Public regulation and supervision are under pressure due to an increasing horizontalization of society and the networked character of public service provision. Moreover, the increased emphasis on person-centredness as a quality requirement of public services makes service provision more complex as, increasingly organisations with different professional, legal and financial traditions are involved. This calls for new, process-based regulatory practices.
In order to assess the person-centeredness of public service provision, users are the touchstone - not regulators - in dialogue with service providers. This means a paradigm shift, because current regulation is primarily top down, based on enforcement of predetermined fixed standards, not focused on networks but on single service providers. Currently, there are promising narrative methods used by service providers that may facilitate this regulatory paradigm shift.
In this study we focus on vulnerable groups of users and, in collaboration with stakeholders, co-produce innovative reflexive arrangements for regulation, based on narrative methods. The project aims to innovate and enhance connections between service users, providers and regulators (Theme 4). In addition, it develops a regulatory toolkit to enhance accountability and dialogue based on the use of narrative methods by networks of multi-sectoral service providers (Theme 6).
This project consists of six Work Packages (WPs), using a mixed method action research approach. In WP2-4, narrative instruments to foster person-centred integrated service provision and generative accountability are developed. The three WPs focus each on a different vulnerable group: persons with dementia in the community and their family carers; low-educated people who are unemployed, and; children with mental disorders and behavioural problems, and their parents/carers. In WP1, the theoretical and methodological groundwork for the project is laid and the findings from WP2-4 are translated into a theory of reflexive regulation. In WP5, a regulatory toolkit is developed based on the insights of WP1-4.
