Changing Minds, Policies and Lives: Toolkit on Redirecting Resources to Community Based Services

M. Norberg, A. Sahlback; Contributions from L. Fox and R. Gotestam for UNICEF

WHAT: This folder contains guidance and planning and assessment tools to implement reform of national social care financing from institutionalized care to a family and community-based framework.  

  • Redirecting Resources to Community Based Services: A Concept Paper: A comparative analysis of social care financing systems in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, with guidance on transitioning to family based care. 

  • Executive Summary of the above concept paper

  • Introduction to the toolkit

  • Introduction to the templates:  The templates are tools to help describe and analyze the current care system e.g. financing, reimbursements to referral partners, providers’ incomes and costs, indirect costs, projections. 

  • Instructions for each template

  • Templates:  An excel document containing all the templates

  • Introduction to the checklists

  • Checklist 1:  Financing and budget reforms

  • Checklist 2:  Setting up the purchaser organization

  • Checklist 3:  Opening up for new providers

  • Checklist 4:  Handling the tendering process

  • Checklist 5:  Formulation of contract

  • Checklist 6:  Facility planning  and management

  • Checklist 7:  Terms of reference for technical assistance and training. 

WHO:  Policy makers, researchers and managers involved in care and protection system analysis and deinstitutionalization. 

WHERE:    While the tools were written for use in the CEE/CIS region, the guidance contained draws on broader research into financing systems and redirecting resources, and therefore has much broader application in terms of guiding a transition from institutionalized care to family and community-based care. The tools will need to be adapted to suit the local context.

WHY:  Provides a model guiding financing flows to a variety of new community-based non-residential options, and thus using institutional care only as a last resort. It includes useful forms and spreadsheets for collecting, aggregating and analyzing the current situation, planning reform and projecting future demand/supply scenarios, and conducting future comparisons and assessments.  Also includes checklists with questions and advice concerning financing and budget reforms, working with purchaser organization, new providers and a functioning market, and managing the tendering process.