Poverty and Social Inclusion Policy Development in Portugal

1
Poverty and Social Inclusion Policy Development
in Portugal
MSI Project Phase II
INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SECURITY Ministry of Social
Security, Family and Child Portugal
Belfast, 7th-8th October 2004
2
Main contents

• Historical and political context
• Policy development
• The actors
• The consultation process
• The evaluation process
• Resources
• Concluding remarks

3
Historical and political context

• Poverty was not seen as a problem in Portugal
  until the beginning of the 80s and therefore it
  was never a main issue in the political agenda.
• There was no specific and coherent set of
  policies to combat poverty in Portugal.
• As Portugal joined the EC in 1986 the problem
  gained more visibility, and in June 1988 the
  political debate was set in Parliament.
• A subject that was completely absent from
  policies began to appear and to play an important
  role in policy making in Portugal.

4
Historical and political context

• During the 90s
• social protection systems were developed,
• total expenditure on social protection rose,
• the range of risks and situations covered was
  increased and
• more people access to services, benefits and
  assistance.

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Historical and political context

• Since 1995
• Portugal has developed a whole new generation of
  social policies, aimed specifically at
  reinforcing the dynamics of inclusion in
  Portuguese society

New generation of active social policies
activation of individuals
activation of institutions
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Historical and political context
These policies targeted children, older people,
people with disabilities and several vulnerable
groups and very poor families and individuals. In
this scope important national programmes and
measures were developed, such as
7
Historical and political context

• In recent years
• the construction of this new and innovative path
  has been accomplished particularly within the
  frame of

• the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion
  (PNAI)
• the Social Network Programme

In different levels, both policies are aimed at
making the measures to fight poverty and social
exclusion well planed and better targeted, more
integrated and thus more effective
A new step in the reinforcement of the combat for
a more inclusive society
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Policy Development

• The political and the policy development process
  in Portugal is rather centralised and, with some
  exceptions, the most frequently used level of
  consultation is national.

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Policy Development

• Partnerships between public and private
  institutions, at local and national level, are
  very common and the partnership work is well
  established.
• Such an experience created the conditions for the
  incorporation of the partnership principle in
  current management of social policies and
  increased the participation of representative
  national organisations in policy development.
• However, there is still a long way to go forward
  to reach a desirable level of participation and
  involvement on policy decision-making of private
  entities and especially of the target groups and
  local communities.

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Policy development

• The actors

• The Ministry of Social Security, Family and Child
  is responsible for the definition, orientation
  and development of the social protection systems,
  including insertion, social action and social
  security policies.
• The NGO, Private Solidarity Institutions and
  Local Development Associations play an important
  role on the social protection system as well as
  on the implementation of national social policy
  measures since they run most of the social
  equipments for children and older people.
• Some private entities as well as local
  authorities are usual partners of the public
  local services in the implementation of national
  policies, such as the Social Insertion Income,
  and in the development of local anti-poverty
  projects.

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The Consultation Process

• The consultation involves mainly national
  representative organizations of social partners,
  such as
• trade unions
• different entrepreneurial associations
• national organizations of private solidarity
  institutions
• insurance mutualities
• national organizations representing local
  authorities

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The Consultation Process

• This consultation is formal and within
  established structures. The examples of such
  formal consultation structures are
• the Council for Economic and Social Cooperation,
  (State Central Government, Unions, Social
  Partners) dealing mainly with economic and
  employment policies,
• the Commission of the Cooperation Pact for Social
  Solidarity, concerning the definition of social
  policies.

• Within these structures consultation is normally
  undertaken at the policy development/design
  stage. However if the first is functioning in a
  regular basis, the second one has not functioned
  regularly in the last two years.

