CVS focus areas

Cross-sectorial collaboration

Within this focus area, knowledge can be gained by examining how public, private, and civil society actors work together to organise sustainable welfare.

Within this area, CVS is looking for projects that analyse issues of cross-sectoral collaboration for a sustainable living environment in urban and sparsely populated areas, as well as collaboration to counteract polarisation between social groups and places. Both site development for a sustainable sparsely populated area, as well as urban development for a sustainable living environment and economic development, are interesting study objects. How the challenges of welfare are defined in collaboration between different organisations and what this collaboration entails in the form of power and interpretive precedence is a central theme in this focus area. Questions of democracy and different definitions of good welfare are thus an important aspect here.

Skills supply in welfare

This focus area concerns the issue of future recruitment and competence provision in the welfare sector and how welfare can meet these challenges in the long term. The challenge is linked to a broader and crucial question of how to maintain living standards in the welfare society in the long term. This requires an increase in both younger and older people's labour force participation, and a reduction in unemployment among foreign-born people.

In health care, strategies for recruiting workers educated abroad are currently in place, leading to developed organisational work with integration. CVS welcomes applications for projects with the aim of studying similar organisational work. Other projects may involve analysing how welfare organizers work with "age management" to retain the older workforce, generational transfer or develop strategies for recruiting young employees. Projects may aim to examine the efforts made to enlist a younger generation into welfare professions with an understanding of what constitutes pull factors (what attracts) for young people into these professions, as well as identify possible push factors (with risk of lack of participation in education and professional activities).

The challenges and opportunities of digitalisation

Within this focus area, the meaning of digitalisation for collaboration and organisation of welfare services, users and professions is studied. Important questions are what digitalisation and AI can mean for different aspects of the welfare professional practice (e.g. in healthcare, police and social services), as well as what governance models are developed in this context. Studies can aim to investigate the impact of digital decision support on professional autonomy and competence and meaning in professional practice. In other words, a central question is how digitalisation can be perceived as both an opportunity and a risk for different professionals, users and clients.