Strengthening Activities of Nowon-gu's Representative Welfare Service 'Ddokddokddok Care Team'

Extending Operation Period for Winter Preparation and Strengthening Visit Monitoring...220 Members Continuously Monitor Over 7,000 Households, Adding 2 Members Each in 10 Districts... Among 175,725 Activities Last Year, 62,228 Visits Achieved, Establishing a Field-Centered Welfare System

Nowon-gu, Seoul (Mayor Oh Seung-rok) announced that it will reinforce the personnel of the visiting welfare service 'Ddok Ddok Ddok Care Team' and undertake year-round thorough management of at-risk households.

The Ddok Ddok Ddok Care Team began its activities in 2021, providing resident-led care services where neighbors look after neighbors. Through weekly or more frequent phone calls or visits, they regularly check on the well-being of individuals, conduct activities to prevent solitary deaths, and manage those at risk of solitary death. When necessary, they also provide information on and connect clients to public social welfare services such as social security and emergency welfare.

This year, Nowon-gu has selected 7,322 households in need of care, including elderly, disabled, single-person middle-aged households, and single-parent families. To prevent overlapping benefits and build a comprehensive welfare network without blind spots, households that do not use other care services were selected.

The Care Team continues home visits and welfare check-in calls, conducts surveys on vulnerable groups, connects welfare services, and discovers welfare recipients through solitary death prevention activities for the selected care recipients. This enables the rapid identification and response to neighbors in crisis, greatly aiding in the management of at-risk households.

Last year, the Ddok Ddok Ddok Care Team conducted a total of 175,725 activities, including 149,638 home visits and phone consultations and 26,087 welfare service connections. In particular, the number of visits increased significantly from 39,349 in 2022 to 62,228 in 2023. This is the result of efforts to establish a field-centered welfare safety net that thoroughly monitors welfare blind spots and to strengthen the Ddok Ddok Ddok Care Team.

This year, two additional care team members will be assigned to each of the 10 neighborhoods (a total of 20), expanding the team to 220 members. The number of neighbors managed per care team member will be reduced from 40 last year to 36 this year to improve the quality of care.

Additionally, the monitoring frequency, which was previously conducted at the discretion of the team, will be mandated to be at least once a week for all care recipients this year. The ratio of visit monitoring will be increased so that phone and visit monitoring are conducted equally at 50:50.

The response system to eliminate monitoring blind spots will also be strengthened. If the Care Team cannot connect by phone with a care recipient, a home visit on the same day will be the principle. If the well-being check is not completed before the end of the activity time, the case will be immediately referred to the responsible welfare planner. The welfare planner aims to assess the situation within 48 hours on working days to establish a thorough welfare safety net.

Oh Seung-rok, Mayor of Nowon-gu, said, “To eliminate welfare blind spots, cooperation between the public and private sectors as well as continuous interest from neighbors is necessary. We will do our best to build a field-centered, thorough welfare safety net so that not a single neighbor in need of help is overlooked.”

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