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European Social Network AISBL

ESN

The European Social Network (ESN) is the network for local public social services bringing together social services welfare departments at national, regional, and local levels with statutory duties for planning, managing, funding, delivering, and inspecting public social services.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Ana Carla Pereira (Director Justice and Consumers)

7 Oct 2025 · Discussion on the launch of a European Social Services Index and on the second phase of the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Response to The new Action Plan on the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights

10 Sept 2025

The European Social Network (ESN) is a European platform with over 180 member organisations from 33 countries. Our members represent public social services authorities at national, regional, and local levels. The European Social Network (ESN) represents the voice of public social services as employers, managers, funders, planners, deliverers, and inspectors of social services in Europe. In 2025, ESN sent a questionnaire to its members, to gather input from members and ensure their views are represented in ESNs submission to this open consultation, asking for their views on the impact of the 2021 Action Plan, the lessons learnt, and potential areas for improvement where further progress might be needed. ESN welcomes the commitment and progress of the European Commission towards the preparation of the new Action Plan for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The briefing attached outlines ESNs recommendations that the EPSRs new Action Plan should include to ensure accessibility, coverage and quality of public social services across Europe. Specifically, ESN suggests the new Acton Plan on the EPSR should: Guarantee home or community-based care through a Care Guarantee, to allow public social services to provide care across the life cycle, adopting an approach that acknowledges that anyone could need care at any stage in their life. Include a social services workforce strategy to ensure implementation of the pillar and develop a more resilient and supportive workforce across Europe, ensuring that social services can meet the growing demands and challenges of the future. Guarantee the social inclusion of people in vulnerable situations furthest from the labour market through access to high-quality social services. Focus on ensuring that programmes funded through the ESF+ focus not just on active inclusion but also on community and social inclusion programmes, particularly looking at rural areas that are often left excluded. Create a social services quality framework that gathers principles, standards and ways to implement them to guide services to ensure they are of good quality. Ensure the European Child Guarantee (ECG) invests in child protection through a comprehensive and collaborative partnership approach with stakeholders at all levels: national, regional and local. Develop further housing and social services support through encouraging national governments to include a permanent section reporting on care and support programmes to address homelessness in their public housing plans. A more detailed input can be found in the attachment.
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Meeting with Hannes Heide (Member of the European Parliament)

3 Sept 2025 · General exchange of views

Response to Evaluation of the Public Procurement Directives

7 Mar 2025

The European Social Network (ESN) is a European platform with over 180 member organisations from 34 countries. Our members represent public social services authorities at national, regional, and local levels. The members of ESN, notably social services departments at national, regional, and local authorities, procure social services to ensure peoples access to social care and support. We have used two questionnaires sent to our members to reply to this consultation. Our feedback focuses on the impact of the 2014 directive on the procurement of social services. Main findings In many EU Member States, public procurement is a common practice for public authorities that have the statutory duty to manage and deliver social services. Social services are not services like any other; hence, the procurement of social services should remain a special procedure under the public procurement directive. In several EU member states, the 2014 directive impacted public procurement rules by leading to the introduction of additional criteria to award contracts with service providers, such as quality and social considerations. However, in some countries, the lowest price remains the sole and main criterion for awarding these social services contracts. Social and quality criteria should become mandatory elements in the awarding process. The possibility of reserved contracts is barely used in social services procurement (in the countries covered in our questionnaire). Likewise, the limitation of three years for a reserved contract and the prohibition of renewing reserved contracts with the same provider may negatively impact service continuity, which is a key aspect of quality service provision. Therefore, this is an area that should be revisited when evaluating the public procurement directive. A more detailed input can be found in the attachment.
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Meeting with Kim Van Sparrentak (Member of the European Parliament)

15 Jan 2025 · Public Procurement Report

Meeting with Jana Toom (Member of the European Parliament) and EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION and

