The Social Investment Package (SIP) emphasises that “individualised and integrated services and benefits (e.g. provided through one-stop-shops) can enhance the effectiveness of social policies. Simplifying procedures can help people in need to access benefits and services more easily, also avoiding overlapping schemes and costs”. It also highlights that those people who are disproportionally affected by unemployment, poverty, bad housing and poor health conditions and discrimination “require policies that target their needs and offer integrated support”. The experts’ analyses suggest that an overall integrated approach to social investment across a broad range of policy areas is not very evident in many countries. However, some experts do highlight positive steps that are being taken to enhance an integrated approach in some areas. For instance, in Belgium, in order to coordinate policies relating to the fight against poverty and social exclusion at different levels, the (permanent) Interministerial Conference on Integration into Society, which brings together all policy levels, was intensified in 2011 by creating five thematic working groups and the permanent working group on poverty, which has to ensure the coordination of the policy between the federal level and the federated entities. In Romania the new draft strategy on social inclusion changes the approach, by strongly promoting the development of social assistance services, and especially of integrated, community based services, in order to ensure a liaison between individuals’/families’ needs and existing services at regional level (especially unemployment services). In Slovenia, there is a relatively high degree of complementarity and interaction between policies and measures (for example, the regulation of early childhood education and care has an impact on child development, parents’ employment and the risk of poverty). The Slovenian benefit system combines more or less adequate income replacement with activating and enabling services which are ever more targeted at individual needs.
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