Verso una valutazione di processo delle politiche di assistenza sociale. Cosa ci insegnano le migrazioni contemporanee?”,

The aim of the article is to outline an evaluation system of social care services, that is based on the process dimension, as an opportunity for continuous learning in terms of policy making. Starting from a theoretical point of view, process evaluation is the kind of evaluation focused on the procedural aspect of a social care intervention, that aims to analyse relations and the management of roles among the subjects involved, the way in which the recipients are reached, the participation procedures adopted, what it supports and what it hinders the social care intervention. Migrations are used as a case study because of their impact on Italian social care system, as an external factor to which the system itself reacted. What is the useful part for the analysis and what type of structure belongs to this part? The historical evolution of Italian social care system in managing migrations points out the relation as the more appropriate unit of analysis. In fact, using relation it is possible to connect different parts of the process during the analysis: social care services user with his or her need and the social worker who must find the answer to the need; the social worker itself and the organization responsible for the social care service. This organization may be a Public Administration, identified by the law as responsible for the social care services, or a provider, delegated by the Public Administration in managing the social care service. Even in this case a relation exists, between Public Administration and the provider, and even this relation is part of the analysis.