Crisis management in the provision of social services during the COVID-19 pandemic

To assess the crisis management process during the Covid-19 pandemic and to analyse inter-institutional cooperation in order to ensure the access to social services. Analysis of normative regulations, analyses of international good practice examples, semi-structured interviews, statistical data analyses. After the start of the pandemic on March 12, 2020, the government introduced series of restrictions and introduced new normative acts. Crises management structures were set up in municipalities to provide all kinds of social services to the population, and targeted services to most vulnerable population (seniors, poor, disadvantaged, persons with mental disabilities, etc.). Access to social services was mainly remoted and through voluntary support, particularly in rural areas. The format of the inter-institutional cooperation changed from the direct communication to the remote communication, therefore the provision and use of technical solutions was very important. 1. The crisis management process was most focused on the governmental and local authorities and organisations, and less on NGOs, despite the fact that NGOs were among the most important providers of social services in the country. 2. Although the type of the provision of the social services changed, for one part of the clients the delivery of services was not interrupted. Certain services were interrupted and were not available (for example, services of day centres, group classes, etc.) due to strict constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic. 3. The crisis management organisation was more successful and effective in those municipalities where civil protection commissions or specially designated coordinators have been in operation since the beginning of the pandemic. 4. In order to improve the effectiveness of cross-institutional cooperation and to protect population from infection, it was essential to ensure timely end effective use of vertical and horizontal information channels for internal institutional communication, and to achieve a mutually consistent flow of topical information between institutions.