LESSON 3

SOCIAL WELFARE
AND
DEVELOPMENT
 AGENCY
It is a structured framework within which the administrative tasks are
carried out. It is an instrument of society, established through government
initiative or through voluntary efforts to achieve a social goal.

Peter Drucker outlines how a social welfare agency in its simplest form
comes into being when “several people see an unmet need, want to meet that
need, get community permission to meet that need, and accept legal
responsibility for seeing that the resources secured, or made available, are used
for the specific purpose for which they were given rather than for some other
purpose
 AGENCIES
Traditionally, the types of social welfare agencies include:

1. Governmental or public agencies – organization supported by public

funds or taxes.
2. Private or voluntary agencies – organizations supported by private
contributions or donations or income from services. These are
popularly referred to as non-governmental organizations (NGO’s)
3. Semi-government or quasi-governmental organizations –
organizations that receive some form of subsidy, either in cash or
kind, from the government.
 AGENCIES

The characteristics of public agencies are:

1. They are created through any of these: constitutional mandate, legislative act,
executive order, presidential decree, or letter of instruction.
2. Their existence, functions, and programs are created by law or executive order,
hence may only be changed or modified by law or executive order.
3. Their organizational structure is bureaucratic and less flexible than private
agencies
4. They must conform with government procedures, especially the accounting
and auditing of funds, property and other resources.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF PUBLIC AGENCIES
Private agencies are characterized by the following:

1. They are organized as a form of response of private organizations to

meet people’s needs in the community.
2. They may be national chapters of international organizations such as the
Red Cross, Young Man Catholic Association (YMCA), World Vision,
and others.
3. They may have been established by sectarian or non-sectarian
organizations.
4. They are governed by their own charters, constitution and by-laws, and
by a governing board.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF PUBLIC AGENCIES

5. Their organizational structures do not generally follow a

bureaucratic pattern, and, therefore, are more flexible in their
policies and programs that enable them to readily respond to
people and community needs.
6. Private agencies can pioneer and initiate demonstration projects
which may subsequently be turned over to the government. The
latter can adopt the program on a larger scale with more
available resources and organizational capacity.
 AGENCIES
  SOCIAL WELFARE AGENCIES (NON-PROFITS)
  Government Private
Basis of Establishment Constitutional mandate & other laws of the land, Voluntary response to a social need; faith-based or
social need humanitarian motivation

Purpose Basic social services Charity; social services; advocacy

Clientele All citizen in a given territory; or special sectors Specific area or sectors (usually the poor or people with
special needs)

Leadership & Management Elective, legislative or appointive officials; hired Founders/members/elective BOT/hired management & staff if
management & staff any

Sources of Funds Taxes and other incomes Member’s fees, donation, grants and other incomes such as
surplus (profit)

Structure Bureaucratic & less flexible; conform to government Less bureaucratic & more flexible
procedures

Issues and Concerns Inefficiency, transparency & corruption Inefficiency & ineffectiveness due to smallness
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SOCIAL WELFARE
AGENCIES

The social welfare agency may be a small organization with a few

people involved in the program or a complex system involving a
great number of people. For a large social welfare agency, the
personnel would include administrators at various levels,
professionals, members of different related professions, clerical,
technical, and manual staff, as well as volunteers and
paraprofessionals.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development is a good case illustration of
a large public social welfare agency. In addition to being a national social welfare
agency, it has deployed social work staff in different countries where there are
Filipino overseas workers through the International Social Welfare Services for
Filipino Nationals (ISWSFN). In collaboration with the Department of Foreign
Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the
Filipino migrant workers in crisis situation and in need of special protection are
provided proper assistance by virtue of Republic Act (R.A) 8042 of the Migrant
Worker and Overseas Filipino Act of 1995. Smaller in scale and responsibility are
the local government social welfare offices at the provincial and municipal city
levels which are established under the authority of the Local Government Code
(LGC). Private agencies exist at the local level to meet the needs of residents. An
example of a small agency is the Philippine Band of Mercy.
ATURE OF SOCIAL WELFARE AGENCIES
Rosemary C. Sarri and Robert D. VInter suggest that social welfare agency
“must be viewed both as administrative bureaucracies and as social
systems.” They are administrative bureaucracies in that they are established
to attain specific goals, and their internal structures, technologies, and
procedures are designed to implement these goals. An example is the
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) of agencies meant to guide agency
workers in the performance of their tasks to serve particular client groups in
accordance with agency goals. They are social systems that adoptively
respond to external and internal pressures, and they generate informal
patterns that may both facilitate and hamper goal attainment.
Being social systems, social agencies are subject to pressures from outside and
within the organization. For instance, political factors interfere with normal
operations of the public agencies as in the appointment of managers and their
staff. Socio-cultural factors such as utang na loob (debt of gratitude) and
pakikisama (getting along with…) oftentimes characterize the informal
relationships that may contravene the formal tenets of the organization. The
economic situation also affects funding and support to social agencies that may
cause the cutting down and/ or elimination of existing programs. The
professional culture influences social agencies by establishing standards of
practice which are mandated through licensure requirements established by law.
R.A 4373 has made a difference in the standards of professional staffing of both
public and private agencies.
 OTHER TYPES OF SOCIAL AGENCIES

Other types of social agencies may be created by

foundations set up by individuals, business corporations,
religious organizations, or even universities. An example
is the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), a
corporate-led non-profit social development foundation
in the Philippines that is committed to poverty alleviation
and people development.
 REFERENCES:
• Cordero, E.A, Gutierrez, C.L & Pangalangan, E.A (2013).
Administration and Supervision in Social Work. Rency’s
Printing Press
• U.P Social Work Board Review Notes