Patterns of interaction between NGOs working with disabled people and state authorities in the context of austerity policy: case study of Russia and Finland

Approaches to study relations between state authorities and non-governmental organizations. Finnish and russian case: dynamics of interaction between NGO and state. Changes in funding. Patterns of interaction between state and NGOs in Russia and Finland.

Рубрика Социология и обществознание
Вид диссертация
Язык английский
Дата добавления 30.10.2017
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  • Thus, all mentioned documents are defining the certain steps of growing a welfare of people with intellectual disability. During the development of legislation, the endowment the particular rights and possibilities for people with disability was changed to fostering their inclusion in the social, economic and cultural life of the state and finally it turns to reproduction of common of benefit for them as for a usual citizen. I can argue that the Finnish legislation obliges the state to provide welfare commitments for all citizens on the principles of personal orientation, equality and universality despite of any recessions and crises.
  • Strategy of social sustainability and deinstutionalization: shared interest and responsibilities of reduction the state institutionalized long-term care
  • It should be noted, that during the interactions between non-governmental organizations working with disability issues and the state authorities there was developed a certain strategy, which seeks to enhance social sustainability in the society, specially establishes equal treatment for everybody, reinforces the sense of community in the Finnish society, provides the security and services for the every citizen, supports the health in overall. The planned elimination of state institutions organized in the past until the 2020 year.
  • The common opinion of the third sector and government refer that the state institutions with standardized rules of governing are devaluing the value of human rights and unified capacities of social protection. The individual was recognized as one from the majority and the importance of the quality of his life was decreased or not even taken into account through the many ways of implementation of standard services for everybody, that is one way or another differ from the needs of the individual. The mentioned actors consider those norms are non proper way of development the society's welfare.
  • As a result, I argue about the targeted regular and cooperative actions of KVPS and the state towards the building social houses across Finland. This practice of interaction is based on the Finnish national strategy of closing down the state of long-term institutions for people with intellectual disability until 2020. According to the head of housing department the state is one of the main partners and investors in the process of construction KVPS' houses and represented by the housing finance and development center of Finland “ARA”. The interaction is represented by many bureaucratic preparations related to the application of housing project and participation in the competition based on tendering process among other common-good NGOs. Then there was preparation of building and applying, plan, budget and other documents to the ARA for further verification all costs presented in the application.
  • Mentioned here the state support based on certain requirements for NGOs. For example, the housing project application must not indicate a desire to get more than 50% of the whole amount of housing costs, the application must be set to ARA once a year and the process of verification application takes three months at least. It should be noted that the ARA's financial support based on the provision of subsidies. There is the fact that the state-institute provides support after the start of construction of social housing, therefore the KVPS cannot rely only on the state financing as a stable income and has to take loans from national banks.
  • I want to notice that in practice, the state financial support is recognized as supplementary funding when the NGO's capital and investors' money are presented as main resources. This principle of funding indirectly evidences about the certain requirement for interaction with the state, I mean the existence of NGO's financial capital and presence of financial stability of the non-governmental partner is a necessary for the equal interaction with business and state actors.
  • Thus, analyzing this practice of interaction, I would say that this cooperation regarding the building constructions for social tasks is formed by the equal combination of the state, KVPS and private investors' efforts. I would recognize this interaction as egalitarian one because the recent situation of building social houses is traced the shared responsibilities of searching resources for building social houses for intellectually disabled persons.
  • The enlargement strategy of serving the clients
  • Referring to the discourse of provision of goods and services to a particular group of individuals as a certain practice of interaction, it's necessary to specify that, during the history of the state-NGO's relations the strategy of providing certain benefits of people with disabilities has changed. Previously, the main focus was dedicated to the recognition of people with special needs and organization special services for them indicating some failures in the provision state services. What I have seen nowadays, this strategy was changed by the offer of alternative ways of providing government obligations through extending services provided by the nonprofit organizations and awarded for a wider scope of people with special needs. Revealing the practices of serving people with intellectual disabilities, it is possible to argue that the development of the social service provision characterized by enlargement of client-groups having a certain necessity in services.
  • During the history, the strategy of providing services for people with intellectual disability has associated with a basic KVPS activity. The state institutions recognized successful practices between KVPS and local authorities in ways of providing temporary care for disabled clients and forced municipalities and local authorities to organize the same service-providers or look for private or non-governmental providers of respite care. The requests from people with disabilities and availability of certain amount of money among municipalities give a reason to fund services for them. Another contribution was made by the municipal social worker and volunteers from small parental organizations who were very interested in the development this sphere. Nowadays KVPS is providing the client-oriented respite care services that meet the different needs and situations of families with children, youths or adults with special needs.
  • Here are a statistical data described the recent provision of short-term services.
  • Table 2. Provision of short-term care services
  • 2011

