Samenvatting

In this handbook we would like to inform (future) social and public professionals about the results of our extensive comparative research on welfare state reforms in Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and UK. The research reveals how reforms take place in local practice and gives insights on the implications of social policies on people’s lives.
Social policies are defined as social investment in human lives. We evaluated the implementation of social investment policies in practice and studied 20 innovative cases, 2 in each of the above-mentioned countries. Starting from these professional practices, we would like to give (future) professionals more insights in the realities of system change and the new perspectives that come out of it.