Some 25 local officials, including social workers of Southern Leyte’s 18 municipalities and one city, swore to replicate what the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has recently completed as social technologies.

DSWD Field Office Office Eight Director Leticia Diokno said that part of the DSWD’s new mandate is to continuously pilot Social Welfare and Development (SWD) projects that will be introduced to local government units for replication.

The DSWD ‘s mandate to provide assistance to local government units, non-government organizations, other national government agencies, people’s organizations, and other members of civil society in effectively implementing programs, projects and services that will alleviate poverty and empower disadvantaged individuals, families and communities for an improved quality of life.

Its goals, then, are identification, development and marketing of technologies for building up social capital; setting up and enforcement of SWD standards to protect the rights of the poor and the disadvantaged to quality services; provision of technical assistance and resource augmentation to intermediaries in the implementation of SWD programs and services; and provision of preventive, protective, rehabilitative and developmental programs and services.

The said officials formally agreed on paper via an Expression of Interest, after an orientation was conducted to them, at the Ritz Tower de Leyte recently.

Jelie Barceta, Project Focal Person of the Social Technology Bureau of the DSWD Central Office, cited the Aruga at Kalinga Sa Mga Bata Sa Barangay (Foster Care in the Community) as one of those technologies that are currently being market.  She stated that the Foster Care Service as a substitute parental care for neglected, orphaned, and abandoned children, has been enhanced, with simplified requirements.

Barceta asked – “why go to residential facilities?”   The DSWD official bared that the new strategy is to develop a pool of ten foster families in one barangay, because in child-caring centers, the ratio ought to be one social worker to 25 children. In reality, however, the situation is one social worker to 50 children. “How can we give exact interventions if the ratio is not proportionate,? She pointed out.

Another new technology for children is the Modified Social Stress Model (MSSM) in Managing Children In Need of Special Protection. She explained that the objective is to improve the management of children in need of special protection by using the MSSM framework in DSWD centers/institutions and other local government units and non-government organizations operating residential care facilities.

The Family Drug Abuse Prevention Program (FDAPP), meanwhile, is a community-based prevention program designed to educate and prepare families in particular and communities in general about the adverse effects of drug abuse. Barceta stressed that drug abuse poses the greatest threat to the family’s survival and development. “We want to save the family,” she pointed out.

For the benefit of older persons and persons with disabilities, the technology is a sheltered workshop which is a community – based facility designed to provide work training and productive employment for them, by producing and selling goods or services for income or profit.

Barceta mentioned another technology named as the Comprehensive Intervention Against Gender Violence, earlier piloted in 61 barangays of 20 cities and municipalities in three provinces of CARAGA Region. She said, the project hopes to improve the conditions of women, adolescents and girls through improved prevention, assistance and reintegration of survivors of Violence Against Women and their Children (VAWC).

The remaining three social technologies are the Re-integration Program for Deportees and Irregular Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), originally implemented in Zamboanga City, the Special Drug Education Center (earlier tested in the cities of Pasay and Legazpi), and the Information Technology Literacy Program for Out-of-School Youth and Youth with Disabilities (SCALA) Project, piloted in Regions IV-A, VII, and VIII.

The latter program is a community-based intervention program that offers a non-formal basic computer-literacy and life skills training to out-of-school youth and youth with disabilities.

Some 126 other local government workers and officials from the different provinces of the region have earlier gave their commitments towards the newly-completed programs, after the Field Office conducted a series of orientations.