Towards a better quality of social services in Seraing ?
One of the objectives of the UIA project "A Place to Be-Come" is to identify missing links in the territory in order to encourage implementation of new services and/or partnerships, and thus to respond as closely as possible to citizen’s needs for support at each stage of his life. A mapping of associations and services available to Seresian citizens has been carried out to make existing support services visible. It is made available to social action professionals in order to help them identify seresian social field in which they operate and to improve citizen’s care.
In parallel with this mapping work, an initial social diagnosis was carried out during the construction of the new day shelter. It targeted people living in precarious conditions, whether or not they use the day shelter, and professionals directly concerned with this public. The qualitative analysis allowed us to establish recommendations and courses of action to improve support for people in precarious situations in the context of this building construction.
This second diagnosis is in line with the first one and highlights problems and missing links that were raised by different public or associative structures, concerning the care of Seresians.
Four major issues emerged from the analysis: housing, health, precariousness and socio-professional integration. These issues are particularly prevalent in most of comments made by professionals in the field. This echoes the first study, which presented a similar finding.
In housing, we note access to housing: waiting lists are getting longer for social housing and private landlords are reluctant to rent their house to people receiving CPAS benefits. In addition, there is the problem of substandard housing, offered at lower prices, which is the only housing that this precarious public can afford. The search for "autonomous housing" is also very complicated because, in addition to previous problems, there are problems related to minority age. The problem of emergency and transit housing is also part of the missing links. Finally, although there are various services in Seraing that deal with housing problem, they are very scattered within the municipality. The population does not always know where to turn.
Health is not a priority for public. However, a bad health condition can worsen and have disastrous consequences if it is not taken care of early enough. It is in the area of mental health that professionals feel the most helpless. It is important to remember that health requires urgent and immediate attention to all its dimensions.
Poverty: for many people, pushing the door of a help structure is an ordeal. As a result, they are slow to find the competent services and associations, which creates new difficulties in their situation.
Finally, the problem of socio-professional integration concerns the lack of places in the proposed training courses and the lack of available jobs. It is therefore impossible to offer a professional integration project to all Seresians. Moreover, the public concerned by professional integration is mostly made up of people who have never had a job. The social integration project represents their first steps in active life for many years. This is a population that needs to find its bearings, acquire a rhythm of life and regain its self-confidence. Finally, we can link the theme of socio-professional integration to that of school dropout. Indeed, social exclusion can also result from the lack of education and/or training experienced by the public at an early age.
This diagnosis constitutes the beginning of a research-action work which will allow to set up concrete actions on the ground answering the identified needs. The three research-actions will focus on the issues of housing, health, and socio-professional integration.
Find the complete diagnosis in French here.