Ministry of Health and Welfare Implements Measures to Identify Welfare Blind Spots

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 23rd that it will conduct the '6th Welfare Blind Spot Discovery' nationwide in cooperation with local governments for about two months until January 12 next year.

The welfare blind spot discovery is conducted bimonthly (six times a year). Crisis information from 18 institutions, such as power and water cutoffs, is collected and analyzed to select individuals with a high possibility of economic crisis. The local government's 'Visiting Health and Welfare Service Task Force' then conducts on-site verification and investigations.

The winter welfare crisis household discovery is expected to cover about 300,000 people. The target for this 6th central discovery is about 160,000 people. In particular, according to the 'Winter Welfare Crisis Household Discovery and Support Measures,' there are plans to focus on discovering vulnerable groups during the winter season.

In this discovery, the types of crisis information used to identify crisis households will be expanded from the existing 39 to 44. Five additional types of information will be utilized, including catastrophic medical expense support targets, debt adjustment suspensions, employment crisis information, and overdue payment information for prepaid electricity and gas bills.

Accordingly, for the winter welfare crisis household discovery, households with disabilities, elderly living alone, and housing-vulnerable households that have experienced disconnection or overdue payments of electricity, gas, or water services will be included as discovery targets.

From this discovery onward, building and unit number information for multi-family houses will be provided. The building and unit number information of multi-family houses registered by the individual at the time of moving-in notification will be provided to local governments, which is expected to facilitate the identification of crisis households that were previously difficult to find due to lack of building and unit number information.

Contact information provided at the time of moving-in notification will also be supplied. For mobile phone contact numbers held by telecommunications companies, system integration will be completed within the year, and during the 6th discovery period, local governments will be able to request this information for individuals who cannot be contacted.

Additionally, from this discovery, the acquisition cycle of major overdue payment information that local governments want to receive as the latest information will be shortened from two months to one month. This is intended to support local governments in smoothly utilizing the latest information for their work.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.