On 19 March, I had the honour to give a talk in celebration of the 20 years since the creation of the intermunicipal social service administration in Osona, a Catalan region. In this talk, I wanted to address social care reforms that aim at addressing the polycrisis while creating a paradigm of abundance. It can honestly be frustrating to give a talk about social services and their transformative capacity in a geopolitical context as difficult as the current one. In general, the number of crises we have to face, now and in the coming decades, makes it hard to see the real impact of the work you do, whether you are out on the street or in the offices, receiving, listening to and attending to people to make their lives a little better. Even so, I hope that, by the time you finish this post, we will have managed to shake off a bit of the cynicism that surrounds our present and, above all, to offer some tools to cultivate hope regarding what democratic, transformative social services are – and what they can become.

What is the polycrisis? A view from care, climate and housing

There are many crises we face as societies, and this has led some people to talk about a moment of polycrisis. We can understand the polycrisis as the overlap of economic, social, housing, care and mental health crises that reinforce each other and affect the daily lives of many people. Now more than ever, it is not enough to look at each problem in isolation. We can see this through three very relevant examples close to home.

First, the care crisis places us in a scenario of deficit: the supply of care is lower than the demand. The causes of this deficit are diverse: population ageing, the massive entry of women into the labour market, the lack of public funding for the provision of public goods, and the precariousness of care work. But, at root, there is a more structural cause: the feminisation and naturalisation of care, as well as the lack of recognition of care as a central aspect of our economic system. This lack of recognition translates into a constant economic undervaluation that allows returns in the productive sphere to be maximised. The fiercer market competition becomes, the greater the incentives to maintain this invisibilisation and to avoid the cost of adequately remunerating care in the home, in the health sector or in the social sector.

At the same time, the undervaluation of care for people – and, more broadly, of care for our environment, such as forests, urban spaces or wildlife – will become increasingly evident in the face of the climate crisis, especially through rising temperatures. Projections suggest that, by the end of the century, Europe could suffer very high mortality associated with extreme heat waves, with particularly intense impacts in Mediterranean areas such as Catalonia. Older people will be among the most affected, especially those who do not have the necessary resources to adequately cool their homes.

Also, the excess hours devoted to economic competition, paid work, the pursuit of profit and consumption contribute to increasing greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the climate crisis. Some estimates suggest that a reduction in working time could also help reduce emissions. For example, it has been argued that a four-day working week could have significant positive environmental effects. And, in addition, this time freed up could be devoted to care to a greater extent, helping to reduce the existing deficit.

If the climate crisis entails an increase in temperatures, it will also involve a series of economic costs that we will need to factor in if we want to protect the population. Here, there are direct and indirect effects. Fires, rising sea levels and extreme weather events generate expenses for both the private and public sectors, which will have to devote more resources to protection and to repairing damage. At the same time, sectors such as agriculture, industry or services will have to bear increasingly high insurance premiums, which will reduce their economic margin or, in some cases, leave them directly without coverage, subsequently shifting the pressure onto public administrations.

But there will also be indirect impacts. The costs associated with the ecological transition and the necessary economic transformations may fall more heavily on those with less economic capacity, that is, on people who are already in more vulnerable situations. This may also translate into price increases, especially in basic areas such as food and energy. And, in addition, there is an inverse relationship that we often forget: the economic costs derived from the climate crisis can limit the capacity to invest in mitigation and adaptation, while also generating inequalities that hinder the social and political consensus needed for action.

The housing crisis is also a central piece of this polycrisis. Decades of underinvestment in public housing and weak protection of the existing stock, together with the diversion of housing towards speculative and tourist uses, are pushing a growing share of the population into situations of impoverishment and exclusion. In fact, housing is probably one of the major challenges for social services and, at the same time, one of the most effective social policies: having a roof over one’s head and sufficient resources left after paying rent or a mortgage is one of the best ways to prevent social exclusion.

In addition, growing climate instability may intensify migratory movements of people with very different economic profiles, and this will increase pressure on the housing stock. In many cases, these people arrive without a close support or care network, at least initially, which can also aggravate the care crisis. At the same time, the lack of investment in energy retrofitting worsens energy poverty, makes people more vulnerable and forces them to spend more money just to maintain minimum living conditions. Various estimates suggest that energy retrofitting can significantly reduce energy consumption, but there are often incentive, affordability or information barriers that hinder the implementation of these improvements, even when subsidies are available.

