The Chilean PUENTE programA bridge between families and their rights

Psychosocial support for families from the Intersectorial Social Protection System, “Chile Solidario”

Puente program – between the family and its rights

Institutional network management and preferential access to public services

Claudio Ferrada – Tutor of St. Kitts and Nevis

Network management and preferential access

Poverty is a phenomenon caused by multiple factors, so it is understandable that the intervention in order to overcome poverty must be multidimensional.

Facing the multidimensional feature of poverty and vulnerability requires the commitment and contribution of all public institutions and the whole society.

It requires a political and technical definition by which the State commits all its efforts.

Public institutions, public funding, and intervention models contribute to reducing gaps that affect people in different dimensions or areas.

Parameters have to be defined in order to detect the way in which public social programs and services can contribute to protecting people’s rights and overcoming vulnerability and poverty in all dimensions.

Furthermore, socially excluded families should be supported in order to effectively use the infrastructure of opportunities available in public institutions.

This support has to be based upon assistance and promotional strategies in order to restore people´s ability to develop the necessary practical tools for effective social inclusion.

Network management and preferential access

The Chilean State is responsible for supporting families in the restoration of life skills that have been damaged or destroyed. The State focuses on creating multiple supports in order to guarantee the family’s welfare.

The Social Protection System provides preferential access for vulnerable families to all programs, services, benefits, and assistance available in the public sector for satisfying the basic and development needs of “Chile Solidario” families.

The Social Protection System “Chile Solidario” coordinates the local network of social institutions.

A priority of the Social Protection System is that families use the networks autonomously. In order to achieve this linkage between the family and the State, a support model is established.

Network management and preferential access

Families receive psychosocial support from a Family Support Counselor who, among other consulting processes, connects them to the community networks as well as to the State agencies that provide social services.

The Social Protection System furthermore covers the social services and programs implemented and coordinated by different State Agencies.

So, this can be considered a joint venture between the different agencies in order to guarantee poor families’ access to a better quality of life.

The Chilean Planning Ministry manages, coordinates, supervises, and assesses the implementation of the Social Protection System.

Network management and preferential access

“Chile Solidario” requires coordination between the different institutions of the public sector in order to guarantee the necessary conditions for an effective integration of programs and services.

Furthermore, it requires efforts in order to achieve the commitment of different stakeholders of the public policies. They should not only provide services, but guarantee the effective application of the poor’s right to development.

The Chilean Social Protection System looks to provide services and benefits that are adequate and opportune for the needs of the families and individuals that are protected by the State.

Network management and preferential access

“Chile Solidario” looks to provide different services and benefits for families and individuals, following an integrated intervention strategy. It is only in this way that effective results for a multi-dimensional phenomenon such as extreme poverty, can be achieved.

The System is flexible and responds to the family’s requirements, and thus, new minimum social guarantees and/or social services can be generated.

Social programs and services, as well as existing support systems, are oriented from a point of view that is universal and progressive. This is why guaranteed subsidies have been created for all beneficiaries of the Social Protection System.

Network management and preferential access

The System defines a set of minimum conditions that guarantee quality of life in the seven dimensions that are the pillars of Puente. The objective is to work operationally on minimum social conditions.

In Chile, due to its geography, there are several coordination levels for specific services: the national coordination level, the regional coordination level, and the local coordination level.

It is recommended that the System, on the local level, seek to be integrated into the existing public, private and community networks.

The intervention methodology on the local level can be described as “local network management” or “local network practice”.

Network management and preferential access

The success of the System lies in the fact that there are positive results on each of the operating levels.

The quality of the agencies’ participation in the protection network depends on how these agencies define and understand their roles within the System.

The role of an agency within a social protection network (such as “Chile Solidario”) is determined by how and how much it contributes to the protected individual.

Network management and preferential access

In order to position their participation in the network, agencies have to know exactly what the specific characteristics of indigent families are. This is an issue of continuous learning.

The operators of “Chile Solidario” are the key components that lead the conversations within the network, delivering facts about the features of the families in order to orient the social services.

The network’s philosophy is that each member must know about and comprehend the contributions of the other agencies in order to operate the System and to guarantee the families’ welfare.

Network management and preferential access

The Social Protection System entails that all services in the network are linked to and complement each other, in order to generate significant impacts in the life of poor families.

Coordinating within a network means looking for complementary areas. This depends on how much each of the members knows about each others’ services and programs.

The monitoring of the results that were committed to by the System allows an assessment of the system’s own performance in assisting and supporting families.

Network management and preferential access

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!