    2012

    2013

    2014

    2015

    Respite care

    73

    71

    66

    74

    60

    Family care

    20

    23

    18

    20

    17

    Group services

    28

    33

    24

    32

    69

    Speech-impairment for intellectually disabled people

    1

    3

    Total

    121

    127

    108

    127

    149

    • The development of respite care service straightly depends on what kind of political decisions were made. The growth of clients has logically impacted to the rise of the providing activities and expanding the list of services. Therefore, the increase of clients and providing activities impacted on the funding allocated by the state national or local authorities. Further, the state authorities decided to change the funding system of temporary respite care services by funding only 50% of costs from the municipality's budget. At the recent time there is a vivid growth of new activities raised client's personalization, independence and self-managing process. The Majority of the services are reorganized, a part of them became oriented on additional funding due to equalization of clients' common sources. The market competition forced NGOs to use best practices in serving customers. Now, they all are used to involve in the development of new service-product which can force an interest among the clients and can be provided mainly from the customers' funding. The certain personalization and commercialization of services for different types of customers were merged. The organization has reached such a level that it has a fixed establishment and facilities for day care for a disabled person.
    • Besides the provision of social care services, KVPS and KVPS Tukena are responsible development of education services for the disabled people as trainings for adaptation and inclusion in the new social environment, development of independence through self-budgeting and training of independent living. To spread such services among the focus group the organization created the contract agreements with different state institutions for the organization of studying the communication with the intellectually impaired groups of citizens for the state social workers. In that process gave a evidence about cooperation and interaction with the state institutes in the educational activities.
    • There is certain obstacle - the limit in the financial resources of the state that cannot fulfill all needs of the clients, so why sometimes KVPS has to work with the clients alone on a voluntary basis, if the state doesn't allocate finances. In other cases, KVPS has to adapt their work according to the funding provided by the state. The organization is forced to look for additional sources of service provision or reduce the benefits provided by the certain services. Referring to the staff of KVPS there are the cases where the services were already cut.
    • The interaction in the provision of the respite-care activities is mainly defined as cooperation with municipal social workers and the heads of social departments of municipalities regarding questions of making contract to arrange the KVPS Tukena's services for intellectually disabled citizens. According to that activity, if the KVPS has won the public tendering on the provision of social services for a certain person, the organization is going to interact with the municipal or local authority, regarding the contracts for organization payments from municipality and to draft a document describing client's necessities for the social services. The same cooperation is happening in case of searching appropriate caretaker if a municipality hasn't a suitable specialist. Such practice of interaction aimed to cooperative enlargement of KVPS's services with the state specialists, where the both sides more eager to communicate with each other. It is one of the most frequent discourse regarding investigated practices of interaction. I got the specialist of the respite-care department opinion about this interaction: “During the interaction with state representatives I could argue that municipal social workers usually present professionalism and humanity, but their superiors sometimes act differently, according to the economic situation and strict formal rules and legislative requirements. Nowadays, I would say that state authorities are not willing to buy more services from us. They want to provide their respite care services. If people are not willing to search the possible alternative of municipal temporary care services, municipalities don't involve us and inform about our organization's services only by clients' requests”.
    • The specialist also pointed that nowadays the state faced with some economic obstacles and it forces to adapt particular NGOs'services to people demand. However, according to the official information from the Finnish mass media, the state still guided by welfare traditions. The employees of the respite-care department shared information that small local non-governmental organizations of Finland nowadays used to be addicted from local municipalities representing the state interests. Their addiction can be growing now, because of the restructuring of the regional system and the further redistribution of the municipal and regional funds.
    • Analyzing such form of interaction I would point that serving of clients with intellectual disability based on legislative requirements is most obligatory for the state authorities that delegated the equal responsibilities for both actors and made the enlargement of services more successful and easier for KVPS. From that side, the enlargement services is recognized as egalitarian practice. From another side, the public tendering process brings the state's impact on regulation in the processes of receiving contracts for provision of social services and contain paternalistic features. It might be noted the informal dependency the KVPS from the decisions of local authorities as in the public tendering process as in questions of looking for non-governmental caretakers for clients. Such issues as the delegation of providing social service for the cheapest organization and non-information about the opportunities of the possible choice of non-governmental services are not regulated and delegated to the local municipality purely.
    • Concluding, I would point that an interaction the issues of serving clients with intellectual disability happens differently, both actors are involved in such process, however, in cases where the state is not interested in the activity, the interaction is happening less-effectively. Those services, which necessity or obligation is recognized by the state authorities are provided effectively with the closer interaction between actors. There is an evidence that the enlargement of services between the Finnish state and representatives of the third sector is constructed straightly by reacting to the clients' personal needs which are shaped by commercial specialties and economic environment of the country.
    • Profit-strategy to manage the organization's income
    • As I already mentioned that the certain part of KVPS' income (20%) was produced due to strategy of getting profit from the own social entrepreneurship. In the process of managing own income, KVPS acts like an operator with the functions of mediating between the state and society presented by clients with intellectual disability. Performing this role, KVPS consider the state not only as a philanthropist, but as a customer, because a vivid part of the state's money was gained by KVPS through the provision of social services its social entrepreneurship. The majority of municipalities used to fund KVPS indirectly, through the process of buying social services from KVPS Tukena organization. It was possible during the legislative changes of 2007 and the emergence of opportunities to get a contract from state institutions for providing services by NGOs. This reformation of legislative acts opened the new financial sources of public contracts for KVPS. Reacting to that, the organization has created socially oriented company KVPS Tukena for the participation in public tendering competition among different state organizations and private companies to provide short-term social services for intellectually impaired citizens. The situation of each municipality is not similar, but KVPS Tukena aimed to win every possibility to provide services and establish long-term contracts for provision of services. The last dated at 2015 and will be described further by picture 4.
    • Also, the client's need for permanent provision of social services and the possibility to have own apartment can move him or her into the social housing operated by KVPS on the tenant right where he or she has paid a rent from own pension spreading from the country's budget. Thus, I can argue that this renting of living place for clients could be mentioned as the way of getting profit through the state benefits of disabled people. The table 3 is describing how many social houses are used by the KVPS and KVPS Tukena's clients since 2011 until 2015.
    • Table 3. Provision of housing apartments for intellectually disabled citizens.
    • KVPS' services / quantity of citizens