Finally, the housing crisis is also a care crisis. We have many homes inhabited by people living alone, and a residential stock designed mostly for family units in a context in which life and family trajectories are increasingly fragmented. This hinders the socialisation of care and reinforces dynamics of isolation. For this reason, as I will discuss later, we will probably need to move towards more community-based housing models, capable of densifying social relationships and mutual support.

A joyful approach to social policy

The care crisis, the climate crisis, the housing crisis and many other crises we could list are deeply intertwined. As I said at the beginning, we cannot address them one by one and in isolation. For me, a fundamental part of the polycrisis is the paradigm of scarcity in which we live, a paradigm that imposes high doses of cynicism in the face of our individual inability to tackle large-scale social problems. We live steeped in the idea that administrations have no resources, that many households’ incomes are not enough to guarantee basic goods, that we have no time to reconcile or to take care of ourselves, and that we cannot be supportive either because we ourselves are lacking. One of the most dangerous things for a society is, precisely, the loss of imagination and of imaginaries capable of overcoming barriers and opening up alternatives. And it is even more serious when this loss of imagination is accentuated among the classes with fewer resources, while decision-making power is left in the hands of the most powerful classes.

By contrast, we need to reclaim a paradigm of abundance based on autonomy and time. A paradigm that, instead of feeding resignation and individual despair, can imagine collective solutions and activate all the resources we have at our disposal to guarantee full, dignified and communal lives.

And this is where social services and social policy play a central role. Although they are often just another sector within public administrations, and all too often one of those that suffers most from lack of attention and priority – especially at the local level – today I would like to vindicate their importance. I want to argue for strong social services, yes, but also for services with the capacity to change and with an ambitious vision: services that break down barriers between administration and society, that democratise decisions and that provide tools to increase autonomy and self-management.

That said, I also do not want to fall into the defeatist idea that “small is beautiful” and that we can only aspire to marginal interventions in the face of global problems. The polycrisis requires, first of all, ambitious policies from those who have the greatest financial muscle and the greatest capacity for organisation and action: states and also supranational organisations. The energy transition, the economic transformation towards productive systems within planetary boundaries, the creation and retrofitting of socially rented housing that is ecologically resilient, and the provision of care all require mobilising resources and coordinating many actors, often beyond nation states themselves. But, while ambition needs to be raised from above, many of the interventions and solutions in public policy necessarily have to involve local bodies and organisations, including social services.

Public goods for the ecosocial transition and management rooted in a paradigm of abundance

Public and community goods are essential to confront the polycrisis for several reasons. First, because they allow resources to be redistributed through social organisation and mutual support. Second, because, unlike the market and consumerism, they compel people to meet, to coordinate and to do things collectively, and this fosters more cohesive and more democratic societies, as well as better conditions for mental health and for shared imaginaries. Third, because they are more efficient in the use and management of resources, which makes it possible to reduce energy demand and ecological footprints and to prioritise essential uses. And, precisely because they are more efficient, they can also be more affordable for everyone, freeing up time and resources to devote to care, social life and those activities that sustain life in common.

Each solar panel, each bus or train line, each activity in a community centre, each nursery, each public good, ultimately, helps us gain autonomy and resilience in the face of the polycrisis. And it also helps us imagine societies that are richer in time, in relationships and in collective capacity.

On this basis, today I want to focus on the management of social services and on some management models that can help us move towards this paradigm of abundance. To do so, I propose three axes that, in my view, should structure social services: territorialising and planning, democratising and giving autonomy, and financing and sustaining over time.

First, to territorialise means reducing the scale of the problem to make it more manageable and, at the same time, being better able to identify the local and community resources available in each environment. It is not the same to think about hundreds of children in poverty across a county as it is to think, for example, about five children who need support in two specific towns and to ask how to coordinate, there, the existing public and community services. Nor is it the same to send a care worker long distances as it is to organise her work in a delimited area in space and time, fostering knowledge of the territory and relationships of trust. In this sense, planning is indispensable: it offers medium- and long-term certainty, allows people and organisations to be brought on board, and signals a clear commitment by the administration to the continuity of resources.

