The "Emergency Welfare Hotline" introduced by Gyeonggi Province in August 2022 has surpassed 26,000 counseling cases in just 3 years and 3 months.
In response to the "Suwon Three Sisters" incident, where a family passed away in a welfare blind spot, Gyeonggi Province established the Emergency Welfare Hotline (010-4419-7722) and the Integrated Crisis Counseling Call Center (031-120) on August 25, 2022. Recently, the province has expanded the hotline's operation through additional channels such as Gyeonggi Bok G-Talk and the Gyeonggi-do Emergency Welfare website.
As of the end of November this year, the cumulative number of people who received counseling through the Emergency Welfare Hotline reached 26,696. Of these, 9,323 people received counseling this year alone.
Among the 26,696 people who received emergency welfare counseling, 7,754 received counseling related to welfare issues. Meanwhile, 18,972 people made inquiries about matters other than welfare, such as unpaid health insurance premiums and provincial policies.
Notably, in the initial phase of the project from August to November 2022, only 10.9% (123 out of 1,125 cases) of reports came from the local community rather than self-reports. However, from August to November this year, this figure increased to 25.1% (158 out of 628 cases).
Gyeonggi Province has urged residents to actively report neighbors in need of assistance through any of the four channels: the hotline (010-4419-7722), the Integrated Crisis Counseling Call Center (031-120), Gyeonggi Bok G-Talk (KakaoTalk), or the Emergency Welfare website.
In addition to citizen reports, Gyeonggi Province is also conducting planned outreach to identify welfare blind spots using big data to detect crisis signs, such as among households vulnerable to winter energy costs. From January to May this year, the province supported 3,047 residents in crisis through these targeted outreach efforts.
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