26 human resources managers from 14 member organisations and 12 municipalities are looking for solutions to the difficulties in recruiting, retaining and motivating professionals in the social services sector.

The InnoLabs are a quarterly co-creation space for iSocial member entities and other stakeholders, in which we analyse complex challenges in the sector and seek innovative solutions through experimentation environments and real test beds that put the person at the centre and at the same time integrate and activate all the agents of the innovation ecosystem.

The first InnoLab started in May and will run until September, with the aim of finding answers to the difficulties and challenges faced by the social services sector in relation to its workforce. The transformations that professional roles are undergoing in the sector are generating growing problems when it comes to recruiting, hiring, retaining and motivating professionals in the sector, and are expressed in the form of various difficulties such as bureaucratisation, limited timetables, emergencies, political interference, digital training, burn-out, the failure of the care model, the marginal social perception, paternalism, etc.

In this first InnoLab, 26 human resources managers from 14 iSocial member organisations and 12 local councils are taking part in several face-to-face and online work sessions. The InnoLab will culminate in the drafting and publication of a report, which iSocial will present in November, containing recommendations and proposals aimed at the entire social services sector to address the challenges analysed.

The InnoLab will be led and energised by the experts in management and human resources in the social services sector, Lluís Casado and Guy Giménez, regular collaborators of Fundación iSocial.

DigitaliSSB is led by iSocial, in partnership with the URV, the Grífols Foundation and 19 local councils and county councils.

This is a 3-year project (2023-2025) led by the iSocial Foundation, which has been financed by Next Generation funds from the Department of Social Rights of the Generalitat de Catalunya. On 22 May, a kick-off meeting was held with the 19 participating local councils and county councils.

The project will develop and implement two technological solutions aimed at improving the social intervention of the professional teams of primary care social services of the Local Administrations. The first technological solution, DigitaliSSB-Intervention, will facilitate the improvement of communication and the relationship, both between professionals and between professionals and users of the Basic Areas of Social Services, plus a self-management service for users and a management of group activities. It will also have different modules for sharing data and documents with a biometric signature platform, with data sources from other administrations and with “file management” information systems. It will also have a virtual assistant that will provide answers to requested information and other user-friendly tools (resources map, social aid simulator, personal space) to offer citizens guidance on the services and resources in the territory that can respond to their social needs and, in the case of citizens who are already users of social services, a personal space in which they can have all the information on their social history with the Basic Area of Social Services and manage their relationship with social professionals (appointments, communication with professionals, etc.).

The second solution, DigitaliSSB-QdC, is a solution for decision making, planning and evaluation of social care, in the form of Dashboards for the 18 participating Core Areas, to be used for analysis, decision making, planning and evaluation by the responsible persons. They will be developed and implemented using the Power BI tool and service, one for each of the Basic Areas of Social Services participating in the project. The information obtained will be consolidated on the basis of the people assisted and will be transformed into useful information for analysis and decision-making on the people assisted by the social services, the services provided, the costs of the services and the workload of the different professionals in each of the Basic Areas, among others.

In a first phase, the first 4 Dashboards are expected to be developed for four of the participating Local Administrations, and at the same time the digital application that a specialised company will start to develop from September onwards will be defined in a participatory manner.

The project is promoted by a group formed by the iSocial Foundation, which is leading the project; the Rovira i Virgili University Foundation; the Víctor Grífols y Lucas Foundation and its Chair of Bioethics at the University of Vic; and the technology company Mass Factory linked to the Autonomous University of Barcelona. At the same time, it has the collaboration of Barcelona City Council as a knowledge partner, and the participation of 18 Basic Municipal and County Social Services Areas: Tarragona City Council, Lleida City Council, Girona City Council, Reus City Council, Manresa City Council, Amposta City Council, Calafell City Council, Banyoles City Council, Garrotxa Social Action Consortium, Vallès Oriental Regional Council, Mancomunitat La Plana, La Noguera County Council, Pla d’Urgell County Council, Pallars Jussà County Council, Pallars Sobirà County Council, Alt Penedès County Council, Alt Camp County Council and Ribera d’Ebre County Council.

