Structure and actors of social services for families with children

The purpose of the article is to study the functional elements and characteristics of the regional structure of social services system for families with children in St. Petersburg, to identify and classify problems, to analyze its functioning and to work out a set of recommendations for the development and improvement of the effectiveness. On the basis of the analysis and compilation of statistics, data from the annual monitoring, and content analysis of public documents the author identifies main actors and structural features of social services the system for families with children in St. Petersburg. They include the two-tiered structure of executive authorities and state social service agencies for families with children with a partially decentralized management system; a variety of types of state social service agencies; imbalance in the state social service agencies for families with children network which impedes access to certain types of social services for families with children in different areas of the city; unbalanced internal organizational structure of state agencies. The analysis at the regional level has shown the peculiarities of development and significant contradictions of the present situation in the system of social services for families with children. The author proposes approaches for further improvement of the work of the regional social services system for families with children. At the present stage, it is important to develop mechanisms that allow during the planning of social services for families with children to take into account their size, needs in services, and the features of city districts, preserving at the same time the diversity of social agencies. Strengthening of the role of legal regulation and standardization at all system levels of social services for families with children, good combination of centralization and more flexible adaptive management forms, harmonization of internal organizational structure of institutions considerably affect the strengthening of the regional system. Flexible combination of the territorial principle of service with specialization of individual units or specialists as well as the active involvement of private sector in social services will improve the quality of social services. Further development of mechanisms for improving the professional level of specialists, increasing the prestige and importance of social services for families with children in the professional and client environment also remains relevant.