The Network of Organizations for Children of Serbia – MODS prepared and submitted proposals for improvement of the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Social Protection in consultation with its members. You can find MODS proposals here.
During the consultations with MODS members, it was found that there was a need for numerous amendments to the Law on Social Protection, the scope of which exceeded the percentage allowed in the enactment of the law on changes and amendments. In accordance with this, we think that the text of the new Law on Social Protection should be worked out upon in consultations and with the participation of representatives of civil society organisations that can contribute to the improvement of legal solutions through their experience and expertise.
Community funding mechanisms, inadequate budget allocations for community services, restrictive regulations in relation to the development of preventive services, services provided by civil society organizations, as well as poor mechanisms for controlling the quality of services and control over service providers have been identified as the main challenges in the functioning of the social protection system.
In accordance with the identified challenges, during the consultations, members of the Network of Organizations for Children of Serbia defined the following expectations from the amendments to the Law on Social Protection:
- to enable and encourage more efficient development of support services for vulnerable groups, with the focus on improving the financing mechanism of services, in the domain of availability of financial resources for financing services, the improvement of the mechanism for financing services (currently defined through public procurement), and the establishment of a mechanism which enables that “money accompanies beneficiaries”;
- to contribute to the deinstitutionalisation process;
- to establish the basis for strengthening mechanisms that would guarantee the quality of services for beneficiaries, not just the fulfilment of technical standards;
- to enable the establishment of intensive support services to the family, social-educational and counselling-therapeutic services;
- to establish effective sanctions mechanisms in the event of violations of the provisions of the law or when the law is not applied;
- to ensure the adoption of the missing rulebooks;
- to encourage the development of private-public partnerships in the provision of services;
- to ensure that social welfare institutions are fully adapted to people with disabilities and children with disabilities.
At the end, we would like to highlight MODS’s expectations that the legislator shall pay more attention to providing a mechanism through which local governments will develop a comprehensive child support system for families that will include early recognition of problems in children, early intervention as support to children and families at an early age, the development of services that will enable permanent, timely and adequate support to families with children with developmental disabilities, to provide access to services and programs for children who are in conflict with the law, for their inclusion in the local community, as well as educational programs and services that will support social inclusion and education based on inclusive principles.