Mutamenti di paradigmi nelle politiche sociali: nuove attuazioni territoriali in Europa

Starting from the birth of the welfare state in Great Britain, we discuss about the traditional paradigms of the welfare state as they are inadequate for understanding the contemporary decentralization process of social policies in Europe. Italy had interesting experiences in social policies since the beginning of the 20th century. In 2000, with the law number 328/2000 Italy reformed the social-health services system organization and administration. This law is very important because, ever since, the State doesn’t assist anymore but it devolves power to the regions in order to create regional social-health services systems to take care of the citizens and to prevent social problems. The main goal is to assure the citizens the right of taking part in the creation of regional social policies. In Sardinia we see the attempt to create a regional system of social and health services with the regional law number 23/2005, which creates an Integrated Local System of Services. We try to compare it with the Scottish experience after the devolution process started in 1999, when Scotland created his own National Health Services. Analysing these cases we can observe the main tendencies in Europe: promoting the decentralization of social policies; creating a better integration between social and health services and between services and the citizenship.