WELFARE IN TRANSITION

A two-year project on welfare issues was started in the autumn of 1999 in the municipality of Norrköping. The aim of the project is to investigate how municipal resources can be mobilised in order to achieve the vision for the year 2010 of a good life for everyone.

Swedish local authorities are faced with a number of challenges like, for example, continued adjustment to the welfare policies of the other EU countries, the dramatic increase in the need for the care of the elderly, and the growing difficulty of finding staff for the care-and healthsector. Besides this, Norrköping are faced with challenges of a more local character e. g. facilitate the meeting between working-class culture and educational culture and the meeting between different ethnic cultures.

The report Hard Facts - Welfare development during the 1990's in Norrköping provides a picture of a decade of great economic restraint within the municipal activities in Norrköping, which has had an effect on the number of employees among other things. At the same time the need for municipal welfare service has grown. More restrictive assessments and increases in tariffs are some of the changes carried out during the 1990's. This has meant that costincreases have been kept within certain limits despite increased needs. In 1998 the trend was broken in that several curves began to point upwards again e. g. the number of available jobs, the level of education and the investment in crowns per pupil in the compulsory school. On the other hand the need for social support of and treatment for children and teenagers and marginalisation from the work force are still at a high level.

The project also includes a qualitative investigation. In eighteen strategically chosen groups issues have been discussed which touch on how changes in welfare during the 1990's have been experienced and how people view welfare in the future. It is also of interest to study the significance of gender, age, education and ethnic background with regard to these tasks. This work will be reported on during the autumn of 2001. The final commission in the project is to draw conclusions from the results of the two studies and make proposals for the future welfare politics in the municipal of Norrköping.