The Social Services needs and conditions to incorporate a new approach to labour market inclusion – to create a collaboration arena for knowledge exchange.

The project application focuses on the Employment Indicator Project (BIP), a Danish labor market initiative that has garnered interest in Swedish Municipal Labor Market Units (AME) and coordination associations.

BIP aims to assist individuals who are far from the labor market and is based on expectancy theory, which means that case workers need to develop trust in clients´ work capabilities and make positive assessments of their job prospects, with a focus on individual responsibility.

In Sweden, welfare policy has shifted towards activating citizens who were previously passive recipients of financial support.

AME activities have played a key role in supporting these groups.The project aims to create collaborative platforms for sharing experiences related to BIP between practitioners and researchers.

The goal is to explore critical research questions and needs-oriented issues regarding BIP to shape a future project application. It also aims to understand the motivations and conditions of AMEs for using BIP within the Swedish welfare system.

Furthermore, a norm-critical perspective will be used to examine how norms affect society´s perception of unemployment and social marginalization.

Gender perspectives and intersectionality will be considered since BIP primarily affects women´s work in a female-dominated sector.

The results will be shared and disseminated through coordination associations, research networks, and national conferences. Ethical principles will be closely followed, and informed consent will be obtained from participants.

Data will be handled with great care to ensure participants´ confidentiality and integrity.The researchers have prior experience in researching the welfare system and diversity issues, as well as using a norm-critical approach.

Collaboration between researchers and practitioners in social services and the coordination associations supporting the application has also proven successful in previous projects related to labor market inclusion.