Social services centres do not know how many people need social assistance in their area. Cooperation with NGOs and social benefit organisations - which is provided for in the Social Services Act - helps obtain necessary information. Most institutions did not fully use that opportunity, though. Only 3 of 12 audited ones cooperated with all organisations in their area. Others contacted regularly only selected organisations. For instance, they did not cooperate with entities based beyond their municipality area. The centres also failed to develop cooperation principles with the organisations, nor did they actively seek contact with them. Their activity was limited to responding to the other party’s initiative. NIK says that by doing so they had no chance to obtain necessary information and reach some of the needy.
According to NIK the social services centres were not active enough in identifying and monitoring persons requiring support. They did not make any analysis or evaluation of social phenomena that may have had impact on the situation of the needy. Most activities of the centres boiled down to typical, routine activities. The possibility of promoting information concerning available forms of aid (e.g. in local media or in the Public Information Bulletin) was used to a small degree. In as many as 11 centres, the Bulletin did not include information on all available social aid. Because of incomplete or outdated information in the Bulletin it was difficult to identify the situation of the needy and use social services of various kinds, if needed. The lack of knowledge on available social services was also confirmed by the results of surveys among beneficiaries of other organisations providing social aid.
NIK has pointed out that problems with finding the persons in need and identifying their social standing derived among others from the shortage of social workers. Only three institutions hired as many social workers as was required by the law. In one extreme case a social worker had in his custody 1000 persons extra, above the statutory limit of 2000 subjects (3 thousand subjects altogether). One of the reasons was the shortage of funds.
The heads of audited institutions complained about the lack of a system for identifying and monitoring social issues in their local community. They said that a set of guidelines, methods and good practices related to identifying, analysing and assessing problems would be helpful for social workers. Currently the activity of individual social services centres depends exclusively on creativity, knowledge and experience of their employees.
Social workers identified and monitored the citizens’ social standing. However, the activity of most of them boiled down to routine work, without any innovation or creativity. According to many social workers it was the case because of: burnout, lack of specialist training, too many subjects in their custody and so too many duties. Another thing was other institutions making cooperation with them more difficult. The quality of their work was also impacted by clearly technical difficulties, such as the lack of access to computer or internet, too old equipment or accommodation problems. Frequently, social workers do not get enough legal or psychological support. The audit showed that in ⅓ of audited institutions the employees were not offered psychological or legal counselling although the situations they had to handle required that. It was difficult to benefit from the assistance of qualified specialists (the so-called supervisors) since there was no ordinance providing the guidelines or standards on social work supervision.
NIK appreciates the fact that some centres took action on their own initiative, e.g. meetings with representatives of the city guard, city council, medical centres concerning the ways of helping the homeless or patrolling - in cooperation with the Police - places of their stay in winter.
Showing appreciation of the difficult job of social workers, NIK has moved to the Minister of Labour and Social Policy to:
- pass ordinance on social work supervision,
- define standards of cooperation between social services centres and other entities, enabling more effective identification and monitoring of people’s social standing.
At the same time the city and municipality authorities should ensure statutorily defined headcount of social workers.
