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The social services, from the administrative-territorial unit levels, which were dissolved during the communist time, were recreated during post-communist Romania as a consequence of adoption, in the institutional plan, of the first law regarding the minimum income (Law no. 67/1995). The present article aims to make an analysis of the minimum income guarantee system in post-communist Romania, from a social worker’s perspective role, while following, in the same time, the building and development of the social services’ mission from the administrative-territorial unit levels. The ethics of the functioning of the welfare system is being observed in the context of its dependence of the financial resources allocated by the state, but mostly, of the legal stipulations often adopted without taking into account the proposals coming from the social work professionals, even without evaluating the responsible institutions’ ability of implementing the adopted measures. Studying the evolution of the legislation regarding the minimum income in the ideological, political, economical and institutional context of the main reforms that have marked Romania, three different stages have been identified: since the enactment of Law no. 67/ June 24, 1995 regarding the social aid and the law enforcement, until December 2001; since the enactment of Law no. 416/ July 8, 2001 regarding the guaranteed minimum income and the law enforcement until December 2010 – with the legislator’s amendments; since the enactment of Law no. 276/ December 24, 2010 amending and supplementing Law no. 416/ 2001 regarding the guaranteed minimum income and law enforcement – with further amendments stated by the legislator, until present. In all these three stages, the services which managed and manage the social benefits have worked with a relatively stiff administrative logic, bureaucratically, with working tools stipulated by law which could have been used by both social workers or any other professional categories engaged in social services and in an approach which have evaded the need of the specific intervention, sustained, coherent, for poor families.
Keywords: social services, social assessment tool, social protection, public administration
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