Innovazione sociale nelle esperienze del Welfare responsabile

The research arises from the reflection of an interdisciplinary study group on inno- vations in welfare (The Responsible Welfare proposal, WR) that over the last five years has developed from the study of a number of cases that presented the char- acter of innovation (Cesareo 2017; Cesareo and Pavesi 2019). As part of the WR, case studies were carried out on a relevant number of welfare experiences with the aim of identifying the main features of social innovation (SI) and the related critical issues. The structure of the paper envisages a brief discussion on SI, followed by the an- alytical restitution of the evidence of a web survey involving the 46 realities dis- tributed throughout the country, operating in the field of welfare in the traditional sense (health and social) as well as in the corporate and educational field. The dis- cussion of the results will make it possible to return a very articulated picture of the local planning panorama, in which elements of innovation and tradition inter- sect; in which the «welfare words» often take on different meanings and therefore different operational declinations; in which the proximity of local contexts seems to be the beating heart of the response to problems and the production of welfare.