by Elaine Fultz
Senior Specialist, Social Security
and Urszula Lonc
Regional Programme Coordinator
Across South Eastern Europe, governments are increasing the range of social services they provide for persons with special needs. Among the main target groups are the elderly, persons with disabilities, refugees, street children, as well as alcoholics and drug addicts. The initiatives involve decentralizing some services that were previously provided in residential institutions, thus enabling more people to live in their own homes and communities. They also involve creating new services, such as helping reintegrate trafficked women and assisting people living with AIDS. In many countries, governments are developing new methods for delivering services through partnerships with university departments for social work and charitable organizations. They are also developing more inclusive mechanisms for setting priorities and more client-oriented practices.
The ILO has supported these initiatives through a regional project that promotes the sharing of experience, identification of good practices, and development of training materials for service providers. Working with national officials in each country, the project has developed a set of national reports that describe the current state of service delivery, and identify the most important problems and challenges facing the countries. The reports point to four major regional trends. First, decentralization is nearly universal, with all countries shifting authority for administration and funding services from the central government to regional or local governments and municipalities. Second, most governments have put new processes in place for decision making that involve community stakeholders, civil society, businesses, trade unions, and consumers of the services. Third, most countries have adopted, or are considering, new laws to regulate charitable organizations that provide social services, in order to allow the contracting of services from these organizations through bids and subsidies, and to provide the authority to establish and implement performance standards. Finally, a major priority across the region is the deinstitutionalization of children through alternative family placements, foster care, or community-based group homes.
The national reports also provide many regional examples of good practices in service delivery. Some examples are as follows:
• In Croatia,the Association for Promoting Inclusion is providing community-based alternatives to institutional care for adults with mental retardation. Today 107 beneficiaries of this program live in apartments or houses provided by the association and receive daily professional assistance aimed at helping them live in the community.
• In Bulgaria, the National Social Rehabilitation Centre organizes an annual beauty contest for women with disabilities. Local companies donate the facility for the contest, prizes, high fashion costumes and hair dressing. Bulgarian national television covers the event. It has been highly successful in demonstrating that disabled people have aspirations very similar to those of the non-disabled, and that they, like other people, can be beautiful.
• In Macedonia, the Association of Parents of Children with Cerebral Paralysis organizes spring and summer excursions as well as Christmas and New Year’s celebrations for its members. It has also undertaken fundraising to enable children to participate, including the provision of durable medical equipment.
• In Moldova, the UNDP Gender, Leadership and Communication Network, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, aims to promote more gender-balanced leadership in local governments. It has established local Gender Centres in 41 districts, and is actively supporting women in seeking new roles in politics, management and civil society.
• In Romania, 19 hostels for elderly persons serve more than 2000 clients under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Family. These individuals receive social services to assist them in maintaining their own living space, preventive and stimulative services to help them stay in good health, and support for engaging in social activities.
Among the major challenges facing these initiatives are a constant need for creativity in coping with a shortage of resources relative to unmet needs; the building of partnerships that allow more efficient and effective service delivery; establishing new mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability; overcoming the reluctance of some individuals in need to use social services; and ensuring objective and humane treatment of clients by all service providers.
Drawing on the national reports, the ILO project has developed a basic training course on social services delivery aimed at conditions and problems in South Eastern Europe. The course also presents relevant experience from countries outside the region, including the Czech Republic, France, Germany and the UK. A preliminary version of the training course was pre-tested with a group of regional officials in Budapest in December 2003, and is now being finalized based on their feedback. Upon the request of governments, the ILO will make these materials available and will provide technical support for their use in national training.
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| ILO Film |
| Fully fit at work |
Film about the advantages of employing persons with disabilities. As this ILO film (Fully Fit at Work) shows, not only may people with disabilities be more productive, they may actually be more skilled in some jobs than non-disabled people. Produced for the ILO by the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing.
Watch the film online in Polish with English subtitles. Duration: 21 min 11 sec
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Press release in English and
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World Day Against Child Labour
12 June 2008
Education: The right response to child labour
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A package for social and economic progress
The Albanian pilot of the One UN Programme will make use of the experiences of the International Labour Organization (ILO) gained in the field. As the only tripartite organisation within the United Nations system, the ILO plays a key role in involving social partners in the recently launched UN reform process.
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