In this article, we have presented the two-sided research design that we developed for answering the question about how and what professionals and other participants of outreach social work practices learn from innovating their own practices. We distinguished five strengths the representatives of which all have to learn to play new roles in order to improve democratization and enabling the citizenship of citizens in vulnerable situations. Without outreach research, it would not have been possible to expose the connection between the learning of representatives of these strengths and other transformation processes on an individual, team, and systemic level. This underlines the importance of outreach research for successful innovations in the social field. In our opinion, our two-sided research design is a precondition for the co-creation of these relative autonomous strengths and the connectedness of each of these three levels. This article is based on the article about the research design of a multi case study of four educational cases Martin Stam wrote for International Journal Of Qualitative Studies in Education (2013b). This research design also formed the basis for a multi case study of six social work cases (published as 'Geef de burger moed' (2012)) and of three social quarter teams (is still ongoing). Both publications were used as a pad for his lecture for NOSMO, HvA en Andragogenkring in 2013. The article presented here elaborates on the findings of the social work and social quarter team case studies.
This book describes how policy workers and administrators of local councils and non-profit organisations can contribute to a social domain in which the people’s strengths are better utilized within the framework of the Social Support Act (Wmo). The book is built up around the three assignments a government sees itself faced with: - The transformation from less of a system world to more of a lifeworld. - The transformation from ‘steering’ in a less top-down to a more bottom-up way. - The transformation from less deductive to more inductive learning and development. In this book they describe how representatives of steering force can contribute to this transformation. In their conclusion, the authors state these representatives cannot ultimately fulfill the role of director in the transformation of the social domain geared to the strengths in the lifeworld. They can help to make the transformation less dependent on ‘higher powers’. The authors end their book with recommendations and suggestions for further research on the topic of WMO. This book is a translated version of “Outreachend besturen in tijden van transitie”, published by Movisie.
This book, ‘Outreach work and imminent eviction: RAAK research’, is a report of the results obtained from the examination of these innovations. The first chapter contains a description of the pilot projects, which brought together care workers from the Blankenberg Foundation and Dynamo for early intervention aimed at preventing threatened evictions. In these interventions, they tried to stay a step ahead of a crisis by getting involved early on the basis of information housing corporations had about their residents’ payment problems. Chapter 2 is a report of a later investigation of the long-term effects of these interventions. The third chapter describes the pilot projects developed by Dynamo and PuurZuid, which made use of the expertise available in the general public, specifically the network of family, friends and neighbours surrounding people with rent payment debts. The expectation was that care workers would be able to provide more effective help using the decisionmaking model of the Family Group Conference. Additionally, the Family Group Conference would add to the strength of the client perspective, offering scope for a range of definitions for problems and their solutions. Chapter 4 describes knowledge and methodology aspects of innovation research such as were involved in this project, specifically, the new knowledge of innovation processes and outreach work that this research has brought to light. The project has also helped to define the De Karthuizer centre’s core activity more precisely, describing how it can provide support and solidarity for developments in the field that will lead to innovation that will transcend the boundaries between social work institutions. Finally, Chapter 5 will address the lessons we have learned during the course of the project.