Second, democratising and giving autonomy means bringing decision-making spaces as close as possible to the people involved in each social problem. This implies reducing bureaucratic layers that generate delays, frustration and coordination costs, and facilitating faster, more flexible decision-making processes that are better adapted to changing needs. It also implies allowing for more horizontal forms of coordination, less based on mistrust and more oriented towards building work systems sustained by trust and shared responsibility.

Finally, financing and sustaining over time is a basic condition for any transformation. I emphasise this because administrations are too often irregular in funding, partly due to the very regulatory and institutional dynamics within which they operate. But if something justifies the existence of the administration, it is precisely its capacity to collectivise economic resources and redistribute them according to democratic criteria. For this to work, however, consensus and planning are needed: organisations and people who work on the front line need to be able to imagine a future, commit to it and devote their lives to it. Otherwise, fear of getting involved, mistrust towards the administration and the risk that this space is mainly occupied by those seeking quick private profit all begin to appear.

If you will allow me, I would now like to dwell on management models. Reality is complex and many situations are hybrid, but I think that distinguishing some models can help us better understand which types of organisation are most capable of territorialising, democratising and sustaining services over time. To simplify, I will distinguish three large management models: “traditional” or more bureaucratic public management, public-private management, and public-community management.

“Traditional” public management is that in which a clear hierarchy is maintained in management and in the distribution of resources, mainly through public bodies. Examples would include a public hospital or the management of publicly owned social housing. This model has important benefits: it protects public goods and working conditions, since public ownership and control tend to preserve the general interest over and above the logic of private profit. It can also promote equality in access to and quality of services, because it establishes common criteria and more homogeneous coverage for the whole population. In addition, it guarantees a certain continuity under a single command, which can facilitate coordination and stability of the service. However, it also presents barriers. It may have more difficulties in adapting to diverse or changing social needs, precisely because its hierarchical structure tends to be less flexible. Likewise, hierarchy can limit the participation of professionals and service users in decision-making. And, finally, it is often constrained by budgetary limits, meaning that resource scarcity can end up undermining its responsiveness and capacity for innovation.

Type of management	Benefits	Barriers
“Traditional” public	Protection of public goods and of working conditions. Equality in access to and quality of services. Continuity under a single command.	Difficulty adapting to needs. Hierarchy with limits on participation. Budget constraints (scarcity).
Public‑private	Accountability and control of expenditure. Competition between providers. Professionalisation of management.	Fragmentation and lack of transparency and control. Market concentration. Lack of autonomy and participation for workers.
Public‑community	Alignment of providers’ mission with local needs. Fostering relationships of trust and mutual support. Integration of the community fabric and of collective well‑being (abundance).	Requires a pre‑existing community fabric. Does not guarantee universality. Limitations when scaling the model to large‑scale or highly complex services.

Public-private management, by contrast, combines public responsibility with the involvement of private providers in service delivery. Its advocates emphasise that it can improve accountability, strengthen cost control and introduce more competition between providers, with the aim of gaining efficiency and professionalising management. But this model can also entail significant risks. It can foster system fragmentation, reduce transparency and concentrate the market in a few companies. In addition, it can weaken the autonomy and participation of workers, especially when management logic becomes subordinate to cost or performance criteria.

Public-community management, on the other hand, is based on close collaboration between public institutions and the community fabric to organise, sustain or co-create collective services and resources. Among its benefits, its alignment of providers’ missions with local needs stands out, since it builds on closer knowledge of the territory and of the people who are part of it. It also fosters relationships of trust, mutual support and co-responsibility, elements that can strengthen social cohesion. In addition, it allows for greater integration of the community fabric and collective well-being, incorporating a logic of abundance based on relationships, cooperation and shared resources.

However, this model also has limitations. First, it requires the prior existence of an active and organised community fabric, which is not always present in all neighbourhoods or municipalities. Second, it does not necessarily guarantee universality, because its capacity to reach the entire population may be uneven. Finally, it presents difficulties in scaling up to large or highly complex services that require more stable structures, mass coverage and sustained resources.

Some examples within the care sector

To see how public-community management models can be extended while promoting territorialisation and democratisation, I would like to give some examples in the care sector, an essential area within social services.

