The Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families of the Catalan Government, Chakir el Homrani, presented the base document for the Strategic Social Services 2020-2024 Plan, which aims to become a key instrument for reorganizing and updating the Catalan social services system and adapting it to sociodemographic, economic and technological changes. The Plan seeks to cohesion, streamline and universalize the system, which is more effective and that guarantees personalized attention and family and community interaction. To achieve this, the Department of Work, Social Affairs and Families promotes a participatory process to incorporate contributions of social agents involved in the base document.

The Plan must become the road map of social care for the period 2020-2024 and must respond to the current challenges. He wants to achieve a universal offer and direct social services to the general public, and at the same time articulate and organize to overcome current fragmentation and deploy an information, innovation, knowledge and research system.

In this area of ​​research and innovation, these will be their priority lines of action:

• Promotion of strategic alliances for the promotion and coordination of research, knowledge and innovation in social services with universities, research centers, third sector, industry, professional colleges and other agents.
• Promotion of collaboration networks to increase the capacity to carry out shared research and innovation projects.
• Agreement with the universities for the incorporation of competitions in research and innovation in the training curricula.
• Definition of the bases and publication of a public call for research in social services oriented to the priorities set by the PESS.
• Launching in conjunction with the social initiative of projects of technological and social innovation.
• Preparation of a map of technological solutions that improve the response to needs, access to the population and results.
• Start-up of innovative public procurement experiences.
• Creation of a system for collecting, recognizing, managing and disseminating knowledge and best practices based on the evidence of social services.
• Implementation of an observatory for innovation and good practices in social services.