Abstract

The research arises from the reflection of an interdisciplinary study group on innovations in welfare (The Responsible Welfare proposal, WR) that over the last five years has developed from the study of a number of cases that presented the character of innovation (Cesareo 2017; Cesareo and Pavesi 2019). As part of the WR, case studies were carried out on a relevant number of welfare experiences with the aim of identifying the main features of social innovation (SI) and the related critical issues. The structure of the paper envisages a brief discussion on SI, followed by the analytical restitution of the evidence of a web survey involving the 46 realities distributed throughout the country, operating in the field of welfare in the traditional sense (health and social) as well as in the corporate and educational field. The discussion of the results will make it possible to return a very articulated picture of the local planning panorama, in which elements of innovation and tradition intersect; in which the «welfare words» often take on different meanings and therefore different operational declinations; in which the proximity of local contexts seems to be the beating heart of the response to problems and the production of welfare