On October 23 in Minsk, the Belarusian Community of PLWH took part in a roundtable discussion on the practical implementation of the state social contract for providing resocialization services to persons released from prisons.
The practice of implementing the state social contracting in Belarus exists since 2012, however, until recently only elderly people and people with disabilities were eligible for social services. After adjusting the state social protection program, the category of “citizens in difficult life situations” was introduced, including people released from prisons, and now non-governmental organizations will be able to provide them with extremely demanded resocialization services.
Over the past two years, a number of important additions have been made to the state social protection program, which are designed to improve approaches to the NGOs operation within the framework of the state social contract.
The Law “On Social Services” changed the competition terms: the contest now can be considered valid even with the single participant, if their application meets the terms of reference and is a truly worthy offer. In addition, the validity term of the agreements within the state social contracting are extended up to 5 years.
Representatives of civil society organizations note that the draft document on the list of services and the calculated tariffs within the framework of the state social contracting is still underdeveloped, while it is extremely necessary to have a comprehensive overview of the NGO social work area, cost of services and remuneration rates.
The draft documents regulating the activities of non-governmental organizations in the implementation of state social contracts are currently passing through the final stages of approval with the departments of the Government of Belarus.