      2011

      2012

      2013

      2014

      2015

      Group-shaped homes

      400

      412

      437

      456

      467

      Independent apartments

      137

      164

      215

      263

      306

      Total

      537

      576

      652

      719

      773

      • Describing the strategy of managing the organization's income, there is the certain interest of studying the KVPS Tukena's profit. Unlike the organization-founder, the KVPS Tukena hasn't aims to share income with members of the organization. However, such company has a certain profit for conducting social services and all gained income is used by KVPS to cover the loans for the construction the new apartments. According to the members of the KVPS Tukena's executive board, the ideology is constructed from the similar mission, strategy and aims, depicted from the KVPS. So, the KVPS Tukena is functioning as operator, providing own social services under the opportunities of a commercial company,but restricted in the decision making and managing of finance processes by KVPS.
      • In my perception, KVPS found the way to escape from the special legislative requirements related to funding of the non-governmental sphere and raise additional financial possibilities that wasn't available for NGOs earlier. Despite of this fact, the sustainable dependence from the state authorities should be noted: KVPS's activities related to selling the social services and client's rent are financed from the state budget. This process might be explained by the existence of historical commitment for funding opportunities provided by the state and the absence of KVPS's aspiration to start the new fundraising projects together with the unwillingness of the involvement new actors from the business sector for financing organization's activities. I can argue that nowadays the KVPS is searching for different possibilities of funding as from the state institutions as well opportunities to develop own social entrepreneurship and gain profit by using the financial sources of client-communities.
      • The KVPS's profit strategy to manage organizational income is testified the phenomena of recent commercialization of the social sphere and orientation to get the profit by providing services. Despite of certain contradiction with the social capital and welfare state's ideas, the phenomenon of gaining profit for social aims is supported by the Finnish government because this activity is oriented to the key priority of the Finnish state - the representation of common benefit to every citizen. Especially in my case the common benefit is an enhance of equal opportunities for housing and care among people with intellectual disability and other citizens. Thus, the profit strategy of gaining income for provision the equal housing opportunities presents a new feature of egalitarian practices of the Finnish welfare state.
      • Practiced interaction: shared interest of charitable activities
      • The information gained during my fieldwork in Tampere allows me to describe the particular practiced interactions between different level of the state authorities and Kehitysvammaisten Palvelusддtiц. Such interactions associated with informal practices and are not considered as a targeted action for implementing a set of tasks.
      • Informal practices correlate with activities of developmental department. During 2015 their activities are counted 279 events, 5211 meetings and 931 participations for developing conditions of life of people with intellectual disability, 568 of them with a close clients' participation. For these aims there were 1603 people involved in these participations. All of these activities could be divided into three groups: 1) participation in public events, flash mobs and other events for people with intellectual disabilities; 2) lobbying common issues and own visions about social care; 3) fundraising and PR of charitable activities. All of them are professionally organized by KVPS's are not considered as permanent practices.
      • The majority of events and projects include the practices of interaction with the state representatives at various levels. The head of developmental activities department argues that the interaction is successful and happens mainly in the project activities, usually municipalities and regional and local authorities are willing to collaborate with KVPS. During the project work KVPS mainly collaborates with working groups of specialists from the ministry of social affairs, so, in that process, both actors are recognized as the experts. Also, the NGO works with local level of governance, where the cooperation happening with local heads of social affairs or executive-employees of municipalities, for example, the municipal social workers. Referring to the experts, both actors of interaction are mostly good in balance through the distribution of tasks and duties in the conduction social projects and events.
      • Commenting on this phenomenon, it's necessary to mention the shared interest of charitable activities as one of the less-regulated by formal rules practices of interaction. Together, both investigated actors established a way to cooperate by negotiating of all important questions and finding a consensus in delegation of responsibilities as partners. Analyzing the certain activities as conducting projects funded by state where non-governmental bodies, I investigated these activities are more subordinated to state authorities in decision-making and process of establishing the collaboration. It's interesting that the levels of state authorities' interests and involvement are depending on the, size of project activity, obstacles in project-management of charitable activities, particular persons performing as state representatives and their level of loyalty to serve the people.
