Digital social innovation: Social support application in social services

Since the earliest times of history, there has been a search for solutions to social problems. The need for digital social innovation for a sustainable solution to ossified social phenomena has grown. In this study, the aim of social innovation and digital social innovation is to identify the state of awareness among stakeholders associated with social work, the responsibilities of stakeholders in sectors and the services that should be in a digital social innovative social support platform. The digitization of social services and the rapid spread (diffusion) of these services and how an application is needed to reduce their costs have been analyzed. In this sense, semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts, academics and non-governmental organization volunteers working in the field of innovation, social innovation, social work and digitalization. As a result of interviews; social innovation awareness is relatively higher than digital social innovation awareness, although there are few studies conducted in the field of digital social innovation, this field is still on a development trend, the government needs to be decisive and more proactive about regulation in terms of establishing legal infrastructure and distributing funds, universities and research centers should be pioneers in producing social innovative products, services or processes with the funds provided, the application to be developed in reaching social services is mobile-compatible, has high accessibility for disabled people, has multi-language support for immigrants, covers the whole of society and has a need to guide it on a problem-based basis. As a result of these findings, the benefit of all stakeholders as well as increase the social awareness purposes, "in search of a solution to social problems, find social support center, social service activities, social work practices, social work job postings, social grants&social donations and products" modules, consisting of web/mobile based application "social support application" content have been proposed. This application will be able to be brought into society as an inclusive digital social innovative service in the digital age.