New social risks faced by Korea is making it imperative to changes the nation's social welfare system, from giving out cash benefit to providing social services. As the gap between rich and poor is widening and social polarization is deepening in Korea, to make such changes in social welfare system, a closer link between employment and welfare has become all the more important,
To meet such needs, social welfare spending has rapidly increased in Korea. Social welfare service budget has gone up 67.7 times from W63.119 billion in 1987 to W4.26 trillion in 2008. Compared to total health and welfare budget (based on general account), which has increased by 24 times from W1.02 trillion to W24.366 trillion, social welfare budget increase is significant. Among the social welfare budget, budget for the elderly has recorded steepest rise for the past five years. (Fig.1)
<Fig. 1> trend of social welfare service budget
from Current Status of Health & Welfare Budget and Outlook 2008-II by Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (Chapter: Statistics)
Expansion of Social welfare service in recent years is expecially significant. It is well illustrated in the statistics that Welfare programs have increased 58.2% and the number of welfare recipients has increased 157.6%. from 2006 to 2010. (by Hyekyu Kang, April 2011)
Although so far cash benefits and services under social welfare have increased a lot, there has not been a serious discussion on how to deliver this new and rapidly increasing welfare. Discussion on social welfare delivery system has remained as a different issue, isolated from the discussion on the expansion of social welfare cash benefit or service. However, as so many welfare service institutions and providers are out there, causing problems of offering
repetitive or duplicated services, one-off service or disconnection between services, now discussion on improving social welfare delivery system is gaining more attention than ever before in order to reduce ineffectiveness and inefficiency in social delivery service and find how to provide recipient-oriented comprehensive service.
Then why recipient-oriented comprehensive service is not yet offered in Korea even with such efforts to improve social welfare delivery system? To find an inspiration on which direction future improvement effort needs to be made, I would like to review the improvement efforts made so far and check what was tried and what was not.
First of all, so far the efforts to improve Korea's public social welfare delivery system focused on a better delivery system for recipients of national basic livelihood program. As a result, efforts to link various departments under Korea's public welfare delivery system for comprehensive service have not been made yet. It means that for recipient-oriented comprehensive service, the issue of how to remove barriers among different departments in the delivery system still remains.
Second, so far, integrating various social welfare services provided by public and private welfare institutions has been left only to each Service Link Team of city, county or district. As a part of effort to support Service Link Team's integration work, community welfare council was mobilized, however, creating general organizational environment and a system to provide recipient-oriented comprehensive service has not been tried. It means that task remains for public and private groups to create such system for comprehensive service.
Third, efforts to improve public social welfare delivery system have been focused on subdividing social welfare works into small categories and subsequently dividing up the work. However, no serious efforts have been made to address resulting disconnection between services and provide comprehensive welfare services. For example, for a case of a recipient of national basic livelihood program, the process was subdivided into 4 categories of investigation, appropriation, change management and follow-up service and subsequently work responsibility of city, county, district and sub-district was divided up. There are Investigation Team, Management team, Service Link Team and case management staff and there is a clear line among their work responsibility. Certainly such subdivision helped work efficiency of each team, however, from service recipients' perspective, it has become the cause of service disconnection. So how to strike a balance between subdividing welfare work and providing comprehensive & integrated service still remains as a task ahead of Korea.
Fourth, improving social welfare delivery system has been tried in the direction of strengthening the role of the local bodies and community groups while reducing the role of the central government. However, there has not been enough attempts on the part of local bodies to closely cooperate and create a stable welfare delivery system at their level. So in restructuring social welfare delivery system for improvement, role assignment for the central government and local bodies remains as a task.
Fifth, as a part of effort to improve social welfare delivery system, those recipients of national basic livelihood program have been linked to a private group of Self Help Center for their self-support, however, offering them case management service that links work & employment to welfare has not been tried. So how to integrate employment and welfare and provide sustainable social welfare also still remains as a task.
Lastly, even with many attempts to improve public social welfare delivery system so far, there has not been an attempt to set up a dedicated office to exclusively do social welfare work and as a result, the work is still done by social welfare officials in general administrative organization. It gives rise to many issues such as supervision by superiors who lacks expertise in welfare work, work inefficiency and ineffectiveness caused by frequent transfer
of general administrative officials and growing shortfall of social welfare officials, undermining effectiveness and efficiency of welfare delivery system as a whole.
