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Social Innovation: Worklessness, Welfare and Well-being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2014

Michael J. Roy ,
Neil McHugh  and
Clementine Hill O'Connor
Michael J. Roy
Affiliation:
Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian University E-mail: Michael.Roy@gcu.ac.uk
Neil McHugh
Affiliation:
Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University E-mail: Neil.McHugh@gcu.ac.uk
Clementine Hill O'Connor
Affiliation:
Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University E-mail: Clementine.HillOConnor@gcu.ac.uk
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Abstract

The UK Government has recently implemented large-scale public-sector funding cuts and substantial welfare reform. Groups within civil society are being encouraged to fill gaps in service provision, and ‘social innovation’ has been championed as a means of addressing social exclusion, such as that caused by worklessness, a major impediment to citizens being able to access money, power and resources, which are key social determinants of health. The aim of this article is to make the case for innovative ‘upstream’ approaches to addressing health inequalities, and we discuss three prominent social innovations gaining traction: microcredit for enterprise; social enterprise in the form of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs); and Self Reliant Groups (SRGs). We find that while certain social innovations may have the potential to address health inequalities, large-scale research programmes that will yield the quality and range of empirical evidence to demonstrate impact, and, in particular, an understanding of the causal pathways and mechanisms of action, simply do not yet exist.

Keywords

Social Innovationself-reliance groupsmicrocreditpublic health
Type
Themed Section on Social Innovation and Social Policy
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 457 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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