Innovation and Service Development through evolving Forms of Collaboration

The project "Innovation and Service Development through Evolving Forms of Collaboration" (INNOS) has been funded by the Praksisvel/HELSEVEL-program of Norwegian Research Council from 2013 to 2017. INNOS has been based on collaboration between the University of Stavanger, Fafo, Agder Research and Agder University (UiA), which has been responsible for the project management. The overall objective of the project has been to increase the knowledge of collaborative relations in the welfare field and to improve the understanding of the prerequisites for developing knowledge-based and better services. The focus of the project has been the study of innovation and service development based on new forms of cooperation: across established services, across public and private sectors, between users and service providers, and between users, researchers, educators and practitioners. The project has included five subprojects plus a PhD-project and from the autumn of 2014 also a small pilot project, which was completed in June 2015. The subprojects have been based on a close cooperation with one or more of the actors in the field of practice: municipalities, NAV, user organizations and the County Governor of Aust- and Vest-Agder. Several of the projects have helped to elucidate structural challenges in cooperation within the welfare field. One of the subprojects has shown that there is a great need for new meeting places between NAV and the child welfare service when it comes to working with low-income families with children. Different logics, "work first" in NAV and "care first" in child welfare services, have had the consequences that children's everyday life in low-income families have not been prioritized. Two of the subprojects have been concerned with the relationship between education and practitioners and/or users. Results from one of these show that user representatives involved in supervising bachelor students in social work help to strengthen the students' understanding of the users' situation and to increase and expand the amount of guidance the students receive during their practice. The second subproject has shown that the practice period for bachelor students in social work can be organized so that students participate in student-active research by identifying some research questions they will work with together with their practice supervisor. The study helped the students become more aware of different forms of knowledge and how they can contribute to new insights into current social problems. Several of the subprojects have shown that collaboration between academia, practitioners and users in research and development has led to changing established roles. Users have become contributors instead of being recipients of services. User experiences have become a resource in knowledge development and at the same time contributed to a positive recovery of users. Also weak groups like addicts have turned out to make contributions to service development. The practitioners have left the expert role and become partners in collaboration with users and researchers. Also, the researchers? power of definition and the official objectives for the project work have been challenged. The research collaboration has highlighted a number of practical questions: for example, what is the correct remuneration of users who participate and whether or not users participating should have an organizational anchorage. It has also made visible a special vulnerability connected to the dependency of contextual relationships, like political and / or administrative processes within municipalities, user organizations and other partners, which may delay the project work. Based on the interviews in the three municipalities seven main approaches to innovation, or ways in which managers respond to the concept of innovation, have been identified: 1) Easing the process of introducing innovation 2) Initiating internal activities 3) Building competence and capacity 4) Joining ready-made programmes 5) Joining (informal) collaborative arenas 6) Joining (formal) collaborative network organisations and 7) Collaboration with universities and researchers. In the PhD project "The situation of biological children in foster homes", the life experiences of foster parents' own / biological children have been studied. The results indicate that these children are an overlooked group, risking strains as a result of the family being a foster home. The project provides an empirical as well as an ethical contribution that may affect service development and further development of social policy guidelines for foster homes. The INNOS project was formally completed 30.9. 2017. In general, the project has contributed to a concretization of what the ideal of increased cooperation in research within the welfare field may entail in practice.

This project will increase our understanding of the conditions for developing innovative practices that may contribute to evolving forms of collaboration and new skills, the need for which is emphasized in a number of official documents, included White Pa per No. 13 (2011-2012). The project will analyse innovation and service development through evolving forms of collaboration: across established services; between users and providers of services and between users, researchers, educators and practitioners . Innovation also requires an education system that may help practitioners to develop an analytical perspective or research mindedness, based on a broad definition of research. It will provide knowledge about key prerequisites for realizing the goal of kn owledge-based services by investigating how practitioners deliver services in direct interaction with users, including the context of this interaction. The project is a partnership between the University of Stavanger, Fafo, Agder Research and the Univers ity of Agder, which is the applicant institution and will have responsibility for the project management. The proposed research may be characterized as explorative. Welfare services will be studied as a multidimensional phenomenon. The project includes f ive subprojects plus a PhD. project approaching the overall objectives differently, including combinations of research collaborations and a traditional qualitative design of interviews and focus groups. Two subprojects will use quantitative methods. The s ub-projects will involve practitioners and/or service users in various ways and in different phases of research.