Self-managed teams in home care

Home care is a service that often ends up being insufficient for those who receive it, and this creates a situation of care scarcity. Moreover, the people working in it tend to rotate a lot, which generates uncertainty and makes it difficult to build stable, long-term care relationships. Similarly, workers often have little room to plan and act in a coordinated way with the person receiving care, with their family and social environment, and with the rest of the team. All this generates frustration, reduces the capacity to adapt to each person’s specific needs and weakens the autonomy of the workers themselves, who often also have to provide care in their own environment. In addition, this also wastes the potential of care workers as a community asset rooted in the territory, with knowledge, recognition and the ability to coordinate existing resources, such as health services or social centres.

An example of an intervention that moves in the direction of territorialisation, democratisation and sustainability over time is the Buurtzorg model, implemented in the Netherlands and later extended to other contexts. It has also reached several municipalities in other countries, such as Denmark, with self-managed teams, and closer experiences like the “care superblocks” in Barcelona and El Prat de Llobregat. The model basically consists of eliminating intermediate decision-making layers and creating small teams – of roughly 10 to 12 workers at most – who have the time and capacity to self-organise and meet needs in a specific territory. In this way, people receiving care have a stable team they know, professionals can share information more easily, and the team itself can provide mutual support to better respond to particular situations.

However, for a model of self-managed teams to work, higher-level structures must offer real support and facilities for coordination, including appropriate technological systems that enable communication with social and health services. But the hardest part, probably, is building dynamics of trust in a sector where results are not always easy to measure. This mistrust often stems from a contracting culture that has placed little value on job stability and staff retention. It is therefore necessary to offer job security, support and resources so that the care sector can retain people who have the desire and capacity to contribute. Too often, administrations, companies and organisations undervalue care workers and let them leave the sector, leading to a constant loss of talent and breaking relationships of trust that are essential both for quality of care and for community rootedness.

Living units and democracy in residential care homes

Institutionalisation processes, both in care homes for older people and in other residential resources, have often had a fundamental problem: they have been organised around infrastructures designed more for logistical efficiency and surveillance than for creating liveable spaces where people can lead autonomous and fulfilling lives. Protection, hygienisation and control have been prioritised, often over the capacity for decision-making and self-organisation of the people receiving care and also of the professionals working there. At the root of this model we find, in part, a paternalistic and ageist view that tends to strip agency from people who, before entering a residential facility, were still social subjects with desires, relationships and decision-making capacity. Moreover, the push for macro-residences, often promoted or facilitated by the administration and managed by large private operators, has exacerbated some of these problems. In many respects, this is a deeply questioned model, something that is also reflected in the fact that the vast majority of people would prefer never to have to live in a care home.

To foster autonomy and socialisation, a central transformation in the care sector is the development of living units. This is an idea that can be applied within care homes, but also more broadly, in how we think about housing and everyday life in general. It is about allowing people to adapt spaces to their tastes and needs, to have their own or shared kitchens, and to have community spaces that they can organise and make their own. It also involves transforming organisation and decision-making spaces so that residents and workers can together participate in planning daily life. This calls for more flexible rules that are less centred on permanent supervision, so that, whenever possible, people can continue to lead their own lives.

In addition, many people want to remain active, feel useful and maintain some form of participation in everyday tasks. For this reason, making it easier for them to care for spaces, collaborate in activities or assume small responsibilities can be key so that care homes are not experienced only as places of assistance but also as spaces of life. Obviously, all these changes are especially complex in care homes where there are people with very high levels of dependence. But, despite these difficulties, it is a model worth bearing in mind if we want to turn residential facilities into more liveable, more desirable places that are more respectful of people’s dignity and autonomy.

I do not know if you have seen Maspalomas, the film directed by Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arregi and starring José Ramón Soroiz. The story follows Vicente, a 76-year-old gay man who, after a stroke, has to move into a care home and is pushed to hide his identity again. The film is interesting here because it shows to what extent a change in the residential model not only affects the organisation of space, but also freedom, intimacy, desire and the possibility of continuing to be oneself within an institution.

