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On 1 July 2013 Croatia joined the European Union to become the 28th Member State. The European Social Network (ESN) welcomes its Croatian colleague’s entry into the EU. This article will aim to summarise some of the social challenges and opportunities as well as some good practice already emerging from the new Member State.

 

Croatia’s social challenges and opportunities

 

 

Education and employment
Croatia’s entry into the EU takes place at a time of economic difficulty in the country. According to Eurostat figures from April 2013, the unemployment rate for Croatia was close to 20% and as high as 51% for young people under the age of 25. The crisis has increased poverty from around 10% to 18% as more and more young people are being affected.

 

 

Substantial reforms have been introduced in the Croatian education system and more children and youth are enrolling in school programs (60% at the pre-school level, near universal enrolment at the primary level, and 88% at the secondary level). However, Croatia’s enrolment levels remain below OECD and EU levels.

 

 

Modernising social services
Croatia is still reliant on a centralised and institutional model of social services. The Ministry for Health and Social Welfare launched a plan for de-institutionalisation and transformation of social care homes with a time-frame for 2011-2016 (2018) with the aim of reducing the number of admissions to residential institutions and increasing referrals of clients to alternative forms of care. The goal is to reduce the number of children, youth and adults with intellectual disabilities in institutions by 30% by 2016, and the number of users with psycho-social disabilities by 20% by 2018.

 

 

The Croatian self-advocacy movement has also been active in ensuring people with all kinds of disabilities have a voice in society (see good practice example below).

 

 

Social inclusion of disadvantaged groups
Close to 20% of the Croatian population are at risk of poverty, but the country is yet to introduce a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy. The elderly, some of whom receive no social assistance, and children are particularly vulnerable. The disabled, national minorities (particularly Roma and Serbs), women, the less educated, the long-term and young unemployed and people from the less developed regions are groups that are facing social exclusion.

 

 

EU funding
In the past investment from the pre-accession EU funds has focused on improving labour market performance, ensuring access for long-term unemployed and for disadvantaged groups (including women, youth, national minorities), supporting the social welfare sector and the integration of disadvantaged groups into the education system. As a member of the EU, Croatia will receive up to 10 times more funding from the European Social Fund. Read more here.

 

 

Good practice

 

 

Better foster care, less institutionalisation
The Croatian Ministry of Social Policy and Youth is supporting an EU-funded project aiming to improve the foster care system and preventing the institutionalisation of children in the country. The project is run in partnership with the City of Vienna and the Austrian authorities and includes the analysis of current foster-care legislation, the education of experts, and activities to promote fostering to potential foster families.

 

 

Developing quality and client-focused social services
The Social Welfare Development Project was designed to assist the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in modernising the quality and delivery of social services, to improve the administration of the overall social welfare system and living conditions in social welfare institutions. The goal was to create a more client-focused, well-managed, and user-friendly system, with a guiding principle of helping clients achieve self-reliance, which required the system to provide a variety of well-targeted social services of consistent quality. Co-funded by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Swedish International Development Agency and the Croatian Ministry since 2006, the project has helped improve the delivery and quality of social services for 13,500 beneficiaries (children, youth, elderly, disabled), financed start-up costs for 34 innovative community-based social services projects, improved living and working conditions in 45 residential institutions, and initiated the development of the first social welfare information management system.

 

 

A strong self-advocacy movement
The Croatian Association for Self-Advocacy has been active in promoting the rights of people with disabilities. The Association also publishes a regular easy-read newsletter ‘Voice of self-advocates’ (available in Croatian and English) on topical issues for service users, each issue dedicated to different themes. Most recently the Association has been campaigning to raise awareness of the right to vote for people with disabilities during the local elections in May 2013.

 

 

The European Social Network (ESN) looks forward to working with social services and national, regional and local government in Croatia in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and good practice with their colleagues across Europe.