Service design and local welfare: Boosting coordination strategies between PAs and communities

Exploring the theme of improving access to local welfare services, this ongoing research aims to use service design practices as an innovative tool to help Public Administrations (PA) offer new service design models that are more effective, distributed, and responsive to the needs of individual territories. By analyzing three relevant forms of engagement in service design – civic activism at the micro, advocacy in umbrella institutions at the meso, and knowledge circulation and capacity building in European multi-actor organizations at the macro – it explores whether multi-level coordination can empower citizens to effectively advocate for increased access to welfare services and become key interlocutors for territorial development and the redistribution of essential services. In practice, the research analyzes the dynamics present in internal areas, i.e. those territories characterized by the difficulty of access to services, and therefore ideal for highlighting systemic challenges and potential solutions, to activate new experimental approaches and detect new ways of intercepting resources in an autonomous but coordinated way. This research aims to establish a framework for how service design can guide, systematize, and replicate policies that effectively redistribute essential services by enhancing communities; at the same time, through multi-level coordination, it seeks to enhance PA to enact more impactful and targeted policies.