A novel experiment: Social Care Centers

by Dr D. Chandraratna, A/Professor, Curtin University, W. Australia Consultant, UNICEF

This new venture of Social Care Centers in all the Divisions in Sri Lanka by the MSS is a proactive measure undertaken to redirect the efforts in the welfare domain. It aims to empower all people in the community and build their capacity to become dignified citizens in a caring society of twenty first century Sri Lanka.

It is reasonable on the part of any skeptic to question why and how our new modus operandi is different from what has been going on in the past. The objective of this paper is to explain the new method of social care in the proposed centers and adduce scientific evidence as to its likely success.

Let me go back to the past caring practices in this sector to draw up the necessary background as to why a new direction is required in the welfare sector... To start off there is no denying the fact that social welfare has been always considered the task of philanthropy.

All good citizens are branded social workers in Sri Lanka and in the layman's parlance it is correct, but it is vastly different from the scientific usage of the term social worker. Social work was a philanthropic act on the part of individuals and when the so called private beneficence was taken over by the State after independence the character of the service remained much the same.

It was an activity akin to a commonsense, otherworldly meritorious service that was done with good intentions but without a scientific basis to it. It may be true that once in a while there was a person, family of group that popped up as a success story. But the general outcome was unsatisfactory, undignified and eroded the sense of dignity of the recipient.

People mired in poverty continued for generations in the cycle of poverty without any chance of coming out of this vicious trap. A deleterious sense of dependency was created and in fact it has become a widespread malaise in our society.

Sri Lankan State has not only been a welfare State but it was pressured into being a Grand Motherly State where many believe that State would stand in as Grand Parents. No economy can sustain such welfare without being bankrupt. The State would be driven to live on hand-outs by the International community and we are already half way there.

In the wake of independence the welfare state achieved many things. The state improved the health, education and living conditions of many. The idea was to meet the basic needs of people to bring about a modicum of equality in society.

At the time they were necessary and they also were required universal provisions. Once basic needs are met and the social indicators are positive a modern society must move forward. Those needs of identified groups ought to be met on the principle of to each according to need principle.

The economy is not robust enough to make universal provisions. Those with the capacity to buy provisions in the market must be allowed to save the State capacity to focus on the vulnerable sections only. In a modern society such measures must go hand in hand with the economic development of the country. Welfare should not unnecessarily muzzle development as a whole.

Creating dependency

The over-riding reason for this state of dependency on welfare is that we did not attempt to move out of the syndrome that we ourselves created to alleviate poverty and related disadvantages in the poorer classes. There was no serious effort to break out of this disempowering chain of charity either at the policy level or the implementation level.

Year after year for over half a century the floods came, the draughts came and social assistance applicants came and once the event was over the task was considered done only to see that year after year the same people returned for the very same reason and the same response persisted.

As the mission was a stimulus response kind of reaction no one was really serious of making it a planned activity which deserved a scientific basis. The cycle of poverty, the culture of poverty and the attendant ills persisted through generations.

The obvious evidence that stares in one's face is the fact that there is still no tertiary program in any of the universities offering a graduate level qualification for the social welfare vocation. It is not given a professional status in this country.

There are a multitude of training classes, workshops and millions of foreign monies spent to raise gender awareness, motivation and animator interest, human rights and anything else related to poverty and disadvantage.

Those 'experts' who come from outside as well as those from inside never bother to ask those who ought to have the responsibility for a national policy or a plan to see whether what they do fits in well with the plan.

Any serious person ought to be astounded by the fact that no evaluation of the performance of these thousands of workshops has been done. Notwithstanding minor examples of success the most disconcerting factor is that not many have been sustained. Sustainability is matter of infrastructure and infrastructures must be professionalized for continuity. It is unfair to waste the internationally given money for the poorer people to be squandered in this manner.

Any interested party can count the number of documents put out by experts for thousands of millions gathering dust and many of them are to do with the plight of poor people and out of monies donated to alleviate the destitution among the peasantry and the poor.