Housing in community

Finally, I would like to address the management of care in the housing sphere. Here, one of the main problems is social atomisation and the increase in loneliness and in the weakening of family and community ties. At the same time, the care deficit leaves many basic needs unmet, while existing infrastructures do not always facilitate ageing in place, as is the case, for example, in buildings without lifts. Many residential models have been built maximising private space and leaving little room for common areas and shared infrastructures that foster denser social relationships and forms of everyday care. And, as the family loses weight as a care provider – due to falling birth rates, labour market demands or migration processes – many people can feel more alone, especially if they do not have spaces for socialisation and friendship nearby or if illness distances them from these spaces.

To socialise care, combat loneliness and make better use of public resources, sheltered housing and cooperative housing emerge as particularly interesting options. In essence, this is about putting architecture at the service of care. This means designing community spaces – such as dining rooms, common rooms or leisure spaces – but also creating decision-making and collaboration spaces to manage the building, promote shared activities, such as urban gardens or workshops, and strengthen connections with local organisations in the neighbourhood or municipality. In addition, geographically concentrating care needs makes it possible to better optimise the time and attention of home care teams and health services, and also facilitates everyday opportunities for socialisation.

Moving out of one’s own home is never an easy decision. But creating truly desirable housing alternatives can ease this transition. In addition, creating such spaces – whether in new environmentally sustainable buildings or in refurbished properties – can free up housing for other people and make more efficient use of existing resources. The major challenge, probably, is to have the resources needed to create these new community housing projects. This is why collaboration is key: from formulas such as granting use rights to cooperative projects, to financing mechanisms that make these projects possible for people or groups who would otherwise not be able to access them.

These are the examples I wanted to share on how to move towards public-community management that enables more territorialisation, more democratisation and more sustainability in social action. And, to finish, I would like to mention some public policies needed at the local level to confront the polycrisis and advance in the ecosocial transition.

Other examples of local policies needed to confront the polycrisis

There are many things within reach of local administrations either to act directly or, at least, to propose and contest at higher scales of government. Guaranteeing housing and employment is probably one of the most efficient social policies that can be implemented, because it makes it possible to move forward in prevention and to avoid much of the economic expense and social harm caused by homelessness and unemployment. However, we also need to ask ourselves what kind of jobs we want to promote. Not all employment generates well-being, nor is all economic activity socially desirable. For example, a recent special report in the newspaper Ara highlighted the harsh working conditions of many workers in the pig-farming sector in Osona.

Strengthening public transport, whether by reopening train stations or reinforcing bus services, is not only more sustainable than mobility based on private cars. It also helps reduce expenses for both households and the productive fabric, freeing up resources that can be devoted to other essential goods. Along these same lines, climate shelters, municipal swimming pools, energy retrofitting of buildings and the installation of air-conditioning systems are necessary tools to protect the population in situations of extreme heat.

In the sphere of consumption and food, price regulation and agricultural and food guarantees can protect farmers and producers, while also promoting healthy and sustainable diets in households. Reducing the weight of intermediary chains, guaranteeing access to land and supporting agricultural production that is ecologically and socially sustainable are necessary measures to ensure generational renewal in the countryside. Another powerful tool is the creation of local currencies, that is, monetary systems that can only be used in local shops and for local products. County councils themselves could promote their use network, encourage certain public transfers to be paid in this currency and guarantee traders mechanisms for exchanging it into euros.

Likewise, a whole set of quality public goods that also help combat depopulation needs to be strengthened. Having affordable, high-quality early childhood education centres, as well as promoting cooperative housing, are tools that can help create young communities rooted in the territory. And also, if you will allow me, it is essential to defend public protection of essential goods such as water. One of the things that most surprises me when I go to villages in Lluçanès is having to buy bottled water because tap water cannot be drunk, contaminated by nitrates linked to the pig industry. In this same line of essential services, we also need climate protection. Climate shelters, municipal swimming pools, energy retrofitting of buildings and the installation of air-conditioning systems are necessary tools to protect the population in situations of extreme heat.

Finally, I do not want to end without mentioning the need to claim and defend improved working and social conditions for all forms of social work. Vocation is indeed an important part of social work. But a democratic society cannot sustain its most essential tasks on precariousness, burnout and invisibility. In the difficult times we live in, defending social work is defending collective dignity.