No longer from pillar to post

Social Care Centres within easy reach will act as one-stop shops at community level to help with social and administrative problems.

From pillar to post and back again from post to pillar. As anyone who has had to get any work attended to at a government office would readily testify, the plight of the Sri Lankan is that – the infamous “file” is passed from desk to desk and officer to officer, with the poor victims, the public, that these officers are bound to serve, go home disappointed, upset, angry and disgruntled. In most cases, they leave empty-handed.

This scenario is about to change. Whereas earlier, people had to waste precious hours and days at Divisional Secretariats being shunted around, now they can walk into ‘Social Care Centres’ located within their own areas, take up their problems, grievances and needs with a multi-disciplinary team and get them sorted out immediately.

The trailblazing Social Care Centre will be opened in Panadura this week on September 15, followed by 27 others along the coastal belt from Panadura to Jaffna, the areas affected by the tsunami, under the first phase of a revolutionary project launched by the Ministries of Social Services & Social Welfare and Child Development & Women’s Empowerment.

The seed for this project, the ultimate in decentralization, came about by chance. “I was thinking about all the women who go abroad, especially to the Middle East as housemaids, leaving behind a host of problems……drunken husbands, sick children or those with a disability, young daughters in danger of being lured into incestuous relationships, elderly parents. We train these women to use blenders and other modern equipment but what happens in their home when they go abroad? We have social service officers including those involved in providing services to children, elders, women and disabled and I wondered how all of them could form a support network for those left behind by the housemaids,” says Additional Secretary W.H.W. Soysa of the Ministry of Social Services & Social Welfare.

This was about two years ago and Mr. Soysa was looking specifically at Kurunegala, from where there is a large exodus of women to the Middle East. He bounced his idea off two dear friends, not officially at first. They happened to be Ted Chaiban and Greg Deuly, who were heading UNICEF and Save the Children, Sri Lanka respectively at that time.

Delighted with the idea, they were mulling over how all these officers could be utilized to support the families of migrant workers more effectively, when came the big waves of the tsunami, in the aftermath of which aid poured in.

The seed took root, and with UNICEF and Save the Children going 50-50, the project was launched. “We will put up 28 Social Care Centres initially and then another 32 in the tsunami-affected Divisional Secretariat areas, all with funding from UNICEF and Save the Children which have provided Rs. 1.5 million not only for the construction of each centre but also for equipment and furniture,” says Mr. Soysa.

In these centres, will sit all the officers who will provide support and guidance to the community at the basic level, dealing with simple but important issues such as a problem with a child or a parent, money for self-employment etc. This multi-disciplinary team will comprise the Social Services Officer, the Social Development Assistant, the Early Childhood Development Assistant, the Probation Officer, the Child Rights Promotion Officer, the Counsellor, the Elderly Development Officer and the Women’s Development Officer.

In addition to looking after the social needs of the families coming under their purview, the centres will also facilitate the reduction of red tape which bureaucrats are well-known for. The centres will keep the various forms needed in the administration of daily life connected to important events such as births, retirement, and property sales and channel such requests in the right direction.
While the project for the network of centres was on the drawing boards, half a world away, in Canada to be precise, a team at Queen’s University in Ontario was contemplating how it could support Sri Lanka after the tsunami.

Sri Lanka, like many other developing countries was not “unchartered territory” for this team from the International Centre for the Advancement of Community Based Rehabilitation (ICACBR). They had been frequent visitors, not as tourists, but as groups helping with the integration of people with disabilities to mainstream society and poverty reduction.

That was also the time when the Ministry of Social Services & Social Welfare was looking for help in the “governance” sphere, to change the thinking and attitudes of the officers who would be its “face” at the Social Care Centres.

The time was right and the match perfect. The Queen’s University team, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, the aid arm of the Canadian government, was in Sri Lanka to set in motion a programme to train a core group of locals comprising public officers and a few NGO representatives who would then fan out across the country and train all officers who would be installed at the Social Care Centres.

“Education is our business and this project was just right,” says Djenana Jalovcic who is heading the team.

Giving voice to the views of the team, ICACBR Executive Director Malcolm Peat says that government institutions in many countries have different officers working at different levels, mostly in isolation. There is no mechanism to bring them together for the benefit of the community whom they are dealing with. The Social Care Centres, however, will be a client-friendly “one-stop shop” focusing on the client’s needs.

Usually, things are done “to” people rather than “with” them. These centres will move away from this attitude and be “community or citizenship models” says Mr. Peat while team member Lorna Jean Edmonds adds: “Although all centres will have one overall goal, each one will reflect the needs of the community where it is located. They will be area-specific as they will deal with the community directly.”

Having a disability herself, another team member Debbie Docherty, a multiple sclerosis sufferer who walks with a cane and uses a yellow scooter to take her around, says Sri Lanka could develop the Social Care Centres as a model for the whole of Asia. “It is something exportable,” she stresses, adding that if an elderly woman comes to the centre seeking spectacles, there maybe another person at home who needs a wheelchair. When the centre staff talks to her they will be able to identify all her needs and also those of her family.

Explaining that at the Social Care Centres one family will have only one file, with a detailed case study, making life easier not only for the family but also for the authorities, Additional Secretary Soysa sums up succinctly: “The centres will be one long stride in our walk towards a caring society.”