The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Health and Welfare for creating conditions that have allowed inadequate pay and poor working conditions for social workers to flourish.
The Control Yuan made the announcement in a press release on Sunday, saying it handed down a corrective measure following an investigative report by members Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) and Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇).
The Control Yuan said it agreed with the findings of the Taiwan Social Worker Union’s 2018 Taiwan Report on Labor Rights in the Social Work Industry.
The sector is rife with unpaid overtime, pressures to forgo vacation days and wage theft, resulting in recruitment and retention woes that negatively affect quality of service, the Control Yuan said, citing the union report.
The problems are “endemic” and they are turning social workers into disadvantaged members of society, the union report said.
The ministry should bear the responsibility for farming out the central government’s essential welfare services to private groups, but failing to provide the funding they need to perform those services, the Control Yuan said.
Ministry statistics showed that nearly 60 percent of social workers are employed in the private sector, and 53 percent of them are paid between NT$25,000 and NT$34,999 per month, it said.
An independent study commissioned by the ministry in 2015 found that 21.2 percent of all social workers had experienced wage theft, the Control Yuan said.
The ministry has continually failed to comply with local regulations obligating it to provide adequate subsidies to outside groups it had commissioned, it said.
The ministry does not cover administrative or operational expenses, including overtime, commutes, leave, training and oversight, the Control Yuan said.
The ministry’s handling of child protective services was particularly unsatisfactory, it said.
Of the 124 juvenile placement facilities nationwide, the government owns and operates just four, with the rest either publicly owned and privately managed, or run on commission, it said.
For the commissioned facilities, the ministry pays about NT$20,000 per person, which is clearly inadequate, it said.
Subsidies of NT$8,000 to NT$9,000 per guidance counselor and NT$12,000 to NT$15,000 per social worker are a “pittance,” it said.
The juvenile placement system is “unsustainable,” with social workers with just two years of experience put in charge of the most complicated cases, due the profession’s high turnover rate, it said.
“The government’s duty to provide welfare services to disadvantaged children and adolescents is being relegated to outside agencies via commission or subsidies in the name of keeping costs down,” the Control Yuan said.
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