[Child and Family Care]

Study on Improvement Plans

in the Operation of the Public Support Facilities

for Single-Parent Families

Lee, Sun Hyoung

Department of Policy Research Seoul Foundation of Women & Family

Abstract

This policy report aims to find the improvement plans in the operation of the public facilities for the single-parent families. The facilities for the single-parent families consist of two types: communal residential facilities for those families having housing insecurity and service providing facilities for their better quality of life in Seoul. Lately, the number of users of communal residential facilities has decreased, but the demand for service providing facilities has been increasing. However, indeed Seoul Special Metropolitan City has only one single-parent families support center as a service providing facilities, so it is a timely need to review the service delivery system in single-parent families support facilities.

This study conducted a survey and interviewed facility’s chair persons and single-parent families using the public facilities in Seoul. The survey of the service users includes several questions; service evaluation, human rights violations at the time of use of the facility, and functions and roles of facilities that users are expecting in the future. The survey for the facility chair consists of service evaluation, current facility services and its difficulties, functions and roles that facilities are expecting in the future.

As a result of the study, this study finds that many single parents want to expand residential services that can accommodate each household separately rather than current communal living facilities. In addition, service users highly demand for public medical support during pregnancy and childbirth, intensive care for disabled family members, and better opportunity to participate in facility management from service users' view point. In the survey result of the head of the facility, they say that it is necessary to restructure public support facilities' functions and roles and also develop single-parent customized services.

Reflecting the research results, this report suggests that in order to improve the operation of single-parent families support facilities in Seoul, re-establishing the functions and roles of support facilities is necessary. Also this report proposed that living facilities should strengthen the provision of intensive support services considering the special circumstances of single-parent families rather than existing programs that mainly focus on offering communal residential spaces. For a stable residential space that most single-parent families want, Seoul Special Metropolitan City needs to expand residential services for single-parent families overall and provide multiple residential options considering various circumstances that each family faces. In addition, this report proposes to expand services in support facilities to provide information related to residential services for single-parent families and broaden peer group meetings for single parents in the local community. Furthermore, to improve the support service delivery system for single-parent families, this study proposed to increase the service personnel for better integrated support and institutionalize cooperation with the medical and health care support network.

*Keyword : single-parent families, single-parent families support facilities, single-parent families support policy

in Seoul Special Metropolitan City, deinstitutionalization for independent living, human rights violations, public

residential service for single-parent families