ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the shift from welfare systems to generative welfare systems. It shows how welfare provides individual services to poor people with reduced outcomes of improvement: it recognises individual rights but does not involve the assisted in the co-responsibility of improving their own condition and the social reality. Generative welfare, on the other hand, by favouring the virtuous pairing of rights and duties, helps to regenerate and multiply available resources. The chapter highlights how social work can play a crucial role in this generative approach – social work that is able to go beyond the logic of performance to enhance the intersubjective relationship between social workers and users. The first results of an exploratory study are reported, showing how the mutual recognition of the weaknesses and strengths of both professionals and users can generate new empowerment to tackle problems. In particular, the potential of social love is highlighted – actions without forced expectation of results or utilitarian calculation, in the authenticity of the moment in which they are experienced. The chapter indicates the factors that allow an open welcome, focused on the recognition of the dignity and capacity of the poor, producing relational overabundance.
