Social Welfare Promotion Fund Management : Accessibility, Problems, and Suggestions

Abstract

The objectives of research on “Social Welfare Promotion Fund” is threefold: 1. to study the formation, development, form of management, accessibility to fund, problems, and suggestion by listening to social welfare organizations which is the target group of fund, 2. to solve the problems and improve the efficiency of management, 3. to study mechanism and social finance system to raise fund for improving efficiency and sustainability. The findings is Social Welfare Promotion Fund was established under the Social Welfare Act B.E. 2003 There are 3 level mechanism: national mechanism, provincial mechanism, and Bangkok mechanism. Framework for fund supporting divided to 3 size: small size support not exceed than 50,000 Bath, medium size support 50,000 – 300,000 Bath, big size support 300,000 – 3,000,000 Bath. There are 2 system of budget allocation namely: normal system; social welfare organizations present project through provincial social development and social security or social development department, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to the national mechanism. The national mechanism will assign subcommittee to screen the proposal before passing to the administrative committee for approval. The project proposal is welcome all year round and approval project proposal is monthly. There is also decentralization system to regional and local for consideration project proposal which is done by provincial subcommittee. Problems and obstacles of accessibility to social welfare promotion fund composed of (1) the mechanism of project proposal is not independent (2) some item of budget can not be apply i.e allowance or overtime of personnel or the very low budget for coffee break (3) problem of communication and data such as no reason to explain why the project is rejected (4) common people have no capacity to write a perfect project proposal (5) problem of limited budget of the fund which solely come from the government annual expenditure budget. Suggestion : Social Welfare Promotion Fund should keep its strong point as a core fund to promote the overall social welfare project of the country, having allocation budget system to regional and local, improving efficiency of its management, targeting at strengthening the social welfare organization to depend on itself in the long run, coordinating with the others for fund raising, the national administrative committee should improve its performance in screening and approving project to speed up budget distribution, should modify regulation on the condition of any project proposal from provincial and local must be accepted and singed by the chairman of administrative provincial subcommittee, should revise whether the criteria on issue based and area based is still suitable, training on project writing should be arrange for community social welfare organizations to be able to write project proposal, should open channel for civil society organizations to participate in providing information or screening project proposal at the beginning to increase efficiency of budget allocation to the areas, the provincial screening committee appoint should include the working group for monitoring and evaluation, should fund raising by using social finance to promote social welfare management, opening channel and facilitating people participation to follow up the national budgeting, and supporting microfinance for the poor.