EASPD and KVPS invite you to join us for our International Conference: ‘Enabling Social Innovation: Concepts, frameworks & organisational change’. Hosted in Helsinki, Finland on 12th-13th October 2023, the conference will address what social innovation really means for social care and support services and the conditions that enable it to happen.
In addition to the conference, EASPD members can also attend the Member Forum meetings (on the 12th-13th October) and the General Assembly (14th October).
Working language of the conference: English.
Real-time captioning: provided during all plenary sessions and selected workshops.
Conference Venue: Radisson Blu Seaside, Ruoholahdenranta 3, 00180 Helsinki, Finland.
Registrations are open. The deadline for registrations is 22nd September 2023.
The conference is co-hosted by the European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD) and the Service Foundation for People with an Intellectual Disability (KVPS).
The European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD) represents the interests of over 20,000 social care and support service providers for persons with disabilities across 41 countries.
The Service Foundation for People with an Intellectual Disability (KVPS) was founded by Inclusion Finland KVTL which is a non-governmental organisation aiming to promote equal opportunities in society for people with intellectual disabilities and their families. KVPS produces services all over Finland. The organisation aims to find individual solutions and to create high-quality services to support people with intellectual disabilities or special support needs and their families.
Rationale of the conference
Does Social Innovation mean anything anymore? Or has it become an overused term to categorise any project with social ambitions?
Social Innovation seems to encompass everything and, in doing so, ends up covering nothing at all. The definition/meaning of Social Innovation has become so blurred and vague that social innovation in practice – and, in turn, the capacity of support services to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – has been hindered.
A common understanding of what Social Innovation entails across the disability sector is therefore necessary – a reboot of what the concept means to us now.
Support service providers need to have a clearer idea of what social innovation means in order to know:
- how it applies to them,
- how they can implement it,
- what impact social innovation can have on the lives of persons with disabilities and their families,
- the existing legal and financial frameworks that can help them innovate,
- how their organisation can become more open and ready for social innovation, e.g., by implementing new organisational change.
Through a variety of keynote speeches and interviews, workshops, panel discussions with innovative service providers, and networking opportunities, our conference in Helsinki aims to provide clarity, solutions, and inspiration to these issues.