3 Oct 2024 · Social and Inclusive Growth

Response to Integrated child protection systems

20 Oct 2023

ESN has been actively involved in various initiatives aimed at reinforcing child protection systems and enhancing the rights and wellbeing of children in Europe since 1999. Social services have a particular responsibility for safeguarding children and young people which is legally established in many countries. This role gives social services a valuable insight into the lives of children, particularly vulnerable groups of children. Many of our member organisations have a statutory duty on child protection and therefore we support them in the implementation of programmes that promote integrated care and support for children, with a specific emphasis on child protection. including young people as they transition out of state care. We do so in the framework of broader policy formulations at European level on multi-generational and multi-dimensional child poverty. We recently launched the project Side by Side Reinforcing integrated child protection services that supports social services professionals to develop and strengthen integrated child protection systems to more effectively combat violence against children (VAC). For further information on our work, we provide a list of ESN publications on our work on child protection in an annex. ESN welcomes the European Commission's initiative to provide recommendations on integrated child protection systems at a time when due to war in Europe there has been a significant number of internally displaced families with children who are highly vulnerable, and we have seen an increase in child protection cases within European countries. The transformative potential of child protection services can only be fully realised when all key agencies and sectors, including education, health, social welfare, justice, communities, and families work collaboratively to implement the necessary legislative, administrative, social, and educational measures to effectively safeguard children. The guiding principles for determining the best interests of the child in line with Art. 3 of the UNCRC should be consistently applied throughout the entire child protection system. Key Norms of Integrated Child Protection Services put forward by ESN Recognising the essential role of public social services Integrated child protection requires a national legislative framework that creates a safe environment for children. A well-trained and resourced workforce is crucial to work in accordance with EU and international standards on addressing violence against children (VAC) and safeguarding children. Enhance awareness and understanding of adequate social services responses, emphasising the need for effective integrated mechanisms to strengthen child protection services. In addition, in line with our previous recommendations to the European Commission made during the Child Guarantee consultation and in alignment with findings from other relevant publications, ESN would like to reiterate the following key recommendations: Develop a pluri-disciplinary child protection assessment tool Give priority to the children most in need and identify gaps in key services. Ensure access to public social services for the most vulnerable children and their families. Build national capacity to monitor the impact of child protection measures Produce and gather child protection related data, which is essential for accountability, including targets which are both quantitative (numbers of targeted children in need) and qualitative (indicators on the quality of key services provided), as well as on actual outcomes for children, related to their needs.
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Response to Recommendation on minimum income

1 Apr 2022

ESN Evidence for Council Recommendation on Minimum Income ESN will provide input to each of those principles along three main threads: I. Access, Coverage and Adequacy • National and subnational authorities should undertake an assessment of needs and socio-economic considerations of localities and use the data gathered to plan and establish services accordingly to ensure that they are available and accessible. • The establishment of social services centres, with professionals coming from various sectors including social work, social educators, psychologists and employment advisers should be promoted. • Public social services and third sector partner organisations are key to reach out to the most vulnerable in order to improve take up. • National and subnational authorities should make sure that they design simple procedures for beneficiaries, for example a unique entry point through community social services centres. There should also be a professional of reference, usually a social worker, who can accompany them to navigate the system. • To improve accessibility, the digitisation of application processes should be fostered, while keeping onsite applications available for those who are not able to use digital services. II. Social Activation, Cooperation of Enabling Services and Labour Market Inclusion • It is key to shift policy and practice from activation focused solely on employment to an ‘inclusive activation’ approach, led by social services who co-create with the person(s) concerned an integrated social inclusion plan. • People with difficulties in joining the labour market, should receive personalised support in preparation to finding employment but also as they have found a job in the initial months. • Building links with employers can increase people’s chances of finding a job and be socially included. Public authorities should lead the development of these links. • Minimum income beneficiaries should also be linked to local social networks which can take form through peer support, mentoring programmes, community centres. • Minimum income beneficiaries should be the co-producers of individual, step-by-step social inclusion plans to ensure their active participation in society and where possible in the labour market. III. Cooperation, Monitoring and Evaluation • There needs to be a robust governance system in place between national and sub-national authorities. The same goes for professionals across sectors. Joint staff training is an area of investment to enhance cooperation of professionals. • Evidence shows that introducing a professional of reference can help increase chances of services take-up, establish personalised tailored care plans, and monitor the plan’s implementation. • The beneficiaries of social support are experts by experience and can help public social services design more effective services. They need to be active participants in the development and monitoring of their social inclusion plans. • National and subnational authorities should invest in IT solutions that support the interoperability of public employment and social services. • The implementation of the guidelines included in the Council Recommendation should be monitored through European and national monitoring mechanisms. • At European level, this could be done through the European Semester process and a platform which integrates representatives of national and subnational authorities with responsibility for the design of integrated social inclusion programmes combining minimum income and at least social and employment services. • At national level, the Commission should promote monitoring frameworks that assess the situation holistically covering at least three pillars: social rights legislation, economic investment, and coverage along the lines of ESN’s proposed ‘Rights-Economic Investment-Coverage (REC) Index‘.
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Response to Proposal for a Council Recommendation on long-term care