On March 20, about 90 people have attended in the auditorium Bilbao Berrikuntza Faktoria (BBF) of the University of Mondragon, in the Basque Country, a public event to present the report “Technological innovation and social services” prepared by the iSocial Foundation.

The event consisted of a welcome by the president of the iSocial Foundation, Montse Cervera; the presentation of the report by the director of the foundation, Toni Codina; a presentation by Ms. Nagore Ipiña, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of Mondragon University, on “The person as the center of digitalization”; a round table on “Incorporation of technology in social services: challenges and difficulties”, by Mr. Sergio Murillo, Deputy of Social Action of Bizkaia, and Mr. Mikel Palazuelos, Head of the Social Care Area of NTT Data; and, finally, a joint conclusion by Ms. Sergio Murillo, Deputy of Social Action of Bizkaia, and Mr. Mikel Palazuelos, Head of the Social Care Area of NTT Data. Sergio Murillo, Deputy of Social Action of Bizkaia, and Mr. Mikel Palazuelos, Head of the Social Care Area of NTT Data; and, finally, a joint conclusion by Ms. Adriana Martínez, director of APTAS (Association for the Promotion of Social Technology), and Ms. Lucía Merino, coordinator of the Basque Observatory of the Third Social Sector.

At the end of the event, refreshments were served and all attendees received a bookmark that included a QR code to download the report “Technological Innovation and Social Services”.

Coinciding with the event, the iSocial Foundation also launched a language version of its website in Basque, at the isocial.eus domain.

The new office is at 105 Sancho de Ávila Street, in the epicenter of innovation in the city, a few meters from the Glòries Tower, the Design Museum or the MediaTIC Building.

On January 9, 2023, the iSocial Foundation moved to new offices in District 22@ of Barcelona, the epicenter of innovation in the city, specifically at number 105 Sancho de Ávila Street, a few meters from the Glòries Tower, the Design Museum or the MediaTIC Building. The new headquarters occupies several work spaces in the Monday Arroba building, which also houses numerous companies linked to the world of innovation and which at the same time offers a strongly international and multicultural work environment.

To get to the new headquarters by public transport, the easiest way is to do so via the Glòries stop on the L1 Metro, the T5 and T6 Tram lines, or the El Clot-Aragó station on the trains Suburbs.

The iSocial Foundation also launches a new direct phone number in these offices: +34 935 473 973

With this change, iSocial has left the headquarters of the ATRA Group at 239 Gran de Gràcia Street in Barcelona. The ATRA Group is one of the third sector NGO that founded iSocial and during the last few years had selflessly hosted the iSocial professional team.

Biel Digital Glasses has been awarded with the 2022 Prize for social integration through ICT, which annually convene the GrausTIC association and the iSocial Foundation, as part of the ICT Diada in Catalonia.

This year the Diada was held on November 10 in the auditorium of the Telefonica Tower in Barcelona, and was dedicated to “Metaverse and new realities”. Toni Codina, director of the iSocial Foundation, has delivered the award to Jaume Puig, promoter and CEO of the Catalan start-up Biel Digital Glasses.

Biel Digital Glasses are glasses that use a combination of new technologies such as 3D vision, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to adapt reality to the visual capacity of people with low vision. In addition to improving images, they identify obstacles and warn of possible dangers, such as steps and traffic lights. In this way, these glasses allow these people to reduce their social isolation and improve their mobility and personal autonomy.

The project arose in 2017 to respond to the needs of Biel, a child from Barcelona who suffers from low vision. Seeing that there was no conventional treatment for this disability, his parents (an engineer and a medical doctor) decided to be the ones to develop a solution, both for Biel and for all those other people who suffer from low vision. With this goal in mind, they created a company to design, develop and market this technological solution.

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