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egular opportunities for communication all reduce compartmentalism and help to
encourage integrated strategies.
Through the LOS, the employment-market oriented and targeted communication
between project initiators and other (social) institutions and organisations has improved
significantly in the city areas. Coordinated action targeting concepts oriented towards target
groups and problem complexes existing in the city areas has become an ever-growing part
of LOS work and the same is increasingly applicable to the work of administrative
authorities.
Nevertheless, the E&C programmes, particularly LOS projects, have had to contend
with one substantial deficiency. The SGB II, the major social welfare tool for the
reintegration of the long-term unemployed, has up until now largely failed in the logics of
small-scale networks. Centralised federal specifications play too large a part in employment
policy; it would be an improvement if local competences and resources could be interlinked
with federal funds in order to achieve more for the target groups. Local politicians involved
in youth welfare and social issues still have the political struggle for this opportunity ahead
of them
To summarise, despite all progress made on a local level, great efforts of persuasion will
still have to be undertaken to ensure that socio-environmental approaches are not viewed
as a mere appendix to urban development planning and construction, but also constitute an
individual strategy which must be pursued consistently if the impact of steadily increasing
socio-environmental disparities in education, wealth and opportunities is at the very least to
be cushioned.
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