Ministry of Social Affairs Strengthens the Role of Development Assistants to Support Government Programs

JAKARTA (April 22nd 2020) - Director General of Social Rehabilitation, Harry Hikmat held a meeting via video conference regarding the role of development assistants in supporting government programs. This meeting is a follow-up to the strengthening of development companions initiated by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas).

Until now, there are still several issues faced by facilitators. These issues are related to competence, incentives, workload and status as companion. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate a national standard of counterpart competence and a companion collaboration mechanism so that program delivery is achieved.

Secretary General of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Hartono Laras said that the Ministry of Social Affairs is the center for the distribution of social assistance (bansos). In the process of launching social assistance, the Minister of Social Affairs, Juliari P. Batubara said that you should not ignore 2 important principles, namely speed and accuracy. So here the main strength of the program is companion.

"The role of social companion is very important for development. The variety of assistants at the Ministry of Social Affairs needs to be considered the distribution and number, so that later the assistants have the principle of effectiveness in carrying out their duties and improving the quality of development," said the Secretary General.

In addition, the Secretary General also directed efforts to increase competence. "Competency standards are needed so that we are able to recruit companions who are able to organize social welfare," said the Secretary General. Then, the Secretary General also said that the sustainability aspect needs to be considered. This companion needs to be improved in role and status.

The foundation and regulations in setting national standards are also important. This is to make it easier to coordinate strategies for strengthening development assistants between ministries / agencies. The Director General of Social Rehabilitation stated that the Human Resources (HR) discussion was an important momentum. At the Directorate General of Social Rehabilitation there are 5 social rehabilitation clusters.

Each cluster has its own companion name. Such as LU assistants (elderly), assistants for people with disabilities, Social Worker Service Units (Sakti Peksos) for the children cluster, addiction counselors for drug clusters and Social Tuna & Human Trafficking Victims assistants. Not only naming, assistants also have various tasks to various incentives. "We will fix this as soon as possible regarding uniform nomenclature, grading and adjusting incentives, so that they are generally accepted and conform to national standards," said the Director General of Social Rehabilitation.

The Director General of Social Rehabilitation also hopes that in the future the companion management will be coordinated through one door. "We will confirm again who will manage the companion human resources at the Ministry of Social Affairs," explained the Director General of Social Rehabilitation. The Senior Advisor for Social Affairs and Poverty Handling, Bappenas, Vivi Yulaswati said that several cross-sectoral qualifications had made development assistants consisting of competency standards, competency-based education training programs and competency certification.

This qualification is supported by 4 pillars, namely regulation, facilitation, recognition and data and information. In the future, there will be a harmonization of qualifications in the field of social welfare which refer to Presidential Regulation Number 8 of 2012 concerning the Indonesian National Qualifications Framework. As for the review of the competence of the Ministry of Social Affairs program companion, it refers to Law Number 14 of 2019 concerning Social Workers.

The level in the development assistant qualification consists of level III which is an Development Assistant, level IV Young Development Assistant, level V Intermediate Development Assistant, level VI Main Development Assistant, level VII Junior Expert Assistance, level VIII Associate Expert Assistant and level IX Main Expert Assistant.

Therefore, Bappenas suggests simplifying the names of these assistants, through harmonization with the qualifications framework of development assistants. In addition, mutual agreement is needed to harmonize the description, packaging and competency units from each level.

The meeting which lasted for 3 hours was attended by 39 participants, namely Directors within the Directorate General of Social Rehabilitation of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Planning Bureau, Legal Bureau, Center for Professional Development of Social Workers and Social Counselor, Social Counseling Center, Directorate General of Social Protection and Security, Directorate General of Social Empowerment and Bappenas.