Social Care centres:

A new dimension in welfare

Lal HEWAPATHIRANA

Every dark cloud has a silver lining! So goes an adage of our time. When the mighty tsunami struck our country on December 26, 2004, the damage and the loss of life and property were unprecedented, irreparable and some of it still remains unredeemed, even after four long years.

Immediately after the tsunami onslaught, many people and organizations from many countries of the world poured into our country, like a `mini tsunami’, some of them promising all kinds of support, some others actually bringing in many types of useful material, and certain other sectors wanting to survey and assess what exactly they could do to help our people to recover at least minimally from the disaster.

The country and its people have displayed their gratitude for all such support and interest, and the unique contributions made by many of them will be well remembered by our present and the future generations.

It was, however, later discovered that while the intentions of some of those donors were admirable, the promises they made still remained promises with a capital P. The services they delivered were far from justifiable; and the ‘assistance’ they provided somewhat lacked quality and sustainability.

Most of such short-term support, inputs, and donations were family or individual oriented, thus extending a `helping hand’ for them to recover on the spur of the moment from the tragic events that befell them.

It was in this backdrop of events that the Queens University of Kingston, Ontario, Canada decided to strengthen the hands of the Government of Sri Lanka on one hand, and the large population as well as the communities directly affected by tsunami on the other hand, to face the consequences of the great tragedy with a vision and mission and a forward plan with sustainable effect.

In a way, it was a case of convincingly bridging the huge gap that existed between the social care cum service delivery implemented by the government, and the actual degree of benefits as well as the quality of well-being accrued to the recipients of such services.

The strategy of the Queens University to help Sri Lanka in this context was to activate its own disaster related rehabilitation machinery called the international Centre for the Advancement of Community Based Rehabilitation (ICACBR), a unit which possesses enormous competence and experience in implementing innovative rehabilitation program in many disaster stricken countries of the world.

The ICACBR Research team headed by its Executive Director, Professor Malcolm Peat, visited Sri Lanka and toured through all the districts affected by tsunami, saw the disaster by themselves, met the people in difficulty, observed the areas of lacunae in their needs and aspirations, assessed what could be and should be done to help them, and then used the ICACBR expertise to evolve concepts and designs on the processes of rehabilitation.

In doing so, the team was closely collaborating with the Ministry of Social Services and Social Welfare, in order to fall in line with the Sri Lanka’s national strategy to re-orient social services for the 21st century.

Quality of life

Together, the two Ministries and the Queens University decided that any ICACBR efforts towards rehabilitation should contribute to community reconstruction aimed at improving the quality of life of the vulnerable people at community level through capacity building.

This goal was to be achieved by the establishment of a series of good governance strategies in an innovative network called Social Care Centres in order to promote coordinated social development, social care and social services in a manner that affirms transparency, accessibility and community ownership.

Canadian government readily agreed to finance the two-year project for the Queens University/ICACBR through its international development arm - the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

It must be remembered with gratitude that Canadian government has been supporting Sri Lanka’s development for well over 50 years now, its land mark contribution being the enormous partnership which commenced in 1951 as a pioneering member of the Colombo Plan.

Ever since Canada stood by then Ceylon and later Sri Lanka through thick and thin to help the country achieve progress in many fields of national and human development.In view of the above vision and the goal, the Social Care Centre Project was titled “ Governance of the Social Development/Care Centres in Post Tsunami Sri Lanka”, with three major components to be addressed within a period of two years.

First, the project was to establish a network of Social Care Centres in tsunami affected districts, out of which eight Centres were to be developed as demonstration multi-sectoral focal points, particularly contributing towards staff capacity building and community participation.

Second, the development of good governance strategies and policy framework for service delivery as a measure of support for the Ministry of Social Service and Social Welfare. Third, the project was to support the establishment of a sustainable advanced level post-graduate educational programme in social sector.

Accordingly, the project was able to commence 27 Social Care Centres in the 7 districts of Kalutara, Galle, Matara, Hambantota, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara, all of which were badly affected by tsunami and were accommodating over a quarter of Sri Lanka’s population. The modern buildings of these Centres were funded and fully-equipped with the support of UNICEF and the office of Save the Children (Sri Lanka).

The concept of Social Care Centres is unique, as it brought together under one roof all the many different kinds of social care and welfare services so far provided from several different places and offices by the Ministry of Social Services and Social Welfare as well as the Ministry of Child Development and Women’s Empowerment.

That was not all. Even the staff of the Social Care Centres, who came under the purview of the respective Divisional Secretariats were exposed to several rounds of training workshops to inculcate in them client-friendly attitudes and behaviour, a sense of urgency and vigilance, and to display a higher degree of efficiency at work - all aimed at good governance.

According to the ICACBR project design, the Social Care Centre staff members functioning at district level were trained by a group called a Teaching Team, comprising 30 senior level public service officers from 13 districts, selected through application and interview process by a panel of representatives from the two Ministries concerned and the ICACBR.

The panel was very particular that an adequate gender balance and an ethnic balance were maintained in making its choices. The 30 members were identified as the Teaching Team in view of their role-play as Teachers cum Trainers of the 200 officers expected to manage the Social Care Centres. They worked in seven groups according to the seven districts they were going to be responsible for the subsequent training of the 200 district level officers.

Activities

The Teaching Team was exposed to Training-of-Trainers (TOT) at nine separate residential workshops of 5 - 6 days each during the two year project period, leaving 2 - 3 months after each workshop for the groups to conduct district level training, follow up, evaluation and reporting at field level.

During this period, the ICACBR training team and its staff in the National Office in Colombo also followed up and evaluated independently the performance of the Teaching Team members as well as the activities of the Social Care Centres subsequent to the training imparted at each workshop.

Altogether 21 training specialists from the Queens University and 14 local experts comprised the overall training team for all nine TOT workshops, which were conducted in English, Sinhala and Tamil media.

Team Building, Communication, Leadership, Decision Making, Problem Solving, Conflict Resolution, Project Planning and Implementation, Programme Evaluation, Human Rights, Good Governance, Community Participation, Community Development, Modern Challenges to Social issues, Disability, Research and Gender were some of the major themes covered in the nine training modules printed in all three languages on over 400 pages.

Queens University’s commitment to assist Sri Lanka in promoting good governance based social care services was evident in another of its desires, which was to establish the Master’s of Social Work (MSW) post-graduate degree - the first such degree in our country.

The Queens University team relied on local leadership, resources and capacity with overall guidance provided by the Canadian team and developing the relevant curriculum conforming to international standard and best practice.

The curriculum was approved by the Ministries concerned and the University Grants Commission, and the MSW programme was launched in March 2008, with 26 students. Pathmasiri Gamlath, a member of the TOT, being a social Service Officer himself, is a student of the MSW programme, who is so pleased with the opportunity he got.

A significant feature of the Social Care Centre Concept is that its principles, guidelines, activities and procedures could be effectively practised, replicated or implemented in any office, even without the existence of such a Centre in the area.

For instance, though there is no Social Care Centre in Dickwella Divisional Secretariat area, all 7 officers attached to the Divisional Secretariat followed the district level training workshops and became empowered.

(Lal Hewapathirana is the former Director of Worldview Sri Lanka. He worked as the communication specialist of the Queens University Training Team for the Social Care Centre Project)