RECO: Resilient Communities by Sustainable Welfare Transformation

Homelessness is an extensive societal problem in Sweden which poses major challenges for the social services in developing sustainable and effective methods that can meet the service user’s needs. The RECO project is based on practice research and has mutual learning at its core. We focus on Housing First as an evidence-based method.

The reasons for this is: First, it narrows down the scope of our project and we can align it to a way of working that has scientific evidence of its effectiveness.

Second, Housing First has a clear foundation in the importance of service user influence and how people who get a Housing First apartment can become part of the community.

Hence, the name Resilient Communities, which means that we want to find ways to co-produce innovative solutions and methods that are sustainable and resilient even when things get unstable, such as when new methods are in conflict with dominant working methods within the social services.The aim is to investigate and analyse how evidence-based methods like Housing First can be sustained within the social services and how implemented methods can become resilient towards external pressures.

Research questionsWhat factors facilitate or hinders high programme fidelity and what are the Housing First tenants’ experiences of the programme?What conditions are beneficial when trying work knowledge-based in the social services efforts to combat homelessness?What methods enables participation and involvement with service users?What impact and consequences do the participation have on the involved social workers and service users?Three work packagesIn WP 1 we use a programme fidelity survey in the 21 municipalities that use Housing First as well as in-depth studies in the three partner municipalities to identify conditions for implementing, using and adhering to evidence-based methods.WP 2 implements knowledge laboratories, so-called RECO-labs.WP 3 creates a national hub for mutual learning and knowledge dissemination.