      • Practices public representation of client's interests: politically-independent promotion of common welfare
      • According to the all interviewees from KVPS, the organization is presenting the interests of families where one or several members have a certain disability related to the intellectual problems. The additional efforts are aimed to help members of families without an intellectual disability diagnosis but with the similar diseases. Due to the complexity representing the interests of people with intellectual disabilities, the Finnish legislation determined that the interests of these people should be provided by their family members or caregivers. Such family persons usually afford KVPS to represent the interests of their family members with disabilities.
      • The activity of representing clients' interests is shown mainly through the media resources, paper leaflets, publications and annual reports produced by the organization. KVPS supports other partners working with disability issues in the lobbying of the legislative sphere related to disability. Together, they are formulating common ideas and discussing about different activities, to search for a consensus among of them and the state. KVPS does not fully present the interests of other groups of people with problems are not related to intellectual disability.
      • The organization does not support any political party and does not want to be associate own activities with the certain political ideas. During my internship. I had analyzed different sources of Tampere's mass media and had not revealed the vivid connections between KVPS and any active members of political parties. However, I got information about the experience of lobbying legislation and was an observer of the first KVPS' experience in the conduction of a public event.
      • Regarding the lobbying, it should be noted that KVPS used to help partner organizations to lobby important issues related to the disability. It's important to note, that the organization prefers the role of expert and not engaged in criticizing the provision of the state welfare system. KVPS has no interest to be opposing towards the state's decisions. There is evidence that the organization does not want to lost connections with the state in the provision of welfare issues. Referring to the theoretical ideas of the KVPS's the main goal is to establish good product for the clients' needs and availability for every citizen that are not possible without the state's funding. Due to that, KVPS is not so active in the criticizing of the state concerning the question about public tendering and economic issues.
      • The interaction of lobbying activities happens less-often nowadays. Referring to the comments of KVPS' lawyers, such activities as a representation of client's interests was successful earlier, but nowadays the staff members of KVPS were not invited inside of interaction groups for the work at the last official meeting. Now, such practice of interaction is more oriented on the legislative work aimed to development of the social sphere services together with a diminishing of the state costs for such services and extending involvement of the business.
      • Another interesting form of representation of the client's interests was the creation of public event associated with the meeting called «Ei myytavana» or “Not for sale”. This was the happening event, associating with a public meeting in a soft form without any aggressive actions. The event was mutually created by the state authorities and twenty non-governmental organizations working with disability issues. It was devoted to negative evaluation of the tendering process in the social sphere. The meeting was organized in the summer after the ratification of the UN convention about the disability. The meaning of this event was about attracting attention to the issues of the public competitive procurement in the social sphere. According to the Finnish legislation, the local authority responsible for providing the services, but they haven't own services, so then the authorities decide for the people what kind of the operator could provide the services. The organizers of event had certain fears concerning the reaction of the new event to the client group - family members, who obviously were not interested in political meetings before. Another fear was about the reaction of the state authorities on the opposite opinion presented by KVPS. But employees also argued that the NGO can present own values and protect the certain ideas because the KVPS is not really influenced by the state. There is a fact that the event was funded by the city councils and local authorities, so that the organization did not want to mare relations with the state partners worse. The participative observation presented the discussion of the family members with officials in the event process. I can refer that KVPS presents as the non-formal mediator role.
      • The conduction of such action can be characterized from different positive and negative arguments. First of all, the event is a vivid example of the state participation and promote the unification of the non-profit organizations. All organizations were willing to act together and expressing a common interest in the reformation of the neoliberal agenda affecting on the well-being of citizens with intellectual disabilities. However, there was a negative trend of the escape from the basic requirement of the NGOs' work by participating in political activity.
      • Thus, the event gave a practical evidence that the non-governmental organizations activate their efforts for representation of the client's interests even participating in political activities. In overall the spreading of such events can emerge a certain level of criticism to the state and its instruments and contribute to the deterioration of relations between the state-non-governmental organizations.
