From the 5th of February, in which the classes will begin, the iSocial Foundation will co-direct, together with the School of Social Work of the University of Barcelona, ​​the “Postgraduate Degree in public management of local social services” of the Association Catalana de Municipis (ACM), addressed to the managers and technicians of Social Services of its 937 associated councils. Last August, the ACM selected the proposal submitted by the UB and iSocial, in the process of awarding the public tender, which had tendered previous months for this purpose.

The course will be held in the ACM training classroom at its headquarters on Valencia Street in the city of Barcelona, ​​every Wednesday from February to December. This is a university course of 30 credits, 256 hours face-to-face and adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) system.

Among the teachers of the course will be teachers of the School of Social Work of the University of Barcelona, ​​experts and collaborators of the iSocial Foundation, as well as specialists in various subjects of other Catalan universities such as the University of Girona, Rovira University and Virgili, and University of Lleida. The course will include a thematic block on innovation in Social Services, which will be the responsibility of the iSocial Foundation.

The ACM has been offering this Postgraduate Course since 2015, and this will be the fourth edition. To register for the Postgraduate Course you must do so through the ACM, which funds 50% of each enrollment, and be a Social Services professional in some of the municipalities associated with the institution. You can find more information here and on the ACM website.

On November 19, Palau Macaya de Barcelona hosted the 3rd debate of the cycle “Big Data and Social Services” of the iSocial Foundation, in which four experts discussed the opportunities and limits of introducing predictive systems and automation processes in the Social Services sector. The debate was led by the data science professor of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Jordi Conesa.

In the first place, Albert Isern, CEO of the Big Data company Momentum Analytics, spoke about the opportunities that today has the Social Services sector to take advantage of the success of the commercial sector, during the last 15 years, in the knowledge and segmentation of current clients and potential customers of products and services, through the treatment and massive analysis of data. He explained how big data companies treat the data and the type of results and knowledge that they obtain.

Secondly, Lourdes Rodriguez, from the TIC Salut Social Foundation, has presented the Intersocial project, which seeks to define a commonly controlled vocabulary to use to interoperate information in the field of social care, particularly aimed at people who have needs social and healthcare. Through this vocabulary, the aim is to achieve a greater integration of the data of the different management systems in the field of social care in Catalonia.

Subsequently, the director of Social Services of the Junta de Castilla y León, Carlos Raul de Pablos, has exposed the PACT and ERGOSS projects of this autonomous government in Spain, through which for ten years, Big Data techniques and tools have been developed to know the social needs of the territory, sharing knowledge and integrating resources between social and health systems, segmenting vulnerable population, and foreseeing the future evolution of services and benefits, such as “Guaranteed Citizens’ Income”.

Finally, the director of the Victor Grífols Foundation, Núria Terribas, a bioethics expert, has provided her point of view on the limits and ethical principles that predictive systems and automation processes in Social Services must have in keep in mind and preserve to ensure that ultimately they bring an improvement in the welfare and quality of life of the citizens with full respect for their rights and their privacy.

In the open debate, many questions have been raised by the attendees, in subjects such as automation in the provision of social aids; the right of users to access their history and reports; the possible biases and discriminations of the algorithms; the limits in the anonymization of the data; etc.

After this 3rd debate, the reflection cycle continues during December, January and February with closed doors workshops with city councils and county councils interested in developing predictive tools in the field of Social Services. And it will end on March 10 with a closing conference given by the basque expert Fernando Fantova and the presentation by Isocial of a final document of conclusions.

On Tuesday, October 29th, at the Palau Macaya in Barcelona, the 2nd debate on the “Big Data and Social Services” reflection cycle, organized by the Fundació iSocial, with 72 participants, mainly from city councils, academics and Third sector entities. Four prestigious speakers have been exposed and analyzed because today the mass data processing or Big Data can help advance social services in four areas of improvement that are very necessary: prevention, personalization, planning and efficiency.

About the strengthening of the preventive approach of Social Services thanks to the Big Data has spoken Meritxell Benedí, Director of Social Services of the Government of Catalonia, which has highlighted the need for the Social Services system of Catalonia today to have of evidence to be able to improve, and announced that with this objective, soon the program-contracts and concerts of the Department of Work, Social Affairs and Families will include a clause that will allow the Department access to the data of local Administrations and service providers.

From the personalization of the services to the citizens, has talked José Antonio Ondiviela, director of SmartCities Solutions of Microsoft Western Europe, who said that despite the difficulties that have the Social Services information systems, today we already have enough data and of sufficient quality to obtain useful knowledge for the improvement of the Social Services system, and has shown several examples of the benefits that this may entail.

Then, Tomas Lethinen, data analyst at the Espoo Town Hall (Finland), has explained the fifteen-year experience of the city council of this Finnish city, the second in the country, in the massive treatment of data with the purpose of improving the planning of policies and social budgets. For example, they have analyzed the data of their half a million inhabitants for 14 years, to make predictions about the future demand for Social Services; or risk factors of 300,000 families are analyzed for 10 years to predict the future needs of the child protection system. Another of the benefits of the Big Data has been the best knowledge of the efficiency of the processes of social inclusion of the immigrant population of the municipality.

Finally, Dr. Josep Maria Picas, a consultant for ICT and information systems in the healthcare environment, has presented a compilation of recent health sector learning in order to improve their efficiency thanks to the Big Data, which can be very useful today at Social Services sector when addressing this challenge.

The cycle will continue on November 19th. In this 3rd debate we will discuss “Predictive models and automation in Social Services. Opportunities and critical factors”

On Friday, October 25, the iSocial Foundation we have started with the whole team of the Social Action Service of the City Council of El Prat de Llobregat the training course “New trends in intervention in the Basic Social Services. From Person-centered Attention to Self-directed Support“.

A total of 60 professionals participated in this first session, which consisted of a debate with three social workers linked to Local Basic Social Services: Glòria Navarro, from the City Council of Barcelona; Sílvia Pérez, from the Consell Comarcal del Vallès Oriental; and Arantza Rodríguez, from the City Council of Vilanova i la Geltrú. The conduction and moderation was carried out by Pilar Rodríguez, also a social worker and vice president of the iSocial Foundation.

In the debate, we have discussed the adequacy of the current intervention model in today’s society; about the areas of improvement to make reality in the Basic Social Services of the ACP and the new European models, both in the daily professional practice and in the configuration of the system; on the image that the Social Services project on the other systems and on the citizenship; or about how to better combine the accompanying function with that of managing aids and benefits.

The course will continue during the next weeks until February, through 8 workshops in which specialists in various fields of intervention will explore how to transfer the ACP approach and Self-directed Support to primary care for people with disorder mental and addictions, people with disabilities, women victims of sexist violence, abused children, elderly people or immigrants without documents. The course will culminate with the elaboration of a manual for the improvement of the model of intervention of the Basic Social Services of El Prat de Llobregat.