Citizen involvement in social welfare services

The idea of involving people in public discussions and decisions has a long history. Within the welfare sector, one of the first recognitions of user/patient participation started in the UK during the 1970s, aiming at facilitating patient interests in the NHS (National Health Services). In the 1990s, the concept of user participation entered the social welfare sectors of many European countries. It has since developed into one of the most central concepts of social welfare today. An increasing body of literature is currently discussing new roles of social welfare recipients in terms of for example ‘users’, ‘consumers’, and ‘co-producers’, and relating these new roles to a range of very different social changes and processes regarding public services, particularly within the last decades. While social scientists within the area of welfare policy and sociology have pointed at welfare recipient roles as part of democratization processes, these processes are today increasingly about individualization, consumerism, and other implications of NPM (New Public Management) reforms, as well as NPG (New Public Governance) reforms in many European countries. Theoretically, social scientists have discussed these changes in relation to ideas about empowerment of individuals, marketization, governance, governmentality, new citizenship types, and new types of welfare partnerships. This paper will provide an overall discussion of the different social and sociological theories inspiring the different approaches to user participation, and critically discuss implications for users of welfare services within the different user participation approaches