We are pleased to share that the European Commission has recognised the ongoing rEUsilience project as a success story. The key messages from our research are brought to light in this success story, featured on the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation’s website, where they celebrate research efforts that contribute to creating social impact. We used this opportunity to highlight that a more resilient Europe starts with more resilient families, calling for a shift where policy development looks beyond the individual, to families in all their diversity. Without this shift, we fail to adequately understand and respond to how people deal with challenges they face: from unemployment, increasing care demands, and managing to keep a decent income in these testing times.
The rEUsilience project consortium made up of key experts in social and family policy from Stockholm University, the University of Oxford, the University of Zagreb, KU Leuven, COFACE Families Europe, the University of Warsaw, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona has been active since 2022 producing a broad range of timely research on family resilience. To date, the project has published 25 research outputs including findings of focus groups with over 300 families across Europe, in-depth policy reviews, and key work to develop European social surveys so that we can foster the data infrastructure needed to see a more realistic picture of the realities of families. Our significant contribution to gathering new evidence is complemented by how seriously we take our responsibility to help shape the future of policy development to support families. Through our Policy Lab initiative, we work directly with family representatives from the national level and with EU policy experts across policymakers, civil society, social partners, and analysts to road-test possible policy reforms.
This achievement comes at the time where we are concentrating our efforts towards the final research and policy outputs, including for our final conference which will bring together key stakeholders to discuss the state of family resilience in Europe today and support crucial policy reform to support families as they go through risks and transitions of family life in this new world of work. Many thanks to the European Commission for its support in showcasing and funding the rEUsilience project, the success story can be found here.