Social Welfare Office, which was created in 2004 and lasted for the following 2 years, was the first attempt to set up a body that independently and exclusively does social welfare work, however, even in the office, senior position was held by general administrative officials. As the office suffered shortfalls of officials, it has become Resident Livelihood Support Bureau, and its performance never been seriously evaluated.
So It needs to be identified first whether social welfare work can be done effectively and efficiently within general administrative organizations and then making a decision whether the nation should continue to go with the current system still remains as a critical task.
The problem of Korea's social welfare delivery system identified by Dr. Hyekyu Kang is accurate and her suggestion for improvement is reasonable and relevant. Changing current service from mainly giving out cash benefit to providing welfare service along with case management service, strengthening the function of front-line office, providing better service support and taking stronger responsibility for service recipient, stronger recipient management and holding clear responsibility for the management, strengthening self-help support at local government level, creating a strong base for community-oriented welfare and beefing up upper level local governments' ability for planning & coordinating welfare administration are all important and necessary. However, there will be certainly more than one social welfare delivery system model to embrace all the above improvement suggestions, it would be necessary to present more specific model together with the suggestions. I think many lessons can be learned from New Zealand's public welfare delivery system(Work & Income), in which case of employment and welfare integration is well managed.
Muhandolbom Center of Gyeonggi Province presented by Professor Seonmee Hong showed how it is possible to integrate case management and offer recipient-oriented comprehensive service with attempts of local bodies on their own and with cooperation between the government and private groups. However, since case management at Muhandolbom Center is being overlapped with case management by the central government for various recipients in health, welfare and education, and duplicated with the work of officials at Resident Livelihood Support Bureau on comprehensive social welfare service case management, the system for case management as a whole needs to be checked and reorganized. As of now, legally, it not impossible for the head of upper level local government or lower level local government to increase the number of social welfare professionals or create a dedicated body that exclusively does social welfare work. However, such attempt does end successfully in reality, so local governments need to find out the reason first, let the central government know about it and then make concerted efforts to address the problem. Only then will the efforts of local governments to restructure welfare delivery system not end as one-off event and result in creating of a stable system.
Reference
Public Discussion for Welfare Service Improvement" by Hyekyu Kang.(2011. 4. 13) Ministry of Health & Welfare Current status of Health & Welfare budget and outlook 2008-II by Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (Chapter: Statistics)
약력 | Biography
■학 력
1994 미국 Berkeley대, 사회복지학 박사(Ph.D.) (Univ. of California at Berkeley)
1988 미국 미네소타주립대학교, 사회복지행정 석사(MSW) (Univ. of Minnesota at Minneapolis) 1986 연세대학교 사회사업학과 졸업
1982 경기 부천고등학교 졸업
■경 력
