Advantages of neighbourhood services:

• they are carried out by people in the immediate environment – so they are based on trust, interpersonal relationships and provide a sense of security for the person using it,
• they involve the simplest possible forms of assistance, such as shopping, housekeeping, seeing to the elderly person's medication – so they do not require specialised professional qualifications,
• they free up specialist social care staff to do tasks that do not need to be done by specialists (a nurse or carer does not need to do shopping or other cleaning tasks),
• they are flexible – their hours and scope are agreed between all parties involved.

Neighbourhood services are the responsibility of the municipality but are not mandatory. This means that the municipality will decide whether it will provide care services in this form. The municipality will be able to decide whether, when organising a neighbourhood service on its area, it will use the possibility of outsourcing it to NGOs. Depending on individual needs and opportunities, the local authority will decide on the form in which cooperation with neighbourhood carers shall be undertaken (in most cases, the basis for such cooperation will be a contract of mandate or voluntary work).

The proposed service will be financed from the municipality's resources, but the prepared legal solution is correlated with government support, in the form of funding under the Senior Citizens' Support Corps and can also be financed under the EU financial perspective. Provisions concerning the determination of payment by the provider of care services also apply to care services. Thus, all competences for organising the services and financing them rest with the municipality.

The amended Act introduces new social services:

• neighbourhood services,
• short-term residence services in a social welfare home in the form of day or 24-hour stays.

In addition, the Act transforms sheltered housing into training housing and assisted housing.

Short-term care is intended to relieve the burden on family members or carers of dependent persons by supporting them in their daily duties or by providing a temporary substitute. These services can also serve to temporarily cover the needs of dependent persons when carers, for various reasons, are temporarily unable to perform their duties (e.g., due to illness). This solution will allow a broader support for carers in relieving care, on the other hand it will allow additional financial resources to be channelled to social care homes.

Short-term services can be provided in two forms:

• daily,
• 24/7.

In the case of a 24-hour service, the standard of service is identical to that provided for statutory places. To carry out this type of activity, a part of the premises must be organisationally separated into a so-called social welfare home (SWH) (separate living rooms and staff, e.g., by secondment, employment of new persons or conclusion of civil-law contracts). The staffing ratio for this part of the activity is 0.40.

In the case of day care, this part of the activity requires one day care room (fulfilling the functions of living room, dining room - with a size of at least 4m2 per person), a rest room equipped with places for relaxation, women's and men's sanitary facilities, with the number of persons per one toilet not exceeding 10. A changing room with the appropriate number of cabinets for the number of persons is also required. The staffing ratio is 0.2.

It is IMPORTANT that short-term care will be provided by municipalities. Therefore, the Director of the SWH, when running the short-term care places, will have to cooperate with the municipalities that will direct people to this form of support.

The process of deinstitutionalisation of social services aims at providing citizens with universal access to such services, including social assistance services in the residential environment. It will take place through gradual and planned implementation of new services in the social assistance system, transformation of the system and giving new functions and tasks to entities currently providing system services.

The Social Services Development Strategy is a public policy, the implementation period of which is planned until 2030, with a possibility of prolongation until 2035. It is a document indicating goals and directions for the development of social services, using indicated possibilities and sources of financing. It provides a framework for the process of deinstitutionalisation of social services in the area of social assistance, foster care, socio-professional integration of persons with disabilities.

The strategy assumes the reconstruction of the social assistance system, towards the maximum development of social assistance services, so that these kinds of services will be available to the citizen in his/her place of residence. Priority actions in this system include:

• development of care services, including specialist services and services provided in the form of neighbourhood services,
• reform of sheltered housing by transforming this form of support into training and assisted housing, and intensive development of this form of assistance,
• development of community-based forms of support, including day support centres and other non-institutional services,
• transformation of 24-hour care facilities (social welfare homes) into facilities also providing community-based services, especially in terms of making their resources available to the local community,
• development of human resources in the social assistance and integration system,
• cooperation with non-state actors, with particular emphasis on NGOs,
• coordination of social services, including coordination of services with the system of health services.

The process of implementing the provisions of the Strategy has already begun. On 28 July 2023, the Sejm of the Republic of Poland adopted the Act on Amendments to the Act on Social Assistance and Certain Other Acts Implementing New Deinstitutionalised Forms of Assistance. In addition, a number of activities are being implemented to prepare system changes, including, among others, a review of long-term care, a review of the social assistance law. It is worth noting that, with the use of EU funds, pilot projects implementing the so-called local plans for development of social services/ plans for deinstitutionalisation of social services and other projects aimed at changes in the system are being implemented.

The aim of the Local Plans for Deinstitutionalisation of Social Services is to set directions for the development of social services at the local level (regional, county, municipality), both in terms of necessary interventions and taking preventive and precautionary measures.

One of the objectives of the Plan is to make an in-depth diagnosis of social needs in the local community as regards the scope and forms of services. Carrying out a good diagnosis taking into account the description of the social structure of the municipality/county, the identification of the main social problems occurring, the analysis of the basic strategic documents of the local government and other entities, provides the basis for the formulation of tasks and activities of local government units in the creation and implementation of social services.

