Questions/Answers

Although many policies and much of the budget were dedicated to the elderly and at-risk, low-income families, it was impossible to provide services tailored to the needs of such citizens at the proper times due to manpower and material limitations in the welfare delivery system. However, by increasing the number of social workers, we were able to strengthen the delivery system. Due to the negative social effects of the country’s rapid industrialization and urbanization, South Korea was ranked 26th among OECD members in terms of “life satisfaction.” In terms of “community,” one of the 11 dimensions of well-being in the OECD Better Life Index, it was ranked the lowest for two consecutive years (2013 and 2014). Poverty, a major contributing factor of this poor performance, was considered to be a personal problem among Koreans at the time. To improve on these aspects of life in Korea, Seoul Metropolitan Government decided to achieve innovation in the welfare system by focusing on the city’s districts and its people. To this end, the government aimed to establish a sustainable system for providing support and care for the poor. The Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative seeks to expand the community sharing and support network to create an environment where community members take care of each other and provide a platform for discussion and the forging of relationships among residents, thereby strengthening local communities. The community service centers serve as points of contact between the government and the citizens. In the past, however, their function was limited to only processing civil complaints. This initiative improves the centers by transforming them into resident-centered community spaces. Moreover, it promotes visiting welfare by providing an electric vehicle, called “Chatdongi,” to each center for social workers and officials to drive when visiting the homes of residents.

Based on the vision of establishing “a welfare community made by the people, and a community service center that serves the people,” this initiative aims to strengthen the social safety net in local communities and realize the autonomy of citizens. The formation of a social safety net in local communities refers to the implementation of policies that have deep, positive impacts on the lives of the people. By strengthening the social safety net in communities, we hope to expand the provision of public services, including welfare and healthcare, to more people. In addition, we hope to realize the autonomy of citizens by establishing networks at the neighborhood level and create a welfare ecosystem in local communities by implementing true public-private governance.

The Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative has four goals:Identify and eliminate blind spots in the welfare system and establish a visiting welfare and healthcare service delivery system to create an ecosystem for universal welfare and healthcare.Provide comprehensive services by reinforcing the function of community service centers as consultation portals for welfare-related civil complaints and expanding case management to the neighborhood level.Establish a resident-centered system for identifying those in need of assistance and create a community where citizens proactively identify and resolve problems in their communities.Establish an innovative,resident-centered administration through the operation of the Our Neighborhood Action Officers,who provide administrative services focused on citizens,and transformation of citizen-participatory spaces.In pursuing these goals,we have effectively managed socially alienated households,strengthened the public responsibility of and provided customized services for the most vulnerable citizens,and established a comprehensive support system to help them rebuild their lives.We have strengthened the social safety net by encouraging the participation of various local community actors.The tasks of this initiative largely involve providing support for poor and vulnerable citizens through integrated services and citizen participation.

We increased the number of social welfare workers and nurses in each neighborhood by an average of 6.8 people, thereby reducing the number of people for which each worker or nurse is responsible from 289 to 126. This helped us identify welfare blind spots and realize “reaching out welfare.” In providing this kind of welfare service, social welfare workers visit poor citizens, the elderly, households with infants, and other people who have difficulty visiting their local community service center and provide customized welfare and healthcare services to each individual according to their life stage. In addition, we created the position of “expert welfare counselor” to provide customized and comprehensive welfare services and strengthened local communities by enhancing the capacity of the general public and building a network of relationships. Lastly, the private and public sectors made efforts to resolve welfare issues as well. All the efforts outlined above have dramatically improved the public services provided by Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Our solution was to turn Seoul into a people-centered city where citizens are able to enjoy their lives. To achieve this, we decided to change the city’s community service centers into places that satisfy the needs of the residents of Seoul. Therefore, we established a beneficiary-centered welfare administration by dramatically increasing the number of workers at local community service centers and began providing universal welfare services customized to the life stage of the beneficiary to at-risk, low-income households, households in welfare blind spots, elderly citizens over the age of 65, and households with infants. Visiting nurses were assigned to the community service centers to provide thorough healthcare services for local residents in an effort to narrow the healthcare gap and contribute to prolonging the healthy lives of citizens. In addition, various improvements were made to the community service centers, such as the creation of communal spaces for residents, enabling both the private and public sectors to cater to the needs of local residents. These efforts have established the community service centers as pivotal spaces in local communities.

