For the financial years 2019/2020, the network has Linköping University and Centre for Local Government Studies, CKS as new coordinator. CKS focuses on questions and challenges of major importance for local municipalities and one focus area is welfare including social work. The priority within CKS is placed on collaboration with different parts of the research community and the main purpose of CKS is to generate knowledge through research, support, evaluation and seminars. CKS forms an important bridge between the research community and the member municipalities. The network will continue working with the same focus as previously but will also focus on developing and strengthen the mobility both regarding mobility in teaching and mobility among students.
To achieve this goal the network continuously develop new forms of collaboration and supports teacher and students exchanges. The background for the network's goal of developing social work must be found in the increasing demands and wishes for raising social workers’ knowledge activities. The reason for the goal is due to the increasing desire for new innovations and impact, and in the network, it goes both ways – impact on research and teaching and impact on practice in social work. The Nordplus network focuses on the development of good and usable methodological forms of knowledge development in welfare services, on the development / exchange of common teaching materials and the development of more socially relevant research forms.
Outcome of Nordplus
Nordplus was founded 2001 and the network and the production within the network have through the years contributed to the renewal of the curriculum, the dissemination of knowledge, to development and concrete methods in social work and in research in the same. area. Over the years, the network has been productive in several areas and some of the more significant activities are for example: published the book Practice Research in Nordic Social Work: Knowledge Production in Transition, edited and written a special issue of two full volumes in Social work & social sciences review, taken the initiative for conferences, special interest groups and participated in the framework setting of "Practice Research" - in both a European and a global perspective, developed a new method for social work practice ‘Critical Incident Reflection’, held four Nordic conferences on youth unemployment – in order to carry out a research project in the field.
All these activities originate of the exchange of knowledge and experience between the network participants – and hence the mobility there exists between the institutions. The ideas usually arise either through the individual teacher exchanges between the institutions. Or through organizing seminars where common Nordic themes are put on the agenda. Here are teachers and researchers from the network in the lectures as well as in the subsequent discussions. Both individual and the more collective exchanges of knowledge lead to new ideas that have created projects and development potentials that have an impact on knowledge development and qualification in teaching in social work, in research in social work and in practice in social work.
Ilse Julkunen, Lars Uggerhöj and Kerstin Johansson arranged a Nordplus conference in Norrköping 2016.