The turn towards a Social Investment approach to welfare implies deploying resources to enhance human capital and mobilise the productive potential of citizens, starting in early childhood. This edited collection brings regional and local realities to the forefront of social investment debates by showcasing successes, challenges and setbacks of Social Investment policies and services from ten European countries: Italy, UK, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain. It provides practical, accessible illustrations of good practice, routes to success, and lessons learned. The book is informed throughout by engagement with service users and local communities, and features many previously unheard voices including front-line workers, local decision makers, volunteers and beneficiaries.

With the transformation of the role of the welfare state, the "social engagement" and "active participation" were taking the place of passive benefits. The importance of individual actions is becoming more and more prominent.With the reduction of welfare benefits and expansion of the workfare model after the crisis of 2008, the main objective of the local integration programmes was to strengthen self-sufficiency of social group with precarious life situations in rural areas of Hungary. The purpose of this volume is to give a brief overview of the most important local integration programmes of the past quarter century, focusing on the social land programme. The analysis, summarising the results of an empirical study, presents the main turning points of the local integration models, the changing environmental conditions, as well as the adaptation strategies and the possible directions of development of local communities in Hungary.

Introduction and conclusion available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The turn towards a Social Investment approach to welfare implies deploying resources to enhance human capital and mobilise the productive potential of citizens, starting in early childhood. This edited collection brings regional and local realities to the forefront of social investment debates by showcasing successes, challenges and setbacks of Social Investment policies and services from ten European countries: Italy, UK, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain. It provides practical, accessible illustrations of good practice, routes to success, and lessons learned. The book is informed throughout by engagement with service users and local communities, and features many previously unheard voices including front-line workers, local decision makers, volunteers and beneficiaries.