      • 2.6 Effect of the austerity context in the era of neoliberalism
      • During my investigation, I was interested in revealing the austerity policy context. It is necessary to add information that officially there is not official recognition of such kind of policy neither in Finland. However, my observation of the investigated cases, especially, the conduction of interviews with the representatives of state authorities, experts of the state-NGOs' relations and specialists of KVPS and KVPS Tukena gave me an evidence to formulate a notion about the non-official existence of such phenomenon as austerity context. At least, the Finnish mass media and web-sources refer about the existence of discourse about the austerity measures Pedro Aibйo «What? Austerity in Finland?» 24.08.2015. Retrieved from: https://www.mustekala.info/node/37527;. Talking about the austerity context in the state-NGOs' relations I mean such phenomenon as a particular set of NGO's and the state authorities' activities, which is constructed due to economic challenges, reduction in the state social spending and neoliberal management that are used nowadays and applied to various purposes across the world.
      • According to the information from deputy major of Tampere, Finland has faced with the affect of economic recession recently. Financial crisis of 2007th has affected to the Finland economy, so since since 2011 till nowadays, the country faced with the unemployment problems. Nowadays, the rate of labor force unemployment in Tampere is 20%. Meanwhile, the increase of unemployment level negatively impacted on the local financial resources, because many citizens of Tampere cannot pay the municipal local taxes. Due to that fact, even the state authorities are faced with public shortages because of the unfavorable economic situation Ellis Wynne “Government imposed further austerity ” 29.08. 2016 Retrieved from: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/29/finl-a29.html. The partial allocations of the government were shorted. Referring to information from the deputy major of Tampere, there is an obvious fact that government shorted Tampere's funding: in comparison with 2010 year, the overall funding was shorted on 111 million euros. The representative of the state authority added information that he realizes the reduction of the state social spending nowadays. His subjective opinion could be confirmed by studying statistical data of the city budget of the City of Tampere website Budget of Tampere. Data retrieved from: http://www.tampere.fi/en/city-of-tampere/administration-and-economy/budget.html. Comparing 2013 and 2016 years on the expenditure parts, I realized that the purchasing of services was decreased on 21 million euros (588 mil. Euros in 2013 and 609 mil. Euros in 2016). The persons shared opinion that austerity topic is a big popular issue at the recent policy agenda. The national government was trying to enforce austerity policy for cutting expenses during last five in the education sphere, development of the new aid services, guarantees for asylum seekers, but the state representative's opinion refers that such discourse in Finnish policy was implemented very fast without structured planning. The government was making the first attempts of cutting the social benefits, starting from unemployed people, and citizens with growing disability, for example diabetes. Such process of shorting cuts is organized through the reformation of legislative acts, reduction of the state obligations and redistribution of gaining resources.
      • The authority is tending to economize on the citizens through the reduction of a list of their privileges. Concerning this issue, it's necessary to mention that such attempts are innovative and not applied to a wide circle of disability issues, but as a result, such a policy is affecting to the people with intellectual disability. There are such general shortages, concerning the rights of day-care for children only if you are employed citizens. Before, even if you are an unemployed person, your children could go to the day-care institution. It should be noted that these opportunities have been developed by the state, but their application depends entirely on local municipalities.
      • Speaking about the austerity in context of interaction regarding the provision of long-term and short-term care services for intellectually impaired persons, the specialist gave an overview that the government ideas of shortage social costs usually associated with changing the legislation regarding of the provision the state social services by establishing the new guarantees for the service-provision under the neoliberal management.
      • According to the specialist, Tampere's municipality obliged to produce social services for the citizens. However, it has a right to formulate the provision regarding to economic agenda, competitiveness and the social needs of clients. The Tampere's municipality still has not used the legislative possibilities to dictate the reduction of the availability of the social services for the saving money. Such institution is oriented on the fulfillment of all legislative obligations for the formation of citizens' well-being. However, in such processes of the respite-care activities, there was revealed the reduction of the state's expenditures from three days per month until two days. Another example is the conduction all social services, including services for disabled persons, in accordance with the Public Procurement through competitive tendering of services. The public tendering process is established in every public sphere. It sets