Tim za socijalno uključivanje i smanjenje siromaštva

The Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia has published the third edition of the research titled Mapping Social Care Services and Material Support within the Mandate of Local Governments in the Republic of Serbia (hereinafter: the Mapping). Conducted in three-year intervals for the past eight years at the local level in the Republic of Serbia, the scope of the Mapping has been expanded in this cycle by also including the data on material support provided from the budget of local self-governments (LSG). At the initiative of the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit, the research was conducted by the Center for Social Policy with the support from the Republic Institute for Social Protection and the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities. The Mapping was supported by the Government of Switzerland.

The research is the confirmation of the strategic commitment of the Social Inclusion and Policy Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia to invest in the development of a monitoring and reporting system, with the ultimate objective of providing policymakers and other stakeholders with relevant and reliable decision-making tools.

The Mapping of social care services and material benefits covers both private and public service providers and enables deep insight into all local-level services and material benefits in the area of social protection in the Republic of Serbia. Moreover, it enables the monitoring of multiannual trends and the comparison of the obtained data and indicators against a benchmark, thus allowing local self-governments to determine how they compare with other LSGs, as well as to be motivated by the peer-pressure and other LSGs’ good practices to introduce new measures or modify how they provide the existing ones, or possibly to consider the possibilities of introducing new or expanding the existing material support entitlements.

The part of the research that refers to material support at the local level covered two types of benefits – cash and in kind, classified into three groups: means-tested benefits for poor individuals and families; category-specific benefits without a means test; as well as birth-related benefits, work-parenthood reconciliation measures and other population/pro-birth policy measures.

Conducted between May 2019 and March 2020 in 145 local governments, the Mapping represents the third cycle of reviewing social care services, as well as the first study on material support provided from the local budgets. Prior to this mapping exercise, which used the data for 2018, social care services had been mapped in 2012 and 2015.

In addition to the data collected at city and municipality level, the analyses also relied on the relevant data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), including from the DevInfo database, the Republic Secretariat for Public Policy, the Republic Institute for Social Protection, the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit, as well as from other sources and quotes from literature and research in this area.

Click to download:

• Report “Mapping Social Care Services and Material Support within the Mandate of Local Governments in the Republic of Serbia” (.pdf)
• Mapping Social Care Services within the Mandate of LSG in RS – database (.xlsx)
• Mapping Material Support – database (.xlsx)