Standardization of social services in the Czech Republic: Approaches and applications

Abstract

The standardization of social services is attracting much attention in the Czech Republic, mainly due to the necessity to guarantee quality in accordance with the Social Services Act of 2006. From the quantitative point of view, there are also recommended availability standards for various social services. Furthermore, since the two major financial sources of social services are interlinked, attention is also being paid to financial standardization. This contribution aims to provide an empirical view of the standardization of selected social care services in the Czech Republic from the quantitative viewpoint, based on theoretical aspects of social service standardization. The paper is dedicated to the application of standards in quantitative terms to selected social services in regions of the Czech Republic between 2007 and 2012. The availability analysis of selected social care services in the administrative regions of the Czech Republic and the comparison of the Czech Republic regions by the multidimensional scaling method showed that the largest administrative regions (Central Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, South Moravia) and the smallest regions (Liberec and Karlovy Vary) are the least similar when it comes to selected social care services. In addition, the least similar regions according to the structure of the available social care services are the region of Usti nad Labem and the capital city of Prague.