The main objectives of the project are, firstly, to develop an in-depth diagnostic study of the municipality of Cascais (territorial, demographic and socio-economic projections) and its public and private education system (school network, school population, school performance, educational projects and partnerships); and, secondly, to draw up a technical proposal for an educational charter and a municipal educational strategic plan, a document that falls within the competence of the City Council, which responds to the current challenges facing schools and the needs of the municipality in the field of education, with the aim of promoting school success and the quality of learning, within a framework of strengthening the recursive role of local authorities in the educational system in conjunction with European, national and regional programs and projects; through a multi-method methodology with a strong component of promoting the participation of stakeholders and local actors in the diagnosis and design phases of local education policy and, subsequently, in the implementation/monitoring and final evaluation phases.  

The aim of this study is to create a system of indicators for the minimum income scheme in Portugal (Rendimento Social de Inserção), serving as a basis for the creation of a model for evaluating the service provision of this policy by local authorities. The research question that will guide our work is to what extent does the decentralisation of competences to the local level contribute to alleviating the causes of poverty and improving the quality of the services provided? The decentralisation of competences has been seen as a mechanism for combating poverty. Several international organisations, such as the World Bank, the OECD and the European Union, refer to the potential of decentralisation to enable local authorities to develop sustainable development processes. Several authors such as Von Braun and Groot (2000) and Crawford and Hartmann (2008) argue in favour of decentralisation, pointing out that local governments are better informed about the needs of their populations than the central state. Proximity makes it easier to monitor the citizen-beneficiary and can also allow for easier and more effective evaluation of social workers. However, some questions arise, namely the fact that these positive impacts of decentralisation depend on two factors, namely the resources that are made available to local authorities (Jütting e Corsi, 2005 and Harris and Posner, 2022) and also how local authorities themselves implement programmes (Harris and Posner, 2022). In the Netherlands, for example, during the process of decentralisation of competences (2003 and 2015), the problem that emerged was related to the way social workers acted in the execution and monitoring of social assistance recipients, who adopted a welfare philosophy. And it was through the initiative of the municipalities that they were open to changing the paradigm of the social intervention model (Oliveira, 2024). In Portugal, there were those who opposed decentralisation on the grounds that local authoriti...

The political and administrative management of the healthcare crisis provoked by the COVID 19 is a key issue in preventing the spread of the disease. The Mc-COVID 19 project is set to analyse the socio-sanitary co-ordination procedures in the context of institutionalized older-age care (age group that appears particularly vulnerable in this epidemic context), in Spain as well as in the rest of the EU-15. This study focuses on the articulation of resources between health and social policies, and aim to contribute to improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process and crucial aspects in the fight against the pandemic. Findings also aim to be useful to inform other public policy sectors involved in crisis-related situations.  

Since 2008, Europe has been shaken by an ongoing crisis. But, in analogy with medical and psychological findings, some parts of the vulnerable population, although experiencing the same living conditions as others, are developing resilience, which in our context means that they perform social, economic and cultural practices and habits which protect them from suffer and harm and support sustainable patterns of coping and adaption. This resilience to socioeconomic crises at household levels is the focus of the proposed project. It can consist of identity patterns, knowledge, family or community relations, cultural and social as well as economic practices, be they formal or informal. Welfare states, labour markets and economic policies at both macro or meso level form the context or ‘environment’ of those resilience patterns. For reasons of coping with the crisis without leaving the common ground of the implicit European social model under extremely bad monetary conditions in many countries, and for reasons of maintaining quality of life and improving social policy, it is a highly interesting perspective to learn from emergent processes of resilience development and their preconditions. Thus, the main questions are directed at understanding patterns and dimensions of resilience at micro-/household level in different types of European member and neighbour states accounting for regional varieties, relevant internal and external conditions and resources as well as influences on these patterns by social, economic or labour market policy as well as legal regulations.

The project is focused on five major areas over which the impacts of the crises will be more closely assessed: the initial education and training; the institutional paths for transition from school/training to work; adult education and lifelong learning; the transparency of qualifications and the articulation between the education and training systems; the structure of services and benefits aiming at guaranteeing universal access to the education and training systems.For each of these five areas, the following key dimensions of analysis are considered: (a) diversity and relative importance of available pathways within the system, (b) curricula; (c) human resources (d) budget and funding circuits; (e) the quantity and quality of physical spaces. Results indicators will be analyzed in all five areas, such as coverage and attainment.

 Therapeutic consumption among youths has been a topic of recent interest in various scientific fields, namely medical, social and political. This interest is focused on the consumption of products to enhance cognitive and body performance to which this generational group is most exposed. Our project falls within this domain and the object of analysis is the trajectories of performance enhancement consumption among youths in Portugal, more specifically on the consumption of the so-called smart drugs and lifestyle drugs. While the former are linked to investments in cognitive performance (enhancing intellectual performance or overcoming natural or neurophysiologic limits), the latter are linked to body performance (investment in growth, muscle development, etc). This spectrum of performance consumption encompasses both pharmaceutical and natural products. The key purpose of our project is to assess the specificity of the emerging youth therapeutic cultures, namely in terms of performance investments (pharmacological and natural), and how these display the blurring of the traditional boundaries between health and illness, between the normal and the pathological. The main analytical objective is to identify the cultural dispositions of youths vis-à-vis these consumptions as well as the role of information networks - notably the internet and everyday sociability contexts - in the production of these dispositions. More information - Final Report available here.