The voices of Italian social workers: from a pilot anti-poverty intervention to a national policy

Abstract

Between 2013 and 2015 the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policy ran an experimental anti-poverty program in 12 metropolitan areas. The program provided households with children an income support through a conditional cash transfer scheme. In order to understand how the program worked within the different local welfare systems, an ex post process evaluation was developed. Focus groups were carried out with almost ninety social workers with different professional backgrounds (social services, employment services, schools, ONGs etc.) involved in the implementation of the program. According to the analysis of the collected data, the chapter explores in particular: how social workers perceived the implementation of the program; to what extent, the insights of the evaluation process and the voices of the social workers have been taken into consideration within the scaling up of the intervention at national level.