The Welfare Systems and Social Intervention Research Group includes researchers from the fields of social policy, social work, sociology, economics and demography who contribute to the development, extension, transfer and application of scientific knowledge (research and action) on welfare systems and social intervention at their various levels, taking into account their multiple actors. The work they develop aims to inform and promote policy and practice processes, which adequately respond to the challenges that arise in the (co-)production and (co-)provision of sustainable well-being in contexts of complexity, to build more just, cohesive, sustainable and democratic societies, in which everyone can live with dignity.

Aligned with the reference frameworks of Citizenship, Rights and/or Justice (social, economic and environmental, intra and intergenerational), its research focuses are:

01. Social Policy and Welfare Governance: research into public policies that promote and guarantee social well-being in a plural institutional context in which the state sector is articulated with the social economy and market sectors, with different degrees of citizen’s involvement (welfare pluralism or welfare mix).

02. Social Work, Institutional and Community contexts of action: research into the processes of professional action in social work that takes place in contexts of institutional and community scope and nature, in articulation with other professions characterised by proximity interventions.

03. Population and Sustainable Welfare: research focused on individuals, families, and communities, namely those in situations of vulnerability, poverty and/or social exclusion, as recipients and/or agents in the provision of social well-being, and on the current demographic dynamics in contexts of inequality that pose challenges to territorial cohesion and to sustainability.

Researchers in the Welfare Systems and Social Intervention research group include: