European welfare states were designed to offer support against 20th century social risks. In the current and ongoing climate of political, economic and social transition which began – or at least, became apparent – in 2008, EU Member States will have to adopt distinctive social welfare reforms to improve their resilience and prepare for future social risks. In contrast to a straightforward redistributive approach to social policy, social investment considers welfare as entailing investments to improve prospects for future economic and social participation. The emphasis, in other words, is on investments in people to enhance their productive capacities and foster longer-term economic development. Social investment thus stresses the life course dimension of social policies and their long-term benefits for society.

The aims of the InnoSI project are:

Aim 1: Identify and evaluate existing innovative and strategic approaches to social welfare reform which utilize social innovation at a regional and local level.

Aim 2: For those socially innovative and strategic approaches to welfare reform identified during Aim 1, we will explore the social and psychological impact of welfare reform on individuals and communities.

Aim 3: For those interventions considered in Aim 2 to be successful, we seek to identify ways of implementing effective innovative and strategic approaches to welfare reform (including social financing) and establish pathways to impact for knowledge created during the project.

In InnoSI project TUAS leads the Work Package 6 “From Foresight to Welfare”.

The aim of foresight work of InnoSI project is to explore the future of European welfare societies with the help of future thinking techniques.

The foresight process of InnoSI project consist of the following phases:
1. Scanning weak signals in ten European countries
2. Identifying tentative trends based on weak signals
3. Validating trends by Delphi Survey
- Background material for Delphi participants: European trendcards
4. Building future scenarios and storylines