Re-imagining the place for social work in the post-pandemic welfare. Lessons from the Italian experience

This chapter analyses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social services and social work in Italy, drawing on studies focused on the transformations generated by the crisis and the ways to cope with it. During the pandemic, already known but unsolved issues in the welfare system have become more apparent: the lack of national coordination and standards for social rights, the predominance of individual monetary benefits over public services, and a strong territorial differentiation. The wider neoliberal assumptions that have influenced the re-structuring of the welfare system combined with a residual approach to social assistance have more clearly shown their flaws. Nevertheless, more space for creativity and the necessity to re-imagine social interventions during the pandemic have shown possibilities for social work to contribute to building counter-hegemonic discourses. Social services can be repositioned as societal structures supporting people and as means for their empowerment, and social work within them can offer a way to lay the foundations of alternative social-justice oriented policy models, in ordinary and extraordinary times.