○ Through the vitalization of resident-led welfare communities, we were able to create a social safety net that spans administrative, welfare, healthcare, and community needs and minimize welfare blind spots. As a result, we were successfully prevented at-risk, low-income families and other vulnerable groups from falling below the poverty line. We also strengthened the support system, continued to monitor the identified at-risk, low-income families, and worked in cooperation with local communities, thereby having a positive impact on society. ○ In terms of assistance for women, children, and families, we assigned professional planners to specific families to check on their development and parenting environment and provide mental and physical health assessments for mothers, recognizing the critical role they play in the health and development of infants. This service has restored people’s faith in public welfare by ensuring that everyone is able to receive public services tailored to their particular life stage.

This initiative is innovative in that it transformed the function of the community service centers from places where civil complaints are processed to communal spaces that focus on the people and their welfare and established a foundation for the provision of universal rather than selective welfare. To realize these changes, we analyzed and changed the function of the community service centers, made structural changes to personnel and teams, redesigned the physical spaces of the community service centers with a greater emphasis on residents; fostered organizations made up of residents in order to educate them on how to solve the problems in their communities, developed resources for communities in cooperation with local residents, and established a system for sharing such resources. Therefore, this initiative is innovative in that it aims to improve the lives of Seoul citizens in the areas of welfare, healthcare, local communities, women, and administration. Moreover, it is unique in that it is a realization of joint public-private governance that brings together the city government, local government districts, communities, welfare organizations, private organizations, and experts from different fields.

The Reaching Out Community Center Initiative was first undertaken by Seoul Metropolitan Government in an attempt to improve the existing welfare policy by shifting its focus toward citizens and strengthening public responsibility. In particular, we focused on transforming the administrative system from a resident request-based system to a government identification-based system. In this way, we have been able to realize “reaching out welfare,” provide comprehensive services that meet the needs of citizens, identify and discover citizen leaders, foster the establishment of resident organizations, use local community service centers as a platform for publicizing and discussing the issues of local communities, and provide continuous care services to residents. Through this initiative, Seoul has improved and reorganized its unique welfare delivery system.

In particular, we have increased the number of social workers by 2,200; visiting nurses, by 538; and neighborhood project experts, by 73. By doing so, we reduced the number of people for which each social worker was responsible from 170 to 115 and increased our manpower to ensure our capability to oversee all aspects of residents’ lives. In addition, we have expanded infrastructure by creating more shared spaces for the use of residents at the local community service centers and increasing the number of electric cars available so that staff can pay visits to residents in need more quickly and frequently. We have also designated Reaching Out Community Service Center officers for each and every resident to make it easier for residents to request counseling regarding their hardships and created a network of contacts. In addition to these human and material resources, we have been increasing the welfare budget allotted for this initiative.

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○ The Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative’s welfare and healthcare service has been praised nationwide for its innovation, effectiveness, and accomplishments. In July 2017, it was included among the “100 Government Projects of the Republic of Korea.” Currently, the service is being applied across South Korea, with all local governments having benchmarked it. With many of these governments having already completed trial runs, the service is now being applied to their welfare systems. ○ To transform the community service centers into resident-centered centers, public architects employed by Seoul City and architects working in other fields with a strong understanding of public welfare service participated in the “One Architect, One Community Service Center Project,” the goal of which was to redesign community service centers as open, public spaces for the use of Seoul citizens. With the creation and operation of such spaces, community service centers came to be pillars of local communities, providing a platform for citizens to discuss various community-related issues. At the request of Beijing, which expressed interest in the initiative, we participated in a design workshop there in 2016 to share our experiences with the “space improvement” project of the Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative.

In order for an initiative to be sustainable, it must first earn the trust of the people. In our case, we were able to build trust as our officials identified and resolved issues affecting the welfare and healthcare of local residents. As a result, the level of public-private trust increased by 24.5 percent, and citizens expressed a high level of satisfaction with the friendliness, expertise, communication skills, and efficiency of the community service center officials. In addition, this initiative does not simply provide welfare services uniformly to all citizens but offers welfare services that are customized to individuals’ specific needs. Furthermore, this initiative has created a system through which people can search for resources that can be shared at the local community level, rather than providing temporary support. Considering these characteristics, the initiative has been assessed to be sustainable.