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The Consultation Process

• Other national consultive formal structures were
  created to help in the definition and
  implementation follow-up of specific social
  policies, such as
• The NAPincl Interministerial Follow-up Commission
• The National Education Council
• The National Commission for the Social Insertion
  Income
• The Commission for the Evaluation and Follow-up
  of Cooperation Agreements
• The National Commission for the Protection of
  Children and Young People
• The National Commission for the Social Employment
  Market

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The Consultation Process

• At local level, also exist formal permanent
  partnership structures, such as
• the Commissions for the Protection of Children
  and Young People
• Local Education Councils
• Local Follow-up Commissions for the Social
  Insertion Income

• These local structures are very seldom consulted
  on national issues. However they can be consulted
  on local problems and projects. Furthermore, a
  few municipalities are implementing participative
  budget discussions opened to local populations,
  following the example of Porto Alegre Forum.

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The Consultation Process

• Good examples of more participated decision on
  policy-making process
• 1) The recent discussion of the second Portuguese
  NAPincl
• At national level - the plan was discussed within
  national structures
• the NAPincl Interdepartmental Follow-up
  Commission
• the Napincl NGOs Forum
• At local level and in partnership with the
  Portuguese EAPN - the plan was presented and
  discussed in several worshops across the country
  with local organizations.

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The Consultation Process

• 2) The Social Network Programme
• The Social Networks are formal discussion fora or
  structures constituted within the municipalities
  territories with the participation of local
  governments, local public services and opened to
  every private non profit solidarity
  organizations.
• In these fora the social problems of the
  territories are discussed and the partners define
  the priorities of the intervention and approves
  Social Development Plans, for a three-year
  period, by consensus, thus creating conditions
  for the articulation of all public and private
  partners action.
• The Social Network Programme is now being
  implemented in 235 of the 277 Portuguese
  continental municipalities, strongly enlarging
  the discussion of local social development
  problems and improving the social intervention.

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Evaluation process

• The most important policy measures and programmes
  are regularly monitored, but their dissemination
  is clearly insufficient and does not reach the
  public opinion.
• Usually national and EU programmes are evaluated
  by external entities (university or private
  research centres).
• Independent research seems to have a very small
  impact in the formulation of policy.
• An information system was created to monitor the
  Portuguese NAPincl, based essentially on a
  statistical information drawing on administrative
  sources. A Working Group is responsible for
  permanent monitoring and reporting on the
  progress of the NAPincl implementation. Annually
  a progress report is prepared to evaluate the
  advancements made in the implementation of the
  plan and its findings allow the reformulation of
  policies.

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Evaluation process

• Participation of target groups in policy
  evaluation

• Since 2002 the Portuguese European Anti-Poverty
  Network (EAPN) in partnership with the Ministry
  of Labour and Solidarity is trying to implement a
  project called Participation Activation to
  develop processes of participation of people
  experiencing poverty in the definition,
  implementation and evaluation of anti-poverty
  policies.
• However, these project remain a unique experiment
  and their impact is very weak.

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Ressources

• The government communicates the general policy
  lines through the Programme of Government and its
  spending priorities through the announcement of
  the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines the Annual
  State Budget. Both Programme and Budget are
  discussed on the national parliament.
• The national and EU programmes to tackle poverty
  have specific lines of financing directed to
  disadvantaged groups such as people with
  disabilities, ethnic minorities, children at risk
  and long term unemployed persons.
• Recent governments prioritised measures to reduce
  poverty and social exclusion. However, in the
  latest years the practical measures have been
  limited by the priority efforts to reduce the
  Portuguese budgetary deficit.

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Summing up

• Consultation on policy development in Portugal is
  centralised and works within formal established
  structures, involving mainly national
  organizations.
• Consulting of local organizations only occurs on
  rare occasions and schemes to consult local
  communities or the beneficiaries of social policy
  measures are not previewed.

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Summing up

• However some of the examples presented, mainly
  the discussion of the Portuguese NAPIncl, the
  EAPN project Participation Activation and the
  functioning and work of the Social Network local
  structures show some important ways to increase
  citizens participation and also to improve the
  transparency and inclusiveness of policy
  development as well as for a better resources
  targeting at the most disadvantaged.