29 Mar 2022

ESN Response to Call for Evidence for the European Care Strategy The European Social Network (ESN) welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to develop a European Care Strategy, which will hopefully respond to the demographic and rising care needs challenges. Ensuring people’s access to quality and affordable care throughout the life course should be the common aim of the strategy, which will require a coordinated and joint effort between public authorities at all levels and non-public providers. Public authorities with responsibility for social services, for instance, day care, residential and home care, will be key partners in the implementation of this strategy. Based on ESN’s 30 years’ experience in promoting people’s access to quality social care we make the following recommendations for a comprehensive European Care Strategy. The future European Care Strategy should: • A European Care Strategy should be based on key principles of community, home and family-based care throughout the life cycle, person-centred and rights-based, promoting quality of life of the person in need, which supported in an integrated manner and involved in every stage of their care. • Ensure quality of care which is focused on improving people’s quality of life, being responsive to questions of effectiveness and performance; by promoting availability and coverage. • Investment in social services focused on promoting community, home and family-based care across all life stages in line with UN and international principles. • Integrated service delivery, including improved interservice communication, interprofessional collaboration, cross-service coordination, increased joint funding, planning, commissioning and service delivery. • Supporting the social service workforce through programmes reinforcing training, recruitment, retention and development of the care workforce. • Providing support informal carers including respite services and safeguards against experiencing poverty. • Having in place measurable indicators and monitoring mechanisms which assess the system as a whole, as per our proposal for the Rights-Economic Investment-Coverage (REC) Index, and care programmes through a recast of the European quality framework. Bringing it all together, the European Care Strategy should: • Reinforce the resilience of care services by fostering more agile, digital and remote ways of working. • Ensure implementation in partnership with local and regional public social services. • Propose a Care Guarantee for all that promotes the delivery of quality care for everyone and supports current European initiatives on children, youth, disability and older people. A document with further input and evidence has been uploaded to the Commission Website.
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Meeting with Dubravka Šuica (Vice-President) and

29 Apr 2020 · Social Services in Europe, Statutory Duties of Public Social Services, Explanation, Impact & challenges of COVID-19, Elderly, Role of the EU, Rights of persons with disabilities, social dialogue & cross-sectoral social dialogue

Meeting with Stella Kyriakides (Commissioner) and SGI Europe and

29 Apr 2020 · VC meeting on the Impact of COVID-19 on Social Services and the risks for persons in vulnerable situations

Meeting with Nicolas Schmit (Commissioner) and

29 Apr 2020 · Videoconference meeting on social support care service and COVID-19

Meeting with Annika Nowak (Cabinet of Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis) and Eurocarers and

15 Sept 2016 · Primary Care

Meeting with Vasiliki Kokkori (Cabinet of Commissioner Marianne Thyssen)

8 Dec 2015 · Information meeting on future initiatives by ESN and discussion on Commission social agenda