Bureau of Civil Affairs in Shenzhen released on last Thursday a policy draft on social work to solicit public opinions. Titled “Several Measures for Facilitating the Development of Social Work (Consultation Paper)” , the draft has proposed concrete solutions to the problems that exist in the development of social work in Shenzhen.
Back in 2007, Shenzhen was the first city in China that set forth a series of documents to help train social work talents and advance the development of social work. 10 years have gone and social work in Shenzhen has enjoyed a significant success. However, with the change of society and the emergence of new demands in the social work field, there’s a need to call for new policies.
The biggest highlight of the latest draft is the increase of average pay for social workers. The standard of average monthly salary is expected to raise from 5,000 to 10,647 yuan (pre-tax, including social insurances and house fund) per person. Standard annual labor cost is planned to increase from 76,000 to 160,100 yuan for each person. Besides, the funds for purchasing social work services in the city is anticipated to augment from 650 million yuan in 2017 to 1.207 billion yuan in 2019.
It is said that the establishment of this system will effectively solve the problem of social workers being underpaid, enhance the attractiveness of the industry and keep more talents in social work.
The purchase of the social work service is another focus of the draft. Bureau of Civil Affairs has long been the only government branch that is responsible for purchasing social work service and for arranging social worker posts in various functional departments. However, the separation of purchaser and user brings problems. As a result, the new draft suggested that the social work service should be purchased by the users themselves, such as government departments and public organizations.