For a contrast it is intellectually stimulating to examine the welfare service in a country such as Australia with a similar population but with no comparable poverty of the absolutist kind that we have in Sri Lanka. They take welfare so seriously that it gets priority attention of the Minister for the treasury.

The portfolio of the Minister in charge of welfare is an important arm in national welfare. She or he is a member of the inner Cabinet as the state budget allocates a fair share to the Ministry and naturally the responsibility on the part of the Minister is heavy in the overall nature of the Australian society. It is a caring society in a capitalist economy and the social welfare national plan is an integral part of the national economic plan.

Obviously the attitude on the part of the national economic managers is not to make welfare a mere doling out of monies to increase inflationary pressures on the economy. Juvenile justice, children's welfare domestic welfare, education, technical education, unemployment are interrelated and hence any sectoral national plan has to take note of the parameters of the other plans.

Now that central planning as a national activity is out of fashion, nevertheless these services are coordinated at all levels from the design level to implementation. The initiatives for child protection in this abusive global world came from the professionals before the legislators moved in.

For example all states in Australia have similar child protection schemes, similar family welfare systems, family courts, elder's benefits, disability and every conceivable service that any socialist would be proud of... The coordination is facilitated by the professionalism of the services available.

There are 14 university graduate programs putting out at least 1000 graduates a year to this work force. Since all states more or less emulate similar schemes the total picture is a national plan by default.

A professional welfare service

That you cannot have a professional welfare service without the academic input from the universities was recognized in the 1950's just after the Second World War in UK, Australia, Canada and European countries.

Hence they opened up the university programs in the same period. The simple fact therefore is that you cannot have any professional service in any field without a relevant university faculty devoted to that science. Sri Lanka must be one of the rarest of nations not to have a degree in welfare, social work or social administration. Nomenclature is not the only important thing but the content of the program.

Lest it be hijacked by some others it must be internationally recognized. It is in fact a good thing to have a graduate welfare program for it enriches all social sciences for they use them always.

Coming back to Sri Lankan scenario scanning we can just peruse some available statistics from the World Bank and Sri Lanka Central Bank reports. In the country in 1996, 29% of all children (4-5 years) are malnourished; about 10-12 % are unemployed; 43.8% drop out after the primary school. Correct statistics are unavailable especially for these classes.

In other developing countries statistics about the poorer classes are kept up to date as they in the earlier times were also called the 'dangerous class'. About the numbers of children in detention, in institutions, under probation, as house labourers one can only make an intelligent guess. These are prime candidates for the poverty trap. A statistical package updated regularly is the best indicator of development for as Amrytya Sen says it is the quality of life not just the physical indices that ultimately matter.

The unfortunate fact is that we have still not grasped that these generations multiply another generation of poorer people and the culture of poverty is ever so visualized in the plethora tele-dramas in this country. Human beings are a resource and it is indecent to waste them in any manner. Our nation is measured less by the $1000 p.c.i than by the way it accords human dignity to fellow human beings.

Why is social care any different from what is already available?

A social care centre is like a poly clinic in social affairs. It delivers all available services in one place. It links people with the resources available in the country such as health, education, legal, etc. People who are our clients are those who have a myriad of problems, and usually are the poorest.

Not that we cater only to the poor people, because there are many others who are economically alright but not socially. Once we identify a person with whatever problem our professionals will diagnose the need for other services to attend to the person and the family.

We need the doctor, the psychiatrist, the teacher and, the lawyer, the policeman and the magician at times, and many more for the well being of the family. We want to rescue the entire family so that it will not add to the numbers in poverty anymore.

We work for the client and the family as partners, with mutually shared power but to make them stand on their own without help. We really would like to see that we are out of a job at the end of the day. We give the service in a different way.

Our delivery of service is underpinned by a sense of human rights and we call ourselves rights based practitioners. It is a right on the part of the claimant and not an act of charity on our part but an obligation of society.

(To be continued)