Reforms for Introducing Activation Elements into the Ajutor Social Program

Country –  Romania

Beneficiary – The Ministry for Labor, Family, Social Protection and Elderly

Objective:

General objective: The objective of the project is to assist the government of Moldova in developing tailored activation policies that account for countries’ current activation stance, institutional capacities, and the distributional and labour-market challenges, including by:
(a) profiling the groups of individuals or families with weak labour-market attachment and, among them, Ajutor Social beneficiaries. The objective would be to identify and understand barriers to employment that these groups face;
(b) reviewing existing institutional capacities and support services, as well as links between them;
(c) reviewing and recommending improvements to the existing activation measure as well as additional policies to support activation agenda.

Activities:
1. Assess the scope for activation policies by:
• profiling exercise which would summarize a number and characteristics, barriers to economic activities/work, social support needs of potential clients of activation policies.
• diagnostics of the extent and driving factors of benefit dependency, the incentive effects of Ajutor Social transfers and financial work incentives resulting from the design of tax-benefit system;
• exploring labour force profile of the population and examining labour market characteristics which define employment opportunities
2. Review and analyze the existing service delivery systems/structures including public employment service, other social services in terms of their ability to activate beneficiaries and other vulnerable groups.
3. Review and recommend improvements to the existing activation policies/measures and suggest other policy responses:
• based on a detailed profiling exercise, conduct a policy inventory to link existing policies/services/programs to the different groups, identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as outright policy “gaps”.
• design a set of possible policy responses (both incentives and interventions) for selected target groups identified in course of profiling exercise tailored to address barriers to work and/or improve access to other re-integration services and opportunities.
• develop initial recommendations for operationalizing the policies
• carry out an initial assessment of feasibility of the proposed interventions
• design pilot interventions and implementation arrangements on a small scale to foster activation elements in the Ajutor Social (Social Aid) program.