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.

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

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. 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. The client is poor because of no fault of his but because we have failed him. As a nation we are guilty that the human being cannot be offered the dignity he or she deserves.

The fault if there is one is ours. So far the human rights discourse has been confined in Sri Lanka to the public domain, in that the claims were asking for fundamental rights to engage in the public domain. The greater human rights violations are in the private domain or the domestic sphere and we are the advocates for this.

The fact that all kinds of ills that we deal with in the Ministry have thus far been construed as private ills of people and we did not have the imagination to change the mindset of the workers to see that a private ill is in fact a public illness as it afflicts thousand upon thousands and for many generations to come.

A professional social worker in this human rights based practice will link the private ill as a public issue. To do that he must understand the ill in its political, historical and structural context and advocate on behalf of the vulnerable. This is teamwork and musters all the resources of all towards one client or family. Through educated training we need to change the whole mindset of people working with these groups.

The best interests of the client are supreme and the client is neither exploited nor oppressed. We have the technological know-how to bring this focused attention on the client in our work and the professionals are trained to do just that.

The oft used terms such as capacity building, empowerment, self awareness, motivation and self esteem describe our work. Ours is not charity, it is a contact entered into by the parties for mutual benefit. If we offer assistance to a child that child must obtain a good report card in the school as evidence of a satisfactory contract.

If we offer assistance to a poor family all children must attend school. The parents must use the assistance to get out of the poverty trap. Less research and more targeted assistance is the new direction. That is the duty of the recipient. All parties have to perform and performance is an index of human dignity.

Just one more point to note. The Ministry will be guided by the activities in these centers to come up with a national policy and plan for the entire country. Through consensus we need to bring the provincial administration to fall in line with the national plan.

We are the centre and it is the duty of the centre to plan for all with their data and support. Those who work in these centers will furnish the data to the Centre to bring out a National plan which will monitor the progress of the nation. While all economic indices are increasing we will be more than happy to see our numbers gradually decreasing. That will be a rewarding experience for all of us.

The following example is an illustration from real life how we operate. In the following example (supplied to me by the Project Manager K. Ariyasena) the reader will notice that by working with one family Ariyasena has saved a number of future families from poverty and has made each one of them a dignified citizen of a caring society. Here it is: Siripala was found guilty of theft and the magistrate called for a Social Report from the Probation Officer. In his report the Probation Officer recommended 2 years of guide supervision and it was accepted by the court.

Siripala was 27 years and living with a woman in a defacto relationship. They had a girl child aged 2 years. He was treated for a brain injury due to an accident at the neurosurgical unit of the National Hospital and had been asked to continue medication. However due to ignorance and inability to meet the bus fare he had given up medication. As a result he was suffering from an imbalance in the body.

The Probation Officer enabled to get a public assistance grant for the client through the Social Services Officer. With this allowance he was persuaded to attend clinics and continue medication. At a latter stage the Probation Officer with the help of the Medical Officer made arrangements to get his medicine from the local hospital saving him the ordeal of travelling to Colombo. Siripala had no regular employment.

However he was doing casual work at the Buddhist temple nearby, receiving food for himself and his family. The PO assessed the strengths of Siripala and found that he was industrious, energetic and responsive to advice. The Probation Officer organized regular casual work in a children's home.

Through it was not on a permanent basis he could earn little money. Meanwhile his wife was also persuaded to wrap "Beedi" and earn extra income for the family.

They were living on a reservation land and the Forest Department in the meantime notified Siripala to vacate the land. The Probation Officer intervened and requested a 3 month grace period to make alternative arrangements.

A five-acre land which was available for a cemetery in the area and PO inquired from the local government authority whether they could release 10 perches from that land. As they had no objection PO requested the Land Ministry through the DLO to allocate some land under the village extension program.

The request was met and the client was allocated 1/2 acre of land. Arrangements were made to legalize their marriage and at the end of the probation period he was living in a house of his own and supplementing his income through cultivation.

His three children are now economically stable, happily married and have become dignified citizens and moreover they will surely assist some others as members of a caring society.