2009.3 – 2010.8 연세대학교 행정대학원 부원장 2008.3 - 2009.2 통일연구원 부원장
2007.9 - 2009.2 연세대학교 사회과학대학 부학장 2005.3 - 2007.8 연세대학교 사회복지연구소 소장
2005.3 - 2007.8 연세대학교 사회과학대학 사회복지학과 학과장 2005.9 – 현재 연세대학교 사회복지학과 정교수
2003.8 - 2004.8 Visiting Professor, Institute of East Asian Studies, Univ. of California at Berkeley 2002.9 - 2003.8 연세대학교 사회과학대학 사회복지학과 학과장
2001.3 - 2003.2 연세대학교 사회복지대학원 교학부장 1999.9 - 2001.2 연세대학교 사회교육원 교학부장 1999.9 - 2005.8 연세대학교 사회복지학과 부교수
1997.3 - 1999.8 연세대학교 사회과학대학 사회복지학과 조교수 1995.3 - 1997.2 연세대학교 사회과학대학 사회복지연구소 연구원 1992.9 - 1994.12 미 버클리대학교 정신건강 및 사회복지연구소 연구조교
■주요 연구분야
사회복지행정, 사회복지전달체계, 사회복지기획 & 평가, 정책분석, 노인복지 등
■주요활동
2007.9 - 서울시 사회복지위원
2006.5 - 2007.4 보건복지부 자체평가위원회위원 2006.3 - 2007 기획예산처 시장원리확대위원회위원 2006. 행정고등고시 면접위원
2005. 입법고등고시(공직적성평가)출제위원 2005.11- 2009.11 사회복지공동모금회 배분분과위원
최재성
연세대학교 사회복지학과 교수
Jae-Sung Choi
Department of Social Welfare in Yonsei University
2007. - 2009.11 사회복지공동모금회 지정기탁소위 위원장
2005.4 - 2007.6 보건복지부 노인요양보장제도 시범사업 운영평가단 2002.8 - 2003.8 서울시 21세기 기획위원회 복지분과위원
2002.3 - 현재 서대문장애인복지관 운영위원회 위원 2002.9 - 2003.8 한국사회복지사협회 복지사회소위원회 위원장 2002.2 - 2002.12 국무조정실 정보화사업평가위윈회 위원 2001.3 - 2003.2 사회복지공동모금회 배분분과위원
Social Work Research and Practice(SSCI), Editorial Board Member(2008.01- 현재) 사회복지연구 편집위원회 위원 (2007.03 - 현 재)
한국사회복지학 편집위원회 위원 (2006.03 - 2007.02) 한국장애인복지학회 이사
한국사회복지행정학회 부회장(07.3- 현재), 편집위원장(99-01) 한국사회복지학회 편집분과위원(05-06) 정회원
■주요연구
1998년 서울시 사회복지관 평가, 서울시 사회복지관협회.
1998년 장애인복지관 평가모델개발, 보건복지부.
1999년 보건복지부 장애인복지관 평가사업, 한국보건사회연구원.
1999년 사회복지관의 비용효율성 분석, 한국학술진흥재단.
1999년 장애인공동생활가정(그룹홈)실태조사 및 운영 프로그램개발, 한국장애인복지시설협회.
2000년 사회복지시설이용권제도의 모형개발, 보건복지부.
2001년 사회복지조직의 다조직화에 대한 연구, 한국학술진흥재단.
■Education
1988 - 1994 Ph.D. in Social Welfare
University of California, Berkeley, CA: School of Social Welfare
Doctoral Dissertation: "Inefficiency and Its Determinants in U.S. Nursing Homes: Does Profit-Making Incentive Improve Efficiency?"
1986 - 1988 MSW in Human Services Management
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN: School of Social Work 1982 - 1986 B.A. in Social Welfare
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
■Experience
2009.3 – 2010.8 Associate Dean, The Graduate School of Public Administration 2007.9 - 2009.2 Associate Dean, College of Social Sciences
2006.3 - 2007.8 Chairperson, Dept. of Social Welfare, College of Social Science
2003.9 - 2004.8 Visiting Scholar, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies, U.C., Berkeley 2002.9 - 2003.8 Chairperson, Dept. of Social Welfare, College of Social Science
2001.3 - 2003.2 Associate Dean, School of Social Welfare
1999.9 - 2001.2 Associate Director, Extension Program of Yonsei University 1999.3 - 2005.2 Associate Professor
1997.3 - 1999.2 Assistant Professor, Yonsei University, Dept. of Social Welfare 1995.3 - 1997.2 Lecturer, Yonsei University
1992.2 - 1994.12 Research Assistant,
Mental Health and Social Welfare Research Group, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA.
■Committee & Membership
2007.12 - present Editorial Board Member, Journal of Research on Social Work Practice 2006.9 - 2009.11 Fund Allocation & Evaluation Committee,
Community Chest of Korea
2002.8 – 2005.12 The 21st Century Seoul Metropolitan City Government Planning Board
2002.2 - 2002.8 Informationizing & Evaluating Committee for Social Welfare, Prime Minister of Korea 2001.3 - 2003.2 Fund Allocation & Evaluation Committee, Community Chest of Korea
Korean Academy of Social Welfare Administration, Board Member, Vice President Korean Academy of Social Welfare, Editorial Board Member
Korean Association for Policy Analysis and Evaluation, Member Korean Academy of Social Security, Board Member
Korea Redcross, Advisor