Seoul Welfare Foundation Provides Consulting Support for 176 Public Welfare Crisis Cases Over 2 Years

Manual and Case Collection Distributed Nationwide

[Asia Economy Reporter Kiho Sung] The Seoul Welfare Foundation announced on the 10th that it has produced a Crisis Case Response Manual and a collection of welfare field consulting cases titled 'Field Cases You Must Know and Use' to provide standardized guidelines for intervention in crisis cases in public welfare fields. These materials will be distributed nationwide to cities and provinces in February upon request from other regional institutions, thereby expanding Seoul's cases on a national scale.

To strengthen the response capabilities of welfare fields (such as community service centers) that are closest to citizens, the Welfare Foundation has been operating the ‘Welfare Field Response Consulting Project,’ a metropolitan-level consulting service, since April 2021. Recently, crisis cases in welfare fields have become complex, including suicide attempts, dementia, and cases without family ties, which are often difficult for public officials to handle alone. Accordingly, the Welfare Foundation has conducted crisis case consulting through professional consultants and published this casebook to share consulting content on similar cases.

The Welfare Field Response Consulting Project has provided a total of 176 consultations over approximately two years, with 115 cases involving crisis situations such as solitary deaths and domestic violence, and 61 cases related to welfare administration. Among these, the most frequently consulted area was ‘mental illness issues,’ accounting for 39 cases, indicating that mental health problems pose the greatest challenge in welfare fields.

Welfare Field Response Consulting can be requested through the Shared Welfare Platform operated by the Seoul Welfare Education Center within the Welfare Foundation. After applying for consulting, a response can be received within three days (basic stage, excluding weekends and holidays).

Although more crisis cases are being identified in public welfare fields than before, interventions after identification still often rely on the capabilities of individual public officials. Therefore, the Welfare Foundation provides consistent and standardized guidelines for intervention in crisis cases in welfare fields by producing and distributing the Crisis Case Response Manual to strengthen the work capabilities of public welfare field practitioners.

The Crisis Case Response Manual and the Welfare Field Response Consulting Case Collection can also be downloaded as PDF files from the Shared Welfare Platform.

Lee Sujin, Head of the Visiting Community Service Center Promotion Support Group at the Welfare Foundation, said, “The purpose of welfare field response consulting is to strengthen the response capabilities of frontline welfare fields and eliminate disparities in welfare service provision between regions.” She added, “As this is a unique project of Seoul City, it is expected that other cities and provinces will utilize Seoul’s cases to bring about progressive changes in welfare fields.”