the non-governmental organizations on the same level with the state institutions and other companies whose aims are the provide particular services. Due to tendering process and marketization of the social services in Finland, the commercialization of the main categories of social services happened. In the best case, it leads to the provision of unique, person-oriented support and possibilities to be a universal citizen without mentioning disability as a failure. However, there are many negative thoughts presented by NGO's workers, lawyers and experts which are arguing about inappropriateness of the selling of social services through the process of public tendering. Nowadays such services are regulated by state principles of competition based on neoliberal trends. The core point of such tendering is saving the state financial resources, which could be an evidence of austerity measures.
      • Revealing the process of interaction in the building up and maintaining of the housing properties together with providing different kind of developmental activities, I could argue an evidence of absence the austerity measures in such relations. The activities of construction of social houses for KVPS's clients and its project management did not face with the consequences of the crisis, because such destinations of work usually organized by their Ray Slot Machine Association. Due to the specificity of gaining money from the gambling, the sources of that organization did not decrease during the 2007-2011 years, because of the mutually beneficial cooperation between NGOs and the state authorities, so funding of mentioned activities was not decreased due to austerity context. Here is a picture 2, describing a history of Kehitysvammaisten Palvelusддtiц's grants.
      • As we see there is certain decrease from 2012 until 2014, however, according information from KVPS's chief executive officer, such decreasing was related to the grant's implementation was aiming to the building group-houses for people with intellectual disability. The verification of the amounts of all granted finance from 2006 until 2016 gave the evidence arguing of the absence of austerity context in such destinations. All data are presented on the web-resource «Database of grant assistance» Web-resource «Database of grant assistance». Data retrieved from: http://avustukset.stea.fi/fi-fi/jarjesto/2305.
      • Thus, the analysis of impact of austerity context of the revealed practices of interaction between the state and NGOs working with disabled people gave an evidence to mention that, in accordance to my observation, I can talk about the existence of the certain reduction of the social costs and features related to redistribution the state sources. Such results are non-clearly recognized as the austerity policy, and better accomplished to the new public management policy.
      • I would add that the new public management policy can be recognized through the several arguments. The first one is the reduction and redistribution of the state social costs. Practically, I mean that the Finnish state is tending to make savings through the economy on the citizen's rights and privileges by reducing the benefits of the certain dependent groups of citizens such as the students, asylums, people which diseases are less socially vulnerable for the state's expenditures. The second argument is the increase of shared responsibilities with the non-governmental organizations happening in Finland. The KVPS provision of social housing services for intellectually disabled people is quite a bright example of that. The third argument for NPM policy laid on the organization of the public tendering competition as an example of alternative service delivery system. Such reformation impacts on the establishment market competition in the social service sphere. This instrument is based on neoliberal market tendencies and particular obligations of providing the state social responsibilities from service-providers to clients with disabilities. The legislative idea forced to establish a competition among the state actors, NGOs and business regarding the issues of providing social services, where the winner is delegated to provide services for the minimum price set by the local or national state authority. The last argument is associated with the lack of long-term funding for any activities and the state prefers to give practical and short funding for the services and charitable projects. The example is the lack of funding for charitable Tapio and Kaija Sun Memorial foundation aimed to provision permanent care for families with intellectual disabilities, but at the same time availability of funding to conduct a charity concert to support the mentioned foundation.
      • In overall I would add, that the austerity measures force NGOs and the state authorities to react. Until nowadays, the reaction could be described as an NGO's adaptation to the actual agenda of the state, especially participation in the public procurement and neoliberal tendencies initiated by the Finnish government. However, such meetings as official event “Not for sale” gave evidence that non-governmental actors are searching for the instruments or points of impact on the state.
      • The investigated factors, gave an evidence to consider that Kehitysvammaisten Palvelusддtiц is a bright example of non-governmental charitable organizations working with the state regarding provision help and care for persons with intellectual disability in the framework of the egalitarian pattern of interaction. The results of observation organization's activities present that the KVPS is less active or even inactive in the search of the new actors for further cooperation: the organization prefers to use the goods stipulated by the Finnish legislation based on the state-funding, than searching for the new partners and investors for service-provision. As a result, KVPS is not searching for new financial sources, getting used to adapting to recent economic conditions that I associated with the austerity measures of new public management policy. Such adaptation for the state authorities emphasizes the charitable status and ideological specialties of the non-governmental organizations working with the socially vulnerable groups of people.
