Ministry of Health and Welfare Holds 1st Meeting of 'Welfare Blind Spot Task Force'... Reviews Step-by-Step Promotion Tasks

Expert meeting on identifying welfare blind spots held at the Government Complex Sejong on the 24th of last month.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] On the 7th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare held the first meeting of the 'Task Force (TF) for Improving the Welfare Blind Spot Discovery and Support System' and conducted in-depth discussions on measures to strengthen the collection and discovery of information on vulnerable households, visits and verification, and linkage of welfare services.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare formed the TF on the 1st of this month to review the overall system for discovering and supporting vulnerable households and to establish improvement measures, prompted by incidents such as the deaths of young adults who grew up in the Suwon Three Mothers case and the Gwangju child welfare facility. In addition to the TF, the Korea Social Security Information Service and the National Health Insurance Service also formed separate support organizations to participate in the meeting.

At the meeting, the first topic discussed was plans to expand crisis information in the welfare blind spot discovery system and improve the discovery model to enhance the accuracy of predicting vulnerable households from the information collection and discovery stages.

Next, at the visit and verification stage for vulnerable households, institutional measures to quickly secure information on subjects whose whereabouts are unknown will be actively reviewed after legal examination regarding personal information protection.

Furthermore, to provide robust protection for discovered vulnerable households, measures to strengthen the linkage of welfare services were reviewed, along with support plans for vulnerable youth such as youth preparing for independence, isolated and withdrawn youth, and youth caring for family members.

Jeon Byeong-wang, Director of Social Welfare Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, “This summer must have been an especially difficult time for socially disadvantaged people who have nowhere to ask for help,” adding, “Starting with today’s meeting, we will promptly review effective improvement measures to proactively find and support the vulnerable who cannot raise their own voices.”

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