Research On Government Purchasing Social Work Service

In western countries, government purchasing service originated in the1980s andhas been operated in a highly mature system; while in China, it was just promotedduring the Social Managerial System Reform in Shanghai in2000, and has remained inthe stage of exploration. The core of government purchasing service is for governmentto purchase social service to meet the various needs in social development and the lifeof citizens. The service purchased is mainly composed of non-profit service, amongwhich professional social service remains the most important. In December2006, theMinistry of Civil Affairs convened in Shenzhen an “National Promotion Meeting onConstruction of the Social Work Personnel in Administration System”, deciding on thefirst group of pilot cities for the social work personnel construction. Governmentpurchasing service has been forwarded in many developed cities and become no longeran unfamiliar topic.After the objective of constructing a strong group of social work personnel wasset in the16th Party Congress, the Central Organization Department, the Ministry ofcivil affairs and other sixteen ministries jointly issued “Suggestions on the constructionof social work personnel". Recently,“The Decisions on Deepening Reform in theChinese18th Party Congress” explicitly pointed out that “promote governmentpurchase service”, and “public services and issues that can be better conducted by tosocial organizations shall be undertaken by them." All statements above areillustrations of government’s urgent need and evaluation of government purchase service, especially social work service.Taking Zhuhai as an example to study the government purchasing social workservice is of practical significance. Zhuhai city is one in the second group of pilot citiesof social work professional construction, which is determined by the Ministry of CivilAffairs. The resident population of Zhuhai is1.56million. It is contiguous to HongKong and Macao and close to Guangzhou and Shenzhen—the first pilot cities. With itsdevelopment in medium level in terms of Guangdong province, Zhuhai, a city on thewest bank of the Pearl River Estuary, is one of the key regions in the futuredevelopment of Guangdong province. Under these conditions, it is representative tostudy social work development of Zhuhai.This research is conducted on the basis of two theoretical principles: New PublicAdministration and Welfare Pluralism. Different research methods such as literaturecollection and analysis, comparison, interview, and cases collection and case study arecombined to analyze the problems occurred in the development of social work inZhuhai. What’s more, related solutions can be offered by comparison betweenexperience of Guangzhou and Shenzhen in government purchasing social work service.This will provide some reference concerning government purchasing social workservice for other citied in our countries.