Integrated Social Services

Introduction

In 2019, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) and the Office of the Head of the Local Government Service (OHLGS), with close collaboration from Ghana Health Services (GHS), Ministry of Local Government Decentralization and Rural Development (MLGDRD), National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the Ministry of Finance (MoF/FDU) and UNICEF embarked on an initiative to strengthen the delivery of decentralized and Integrated Social Services (ISS).

The rationale for strengthening the delivery of integrated social services is to prevent and respond to violence against children and help address multi-dimensional poverty and vulnerability, with a strong focus on promoting linkages between health, child protection, sexual and gender-based violence, and social protection services which comes from the Coordinated Programme and the National Medium-Term Development Policy Framework 2018-2021 and 2022-2025 (NMTDPF).

The implementation of this approach is already ongoing in 100 MMDAs in 2021 (starting with 60 MMDAs in 2020). The strategy uses the social welfare system as the entry point to strengthen its overall capacity and methods of local social welfare offices, empowering them through updated operating procedures, capacity and innovative use of resources.

Strengthening the social welfare workforce at the sub-national level is at the centre of this due to its critical role in supporting children and families by alleviating poverty; identifying and managing risks; preventing and responding to violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and family separation; and facilitating access to and delivery of social services to enhance child and family well-being.

This workforce strengthening will support ongoing efforts to promote outreach to and access of poor and vulnerable households to health services through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) by strengthening linkages with social protection programmes such as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.

Finally, it will also support or develop the coordination, procedures, training and data management systems necessary to support inter-sectoral linkages and referrals.

Goal and Objectives of the Integrated Social Services (ISS) Initiative

Goal:

Poverty and vulnerabilities of children and families are reduced through increased access to an integrated set of social services.

Objectives:

>> Support MMDAs in implementing the policy objectives of the NMTDPF related to child and family welfare and social protection.
>> Strengthen capacity, coordination, and systems at the local and national level required to enable sustainable delivery of integrated services with a focus on child protection, social protection and health services.
>> Support MMDAs to be able to access funding from different funding arrangements, primarily District Development Facility / DACF/RFG/IGF related to social and child protection programme. 

AN OVERVIEW OF INTEGRATED SOCIAL SERVICES DELIVERY (ISSD) SYSTEM BY THE HEAD OF SERVICE (ING. DR. NANA ATO ARTHUR)

I consider it as a pleasant duty to give an overview of the Integrated Social Services Delivery (ISSD) system. But before I proceed kindly permit me to pay a glowing tribute to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department for International Development (DFID) now Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for providing both technical and financial support to the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development of the Service.

Furthermore, I would like to place on record the commitment of the various Heads of our collaborative entities such as the Ministries of Gender Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development (MLGD&RD), the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), the National Planning Development Commission (NDPC), the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and Ghana Police Service (GPS) among others. The Heads of the above entities have always supported this worth course by releasing their staff to participate in most of the ISS programmes and its related activities mostly as facilitators. This presupposes that both decentralized and non-decentralized entities have committed ourselves to working towards a common goal.

Now kindly permit me to highlight the concept of Integrated Social Services Delivery system (ISSD) and its associated programmes like the Inter-Sectoral Standard Operation Procedures (ISSOP) and Social Welfare Information Management System (SWIMS) for the consumption of those who may not be conversant with the above programmes.

In the main, ISS implies how many governmental and non-governmental entities work in concert or as a conduit for the delivery of social services. In other words, it is predicated on the principle of division of labour or specialization for the achievement of holistic results in service delivery.

For instance, in a defilement case, the Social Welfare and Community Development officer may have to work with the Police Service, Health Service and Judicial Services to resolve the matter based on professional causality or linkage. Such causality or linkage could also be termed as the Referral Pathways under the ISSOP. Additionally, the causality brings on its orbit the SWIMS which permits the compilation, storage and retrieval of clients’ data for purposeful action. The above simplified illustration underscores a positive paradigm shift of our social services delivery system.  This again drums home the need for us to work together rather than in silos for the achievement of our common goal(s) of assisting vulnerable groups in society initiated during my tenure. In the nutshell ISS helps to situate social services delivery within the International Best Practices or Global Standards hence my personal involvement in the whole process as head of Service.

Per my calculations, hundred (100) Assemblies have already benefitted from the UNICEF support.  Magnanimously, sixty (60) additional Assemblies have come on board as at January, 2022.  However, Hundred and one (101) are still waiting. To this end, beneficiaries should count themselves fortunate and therefore should work assiduously to merit the support being provided by our benefactors.  As the Head of Service I don’t want to have any unpleasant duty to sanction any social welfare and community development officer for non-performance. However, if it becomes absolutely necessary I would not to apply sanctions.  Simply because, we don’t want miss the joint projection of UNICEF and the Government of Ghana (GoG) that “by 2022, girls and boys in Ghana especially the most vulnerable ones will increasingly benefit from better, readily available and responsive integrated social services delivery system at the sub-national level”.  The actualization of the above will definitely require the strengthening and building of the capacity of our social welfare workforce. This is an issue that is dear to my heart and therefore would be tackled head on in no distant future.

Furthermore, I will urge the Co-ordinating Directors and Planning Officers to work with the Social Welfare and Community Development Officers to capture issues concerning sexual and gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and other social protection interventions into the Annual Action Plan (AAP) each year for action.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate my gratefulness once again to UNICEF and others for this timely support in improving the competences of our workforce engaged in the provision of social services. Again, I would like to commend all Regional Chief Directors who have graciously support of the ISS programme in diverse ways.  

THANK YOU AND MAY GOD BLESS US ALL.