When planning the development of social services, local governments should make an inventory of existing resources and prepare a detailed analysis of the stakeholders in the process (analysis of institutional actors and organisations and potential partners in the process). Plans should include an analysis of the needs of all parties in the process of organising services – both the recipients themselves and potential providers of social services. An extremely important task is to identify the state of preparation of social service personnel, including existing staff and competence deficits.

The needs analysis should address people in need of support in their daily life, including the elderly, people with disabilities, people in mental health crisis, people in homelessness crisis, children in multi-person 24-hour institutions, as well as the needs of the local government units where the solutions will be implemented: e.g., financial capacity, premises, staffing and the needs of the staff providing social services.

'Sheltered housing' will be replaced by 'training and supported housing'. The purpose of the changes is to emphasise the subjectivity of persons with disabilities and other persons benefiting from this form of support. The amendment widens the circle of entities entitled to run training and assisted housing, which will allow for the development of this form of care. The changes relate to the way in which services will be provided in the new types of housing and are intended to personalise even more the services offered within this form of support. These changes also make it easier for local authorities and NGOs to obtain EU funding.

According to Article 53, Section 3, housing, either training or assisted, may be run by:

• any organisational unit of social assistance,
• a non-governmental organisation, referred to in Article 3, Section 2 of the Act of 24 April 2003 on public benefit activity and voluntary work, and the entity referred to in Article 3, Section 3 of that Act, conducting activity in the field of social assistance, foster care or integration and professional and social reintegration of persons threatened by social exclusion – pursuant to the principles set out in Article 25.

So, it is possible for social welfare homes to provide this form of support. However, it is important to bear in mind the fundamental issues involved in running them. The main problem is the status of the building in which the SWH is run. In accordance with the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure on the technical conditions to be met by buildings and their location, as far as a residential building is concerned – this should be understood as:

• multi-family residential building,
• single-family residential building;

In the case of a collective residence building, it shall be understood as a building intended for the temporary stay of people, in particular a hotel, a motel, a boarding house, a holiday home, a tourist home, a youth hostel, a hostel, a dormitory, a student residence, a barrack building, a building for accommodation on the premises of a penal institution, a detention centre, a youth detention center, a juvenile hostel, as well as a building for the permanent stay of people, in particular a children's home, a retirement home and a religious home.

Thus, to convert the current SWH premises into training or assisted living accommodation, a number of formal and legal conditions must be met, including a change of use of the building.

Therefore, it is advisable that when training and assisted living facilities are set up at social welfare homes, they should be established in buildings other than those in which collective 24-hour care is provided. It is worth noting that a permanent separation of these two functions will promote the independence of those receiving housing support.

Furthermore, if we intend to use support from European Union funds, it is important to bear in mind that the provisions of the Guidelines for the implementation of projects with European Social Fund Plus funding in regional programmes for the period 2021-2027 - Section 4.3.3. Services in housing, do not allow training and sheltered housing to be located on a property where an institutional care facility (such as a nursing home) is located.

Pursuant to the content of the new provision of Article 55b introduced by the Act of 28 July 2023 amending the Act on social assistance and certain other acts (Journal of Laws, item 1693), an application for assistance in the form of short-term support services shall be submitted to a social assistance centre or social services centre with jurisdiction over the place of residence of the person requiring support. In the new Article 55 b, Section 12, the legislator did not mention Article 110, Sections 7 and 8 of the Social Assistance Act as not applicable to short-term support services.

However, in accordance with the content of Article 110 of the Act of 12 March 2004 (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 901, as amended), social welfare assignments in municipalities are performed by organisational units – social welfare centres or social services centres referred to in the Act of 19 July 2019 on the implementation of social services by a social services centre. The social welfare centre and the social services centre, when performing the municipality's own tasks in the field of social welfare, are guided by the arrangements of the head of the municipality (mayor, city president).

Thus, the authority competent to issue administrative decisions in all social welfare matters still remains the head of the municipality (mayor, city president) and only he/she is authorised to empower persons other than the head of the social welfare centre to issue a decision granting short-term support services.

When interpreting the wording of the disposition contained in the content of Article 55b, Section 9, a purposive interpretation of the provision should be made. When interpreting it purposefully – and not linguistically – it should be understood that the regulation in question provides for the necessity of making arrangements with a specific social welfare home run by a municipality, county or on their commission, which will provide services – even before issuing a decision granting the support in question.

The structure of the provision in question indicates a presumption of authorisation for the head of the social welfare centre or the director of the social services centre to perform actions on behalf of the head of the municipality (mayor, city president), who authorises the head of the social welfare centre/director of the social services centre to issue administrative decisions in individual social welfare cases falling under the municipality's jurisdiction, the issuance of which is preceded by an administrative procedure as part of which it is necessary to establish the prerequisites entitling a person to benefit from such support.