The Transformation of the Municipal Social Care System in Hungary – In the Light of the Provision of Home Care Services

Abstract

Municipalities play a significant role in the field of social care services. The basic social services are primarily provided by local governments. The Hungarian municipalities have strong social powers and duties, but their role is in a permanent transformation. The strongly decentralised system established in the early 1990s has since been centralised and the majority of specialised social services has been nationalised in the last decade. This has resulted in a new model; a mixed system having evolved after 2013. The provision of the specialised services has been mainly centralised, while the basic services have remained the responsibility of the municipal bodies. In this article, the impacts of this reform are analysed. The centralisation of the specialised services and the reforms of the financial support of municipal basic social services significantly transformed the former accessibility. The accessibility to these services depends on several factors: it depends on the central regulation of the entitlement rules, of the central funding of the municipal tasks and partly that of the economic power of the municipality. The central regulation and the central support of these services play a very important role in this system.