during the

project development (with the negotiation with the other actors), changing progressively from supervisor to consultant, exiting the

processes entirely, or moving its scope to other levels of intervention linked to other participation objects. In this perspective the ex-

perience of Asolo is interesting, in that it identifies a third subject, different from the operators involved so far, to monitor the inter -

action between the TSO, administration and families. In this dimension it is essential to have an occasion of empowerment evalu -

ation that will clarify, in the different steps, the roles played by the TSO in the participatory process, both within the teams that man -

48 See Tomei and Villa (2010).

22

age the processes, and in relation to administrations, citizens and TSO.

In conclusion the underlined levels need to examine in depth the relation between operators, TSO and public administration in order

to identify potential key elements along the concepts of participation, social exclusion and governance.

23

3. The role played by the third sector organisations in the processes of participation promotion:

institutional learning and community approach

The analysis made so far leads to some questions on the participatory processes in the territorial welfare policies. On the basis of

what we have discussed, we would like to identify some key points concerning the relationship between third sector operators, insti-

tutions, services aimed at the promotion of social participation and related risks of exclusion.

A first element concerns the question of permeability of welfare public institutions and services on the participatory processes and

their outcome. The projects activated by Il Sestante show that it is possible to structure paths capable of internal governance, where

PAs, TSOs and citizens interact with each other in a reciprocal way. We have already highlighted how “ordinary” projects and ser -

vices of the public institutions find it difficult to borrow innovative ideas to better involve the citizens, thus restricting the results of

the actions to the projects promoted directly by the families.

This difficulty reveals a significant feature of the participatory processes that concerns the relation between TSOs operators and the

PA's representatives (administrative, technical and political) in the process development. The question lies in particular on how the

relation commissioner-supplier between public administrations and TSOs can evolve towards an interaction that allows both sub-

jects to learn to redefine their relation to the citizens and to the local communities. This leads to another question, that is, how the

PA (as a set of political, administrative and technical representatives) in charge of welfare policies is ready to bestow a meaning49 to

the participatory processes activated by the TSOs. This dimension, often left unconsidered by the TSOs itself 50, appears to be the de-

49 See Weick K.E. (1995).

50 See Cerri M. (2003).

24

cisive factor for the sustainability and effectiveness of the interventions. However, from this perspective it is necessary, to establish

occasions of co-planning and empowerment evaluation between TSOs and the administrative subjects involved in the initiatives that

promote participation, this in order to make PAs able to express and define the cost/benefit51 relation (as a relational system) in the

process of involving the citizens.

These considerations also concern the influence that the participatory process, especially for its outcome in terms of governance, has

on the public organisational structure.

When the relationship of citizens-institutions in the participatory processes produces information and actions that are (potentially)

useful for the well-being of individuals and of the community (fighting exclusion), the institutions must be able to reconsider/adjust

procedures and services accordingly. This potential outcome of the relational process between the actors has different values. In

particular the TSO, together with the public administration technicians, can play an important role in changing the distance between

actions and projects on one hand (influenced by the operator's decisions, street-level practices and bureaucracy) and administrative

rules/procedures on the other, as well as between the needs expressed by the territory and the services offered by the public adminis-

tration. Therefore the participatory processes appear to be crucial when working on such gaps and thus provide significance that re -

defines political directions and operative tools that are better linked to territorial needs, recognising roles, responsibilities and po-

tential discretion. In fact, these processes facilitate relational contexts where the accountability on services and projects is carried

out not only in terms of a technical responsibility and evaluation, but also in terms of a political responsibility and evaluation shared

with the citizens.

From another perspective the empowerment processes do not concern all services that aim at fighting social exclusion. In our opin-

51 See Geddes (2003:14)

25

ion, their value lies in the fact that they confer a second level meaning to these innovative relations between citizens and institutions.

From this point of view some projects can influence the planning of projects and services by PAs. If the participatory process is re-

cognised as an intervention that endorses new networks of actors of the local community in relation to the mandates of the PA, the

planning of projects and services will consistently identify the actors in the community that are willing to become involved. In this

perspective, the Action Research processes promoted show some concrete actions regarding the following aspects: tax deduction, vi-

ability, childhood services. Therefore, the citizens involved can be seen as producers, and not as consumers (Baldock 2003, Villa

2007).

Following this first series of thoughts, we would like to outline some reflections related to the basic models of social work from the

perspective of community work and empowerment. In different situations TSOs52 are inclined to see their role as mediator of the in-

teraction between citizens and institutions. We deem it necessary, however, that the no-profit sector53 re-thinks the participatory

processes from the viewpoint of territorial welfare. The no-profit sector should consider the whole local community (institutions, cit-

izens, families, TSO, etc.) as a subject capable of dealing with specific problems of citizens or families within a collective vision of de-

velopment. This change of perspective implies a re-structuring of evaluation phases in the participatory processes (especially

between TSOs and PAs) which permit the involved actors to read the different steps in the progression of the processes not only in

terms of the outcome on themselves, but also of the influence on the community as a whole, in order to envision new chances of col -

lective development54. In our opinion this change of “paradigm” allows participatory processes to be developed in such a way as to

identify new variables, new contexts and new solutions, where the actors become involved in subsequent possible actions. The goal is

to allow the various actors the chance of “learning to consider a wider spectrum of class of variables, it means extending the level of

52 See Tomei and Villa (2010).

53 Particularly in the current transitional phase of the Italian local welfare.

54 Regarding employment policies, See Baccichetto, Emilio (2012)

26

perceived and experimented context: choice and behaviour options increase due to a growing consciousness and capability to ration-

alise on the lower classes and levels55, and to interact with a more differentiated communicative system”56.

In our opinion, the third sector does not have to act in this context as representative or mediator between the levels, but as a profes -

sional subject that, in partnership with the PA and the citizens, builds new forms of communication and reflection in local com-

munities and new opportunities of collective learning in order to promote the social agency necessary to ensure that the citizen's

voice is legitimised by the institutions57.

There are still many unresolved issues, relating to the factors that play a role in the social participatory processes inside public wel -

fare policies, and relating to the cooperation between TSO and local entities regarding the promotion of participation among the cit-

izens and families. As this is a very important matter, and because the various interventions are extremely heterogeneous, it is essen-

tial to continue a comparative analysis of the projects carried out at a local level in Italy and in Europe.

55 Meant as classes and levels of relations in the dynamics between single citizens and institutions.

56 See Tomei and Villa (2010).57 Bonvin and Thelen (2009) pp. 7-8.

27

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