Instead of making a small, temporary change to the support system for at-risk, low-income families and other vulnerable groups, this innovative initiative made a fundamental, long-term change to the welfare delivery system. Now, the Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative is well established. To ensure the sustainability of the initiative, Seoul Metropolitan Government has created a sustainable training program for government officials consisting of electives that cater to individuals’ needs and capabilities, in addition to the core curricula. Moreover, the Welfare Information System has been improved to provide integrated information on the welfare and healthcare services offered to citizens. In this way, the manpower and material basis necessary for the sustainability of the initiative have been fully established.

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We submit reports on the process and accomplishments of this initiative to the Korea Administration Public-Relations Festa (KAPFESTA), Korea Local Autonomy Exposition, and other policy evaluation events so that the initiative can be assessed and evaluated. In addition, the Seoul Institute conducts performance assessments to evaluate the level of citizen satisfaction with the initiative, public-private trust, extent of citizens’ autonomy, and welfare recipients’ satisfaction with the services they received.

○ After the evaluations conducted at KAPFESTA in August 2017, Seoul’s Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative was honored with the presidential award, which is granted to only the best of the initiatives undertaken by local governments in South Korea. The initiative was also introduced as one of Seoul’s major initiatives at the Korea Local Autonomy Exposition held in November 2017. ○ Certain aspects of the new national welfare system, announced with the “100 Government Projects of the Republic of Korea” in July 2017, after the inauguration of President Moon Jae-in, were based on the innovative Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative, particularly the initiative’s basic elements. The success of the initiative was attributed to the value of focusing on “people,” bold investment, and administrative innovation, which were supported by: an increase in the number of personnel (reducing the number of people overseen by each social worker by 56 percent); transformation of government officials’ work process; focus on people, communication, and governance; provision of integrated, universal public services for vulnerable groups, the elderly, and families with infants; and active support provided by the administration to allow citizens to learn about and participate directly in the process of citizen autonomy.

We asked the Seoul Institute to conduct an assessment of the initiative by examining how many times social welfare workers paid visits to citizens, in how many cases welfare was provided, and how satisfied people were with the service, among other factors. The excellence of the initiative was confirmed by the media as well. The Seoul Institute studied the basic documents related to the Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative and conducted a quantitative evaluation (i.e., measured quantitative performance) and qualitative evaluation (i.e., gauged the level of qualitative effort assessed by the recipients and people involved, improvement in recipient’s level of satisfaction, etc.). The assessment results included a proposal regarding the mid- to long-term direction that the development of the initiative should take in the future.

○ From its conceptualization to implementation, the Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative has been operated through public-private governance. The governance of the initiative involves: the Reaching Out Community Service Center Steering Committee, headed by the First Vice-Mayor for Administrative Affairs of Seoul Metropolitan Government and consisting of government officials from each department, professors in the areas of welfare, healthcare, and community, and experts from various social sectors, and the Community Service Center Promotion and Support Group, made up of social welfare organizations, community activity organizations, social economic organizations, and ordinary citizens. Experts from various sectors design the content of the initiative, while government officials implement and execute it. The Promotion and Support Group makes efforts to ensure the progress and implementation of the initiative, while assessment organizations constantly monitor the initiative’s results. ○ In addition, in the process of strengthening the public welfare function of the initiative, we established a joint public-private taskforce to re-establish the role of private welfare organizations, in light of the transformation of the community service centers. The complementary roles of both private and public organizations were established through the vitalization of public-private, working-level training clubs. Moreover, in the process of expanding the scope of the initiative by stage, we designed and promoted the initiative based on the results of discussions with the districts and residents.

Through this initiative, we learned that innovation of the public welfare system is possible only after acknowledging people’s right to welfare, the diversity of people’s needs, and the national government’s responsibility to provide welfare as well as by designing the initiative through the continuous research and investigation of experts in the private and public sectors and investment of materials, personnel, and funds. By launching this initiative, Seoul has made local communities safer and healthier, improved citizens’ quality of life, boosted citizens’ pride by giving them the chance to directly participate in their local communities and the policymaking process, and encouraged citizens to effectively release their social, economic, and cultural needs. With these achievements, we have transformed Seoul into a city that actively works with its citizens to make their dreams a reality. In the future, we will be announcing the second version of the Reaching Out Community Service Center Initiative, which will involve improving the community service centers to create local centers that provide a comprehensive range of support and services for citizens.