      • Concluding my analysis of practices of interaction, I can claim the ideas related to the practices of interaction in the time of the austerity policy in Finland are more associated with the mutual interaction with egalitarian characteristics between the state institutions and KVPS, than with the state paternalism or dictation of the state's interests. However, such interaction shaped by the recent neoliberal tendencies happened in the world, such as the commercialization of social sphere, personalization of the clients' needs and capabilities, equalization of state structures and non-profit sector and further competition among them for the provision of certain kinds of social services. The certain state management and distribution of the state finances towards the KVPS's projects and activities related to the building and purchasing of house properties for people with intellectual disabilities demonstrates the shared responsibilities for the activities provided by the KVPS and interest to make a more sustainable life for people with intellectual disability. I have an opinion that such interest is raised by legislative obligations which are still corresponding to the strong influence of the welfare state. The public tendering regulations positively impact on the Finnish economy by saving the state funds, but at the same moment it leads to a possible decline in the quality of social services and decrease of the welfare commitments of common benefit for everybody.
      • Chapter 3. Russian case: dynamics of interaction between NGO and state
      • The aim of the chapter is to identify the practices of interaction between the state and NGOs working with the impaired person in Russia during the neoliberal turn through analysis of changes in legal status and organizational structure, missions and sources of finance, main activities and strategy of cooperation with state authorities in solving the specific social issue.
      • The analysis is based on the case-study of “Saint-Petersburg Association of Non-governmental Organizations of Parents with Disabled Children (GAOORDI)”. I was doing an internship in the organization's office where I organized the similar process of case-study data collection through the participant observation of everyday work, conduction of 14 interviews with key-groups of informants, revealing the perceptions of the staff supplemented by secondary data, analysis of the legislation.
      • During the study of the case, I have possibilities to analyze legislative documents related to the recent cooperation between NGOs and the state, observe practical processes of the organization's work, especially the practical interaction between the state authorities Saint-Petersburg and GAOORDI through the organization's events, conducting the interviews with GAOORDI's specialists, volunteers, clients, the representatives of Saint-Petersburg Committee on social policy and Committee on Youth Policy and Interaction with NGOs, experts from the Center for Development of Non-Profit Organizations "CRNO" and St. Petersburg Humanitarian and Political Center "Strategy". At the same time I shared the responsibilities of social care for the day group of the organization's clients - GAOORDI members' children with different disabilities.
      • The general description of case describing the recent practices of interaction between previously mentioned actors in the austerity policy context then was analyzed further.
      • 3.1 Organizational features of Russian case: legal status, structure and types of activities
      • Legal status.
      • The Russian case is represented by “Saint-Petersburg Association of Non-governmental organizations of Parents with Disabled Children (GAOORDI)” - the charitable, self-governing union of the parental non-governmental organizations of Saint-Petersburg based on common interests to help children with disabilities and rare diseases, youth people with special developmental needs and their families. The Russian initials of “GAOORDI” will be used in further mention. GAOORDI was established and registered as association of non-governmental organizations at 30th of June 1992 in Saint-Petersburg.
      • Structure.
      • The members of GAOORDI are 62 legal entities - non-governmental and non-profit organizations in different form of foundation. The major parts of the organizations are governed by the parents of disabled children or youth. There are cases, when the heads of non-governmental organizations are persons with disabilities. During the development of their civic initiatives, they became professionals regarding the working issues with families with disabled children, adolescents and youth adults with developmental disorders.
      • The GAOORDI's target groups are: 1) the non-governmental organizations working with disability issues and their leaders; 2) children and youth (17 years and older) with certain disabilities; 3) children with rare diseases; 4) parents and family members of disabled youth and children.
      • The organization is aimed to develop the social activities regarding social protection of the youth with different disabilities with further implementation a particular set of services for people with disabilities, management and coordination of association-members' activities, regulation of the association and its members' interaction with the state authorities, business entrepreneurs and other NGOs.
