At the beginning of the 2000s, the child and youth welfare of the province of Styria decided to realign its portfolio. It started out by developing two technical concepts that were then interwoven in the course of the reform process: orientation towards the social space, and case management.
While the design of case work is oriented towards the understanding of roles and functions, the principles, and the process logic of case management, the prevention work of child and youth welfare is to be facilitated through non-case-specific and social space-oriented activities.

This project by the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences as a pioneer of social space-oriented interventions and Social Work case management is intended to support the official and private child and youth welfare in the needs assessment and development of social space-oriented innovations. There is an interest in a reorientation of specialist services and offers towards socio-geographically grown structures and conditionalities.

The research project includes a sociodemographic analysis as well as a reconstructive empirical and milieu-specific analysis that shall serve the contracting entity as a basis for the redefinition of (regional) social spaces.