As a result of the growing need for care and support characterising present time, demand for quality social services is constantly increasing. Despite their crucial role, it is widely acknowledged that, nowadays, social services are facing important challenges, such as chronic underfunding, staff shortages and challenges in transitioning to community-based and person-centred forms of services. EU funds, particularly ESF+ (European Social Fund Plus) and ERDF (the European Regional Development Fund), can create key opportunities to overcome these obstacles. However, too often social services struggle to benefit from these funds for 3 main reasons:

1. shortage of knowledge and awareness around EU funds
2. complexity of procedures for accessing and using EU funds
3. lack of capacity in maximising the impact of these funds in the social services sector.

In addition to this, managing authorities often face difficulties in using EU funds to finance high quality social inclusion projects. The HELPDESK project aims to address and solve these issues and to offer concrete solutions to both social service providers and authorities.