      • The main founder and the first president is one person that is still running GAOORDI. Except the president' position and a leader' role in GAOORDI she presents functions of a chairman of the Saint-Petersburg Public Council for independent evaluation of the quality of social services in organizations working in the social field. The president also combined such statutes as the member of the presidium of the Public Chamber of Saint-Petersburg, the adviser of the governor of the city, the member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation. It should be noticed that such majority of statuses and multidisciplinary functions are unique and was realized only by her personal efforts, skills and knowledge. The second person of GAOORDI represents the position of vice-president and chairman of non-governmental foundation “Sirius”. Both of mentioned persons as other heads of non-governmental organizations including to GAOORDI are parents of children with different kinds of disability.
      • GAOORDI has two levels of organizational structure: umbrella system of non-governmental organizations and the administration office working on a permanent basis.
      • Under the association's system, there is a combination of parental public organizations working with disability issues which are different in size and stage of development. They're governed by the presidium board from 9 persons, headed by GAOORDI's president.
      • The permanent administration structure consisted of executive departments which are managed and coordinating all activities of the association. They are also governed by the presidium of association. This executive body consists of the administration and accounting department, HR-department, legal advisory department, social and labor department, day-care center and the center of social innovations. Association Presidium, Accounting department, and HR-department are responsible for running of organizational issues and recruiting personnel. Other departments are responsible for implementation of the certain programs, services and support for GAOORDI's clients.
      • In overall, the employment structure of GAOORDI consists of 35 full-time persons employed as specialists or administration personnel; a few of them are persons with disabilities. Due to the Russian specificity of the provision social services for clients, there was no possibility to count an exact number of provided social services for the clients in 2016, however, combining all numbers the participation of clients of each project happened during this year, I found that the organization provided services more than for 900 youth people from Saint-Petersburg and Leningradskiy region.
      • Types of activities.
      • During my investigation, the certain list of GAOORDI's activities was revealed: 1) day-time support for young people with severe intellectual and physical disabilities; 2) temporary employment of adolescents with disabilities and young disabled people; 3) Provision of legal advisory assistance for families with disabled youth or children; 4) organization of recreational activities for young people with disabilities in the state health institutions or GAOORDI's tourist camps; 5) project management of social and cultural events for children with disabilities and their families; 6) conduction expert activities aimed to improving the quality of medical, social and rehabilitative care for children with rare and genetic diseases; 7) consultation and support of charitable parental non-governmental organizations regarding disability issues.
      • 3.2. History of organization: from grass-root towards resource center
      • As it was mentioned above, GAOORDI was founded in 1992, by five public parental organizations oriented on work with the different disability issues and worked in various districts of Saint-Petersburg. These organizations were communities of people, faced with problems related to care their disabled children and maintain their life-conditions in after the Collapse of Soviet Union. According to the staff of GAOORDI, this time of history associated with many changes in society that particularly affect on the socially-vulnerable groups of people. According to the one of a head of NGO included into GAOORDI, such period was historically associated with the political vacuum, shortages of economic and social guarantees for all citizens, especially for socially-vulnerable groups of people. The Soviet organizations for disabled people struggled to survive in difficult economic conditions by reducing their range of efforts regarding the protection of disabled persons. In response to the economic problems and certain passivity of Soviet organizations, the citizens united into groups of activists and created different types of public organizations in the 1990s. Usually grass-root organizations of citizens of that time were trying to resolve personal problems, associated with diseases of participants. The first reason of unity of five organizations worked with disabled children was the inability to help their target groups because of the lack of their professionalism. In the most of cases, social problems сould not be solved by one small group of organization's activists, consisted of parents of children with disabilities. Another reason was the lack of financial resources, observed in many public organizations of the 1990s. Thus, the main reasons for the unity was a desire to combine the best methods and practices for the professional help, create the common resources and represent common interests of their main target group - the families with disabled children.
      • ...

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