Institute for Social Policy-ISP
University of Zagreb, Croatia
Institute for Social Policy, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia is the leading national institution dealing with social development issues. The Institute applies an interdisciplinary approach in teaching, research and consultancy. It has a long experience of cooperation with relevant national and local stakeholders and also with other institutions in the region of Central and South-East Europe, Western Europe and USA. Through education, action oriented research and publications, the Institute influences public policies and provides know-how for public policy making related to the wider area of social policy, including: poverty and social integration, employment, third sector/civil society, social services, social innovations, social entrepreneurship, housing, urban development, pension policy, family policy, education, governance, regional development.
The Institute participated in two FP7 projects: “WILCO – Welfare Innovations in Favour of Cohesion“ and “TSI – Third Sector Impact“. Among other, topics of the projects were housing for vulnerable social groups and impact of third sector organisations on quality of life. Other projects are several COST actions on social entrepreneurship (“Empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars”), on social care (“Who cares in Europe”) and on innovations (SHINE – “Multi-disciplinary innovation for social change”. Recently, the Institute took a part in the project of European Social Fund, “Service learning in the field of care for the homeless.”
The Institute has a PhD programme on social policy and publishes regularly in the Croatian Journal of Social Policy.