“The strong partnership between the central and local levels of government in recent years has significantly contributed to improving the quality of public services, which directly reflects on the well-being of citizens,” stated the Secretary General of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro (UoM), Mišela Manojlović, during a meeting with Ana Kulić Ratković, Director of the Institute for Social and Child Protection. As she emphasized, the voices of local self-government units are increasingly being taken into account, enabling higher-quality decision-making at the central level, bearing in mind that municipalities are the first point of contact for citizens.”
The Draft Law on Social and Child Protection envisages transferring key community-based support services to the competence of municipalities, including day-care services and day centres for children with developmental disabilities and difficulties, home care, personal assistance, and counselling services. This places a significant financial burden on local governments; however, municipalities currently do not have clear information on the actual costs of these services. Such data are essential in order for local self-government units, as well as the Union of Municipalities, to provide informed opinions on the proposed legal solutions. For this reason, closer cooperation between the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro and the Institute was agreed upon, with the aim of mapping citizens’ needs in each municipality and determining the actual needs and costs of service provision, which is a key prerequisite for their long-term sustainability.
At the meeting, which was also attended by Ivana Nedović from the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro, as well as Dragana Pešić and Dunja Pajović Representatives from the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro and the Institute agreed on future joint work on analyses that will serve as expert groundwork for mapping the actual needs of citizens in individual municipalities and assessing the real costs, which is a prerequisite for the sustainability of this type of service. It was also agreed to harmonize a Memorandum of Cooperation, which will define joint activities and cooperation. Special emphasis was placed on the importance of developing reliable records, building a high-quality database, and ensuring proper reporting, in order to clearly define needs and plan activities in the period ahead. Local self-government plays a key role in this process, as it is the level of government closest to the actual needs of citizens.
It was also agreed that the Union of Municipalities, in cooperation with the Institute for Child Protection, will develop a model local social protection plan, which will serve as support to municipalities and facilitate the preparation of their own plans. For this project, as well as for all future analyses, a reliable and comprehensive database that clearly distinguishes between rights and services is of crucial importance. In order to establish such a database, a multidisciplinary approach and the involvement of centres for social work, health centres, the Red Cross, the NGO sector, and other stakeholders are necessary. Only in this way is it possible to obtain a realistic picture of needs and, based on it, define future steps.
Secretary General Manojlović also informed the interlocutors about the project ‘Support for Children Without Parental Care’. Representatives of the Institute emphasized that the project could serve as a pilot initiative for defining key support mechanisms for this group of children and young people, including social mentoring, psychological support, assistance with housing, employment and job retention, as well as support in education and retraining processes. Manojlović stressed that the experiences of developed countries and countries from the region can be of great importance for improving the system, and that there is a possibility of applying for EU funds if the project proves to be sustainable and feasible in the long term.
The interlocutors concluded that a strong partnership between the central and local levels represents the best path toward providing sustainable and high-quality services, as only through joint action can the real needs of citizens be met.
