Suchergebnisse

Background:
The importance of using evidence to inform the policymaking process has been well established in the literature and practice. In Western countries evidence-based policy (EBP) is already accepted and implemented in many policy areas, including disability policy. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) the interest in EBP (evidence-based policy) is new and limited, hampered in many aspects by the regional specificity of the public administration and welfare services reform.


Aims and objectives:
The present article aims to explore the development of evidence-based disability employment policy in Romania, in a specific area of work integration: sheltered workshops.


Methods:
The article draws on the findings of extensive research on sheltered workshops that included multiple research methods, such as public policy analysis, social documents analysis, and secondary data analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.


Findings:
A number of issues concerning the implementation of evidence-based disability policy in Romania have been identified. Some of these issues are related to the administrative and policy capacity of the government. Others are linked to the limitation of the advocacy capacity of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) active in the disability area, or to the weak presence of the academic/research community in the disability policy forum.


Discussion and conclusions:There is a limited knowledge of how evidence-based disability policy is developed in CEE countries. This article will emphasise the role of the sheltered workshops in shaping the policy solutions in the area of work integration for persons with disabilities. The article will contribute to better understanding of the disability policy reform, looking closely at how the evidence is built and used within the disability policy process.

Social enterprises are embedded in the local context, their organizational characteristics and operational strategies being influenced by the institutional settings, political culture and historical traditions and events. Similar to other European countries, Romania has included the modernization of the welfare systems in the development agenda of the last decade. One of the areas of interest was to better understand and promote the dynamics of the social enterprises as economic, social development actors and facilitators. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, this paper aims to explore the role of social enterprises as a component of Romanian welfare system. It starts with an overview of the history of the Romanian social enterprise, its roots and drivers; it continues with the identification of the roles, challenges and development processes of the social enterprises as welfare services. Keywords: social economy; social enterprise; welfare system.

The aim of this article is to provide structured information on the profile, trends, and challenges of worker cooperatives in Romania. Its main purpose is to help refine the current explanatory framework for worker cooperatives in post-communist countries in the light of empirical evidence drawn from research conducted in Romania. Building on the literature and empirical research, it identifies and highlights some of the present issues and challenges facing Romanian worker cooperatives. Our analysis has shown that many of the elements that are considered key to the successful development of worker cooperatives on the basis of international good practice are missing in Romania. While some enabling elements are impossible to replicate, there are others that might be improved and could help worker cooperatives develop further: a shift away from policies that discriminate against cooperatives in terms of access to credits and the development of governmental programs that could open the public market more to these entities; a better organization of type II cooperatives and of the services they offer to their members; better public image and communication strategies, and greater investment to enhance the advocacy skills of these organizations.

Abstract:
Over the last years, the interest for the potential of social economy organisations to support and produce economic and social development has increased substantially. Against the background of this increased interest in the area, the interest for the research of this economic sector having specific characteristics and grouping various organisations under the same identity has also increased. Starting from recent research, the main purpose of this article is to describe the landscape of social economy actors and the key elements in the evolution of the social enterprises in Romania. In the first part, we present structured information about the status quo of social economy entities such as they appear by analyzing the data collected at national level by the National Institute of Statistics and by analyzing the juridical and institutional framework of each type of organization. The analysis mainly focuses on three types of organisations – cooperatives, NGOs with an economic activity and mutual organisations. In the second part, the authors identify and analyze several key policy fields enabling the development of social economy actors. The last part of the review is dedicated to a discussion concerning the development of a specific policy framework to support the social enterprises in Romania.