Improving bilateral regional social and health management to strengthen social cohesion [Unofficial translation provided by Interact]

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In the last few decades, broad support for problems such as unemployment, poverty, care, homelessness, physical and mental illness, disability, educational problems, addiction, violence, debts, running away, and many more, has been established in both countries. However, government budgets are no longer able to continue to increase expenditure. New demands can only be satisfied if resources are released to other areas. Regio Help is an initiative by the Voitsberg and Murska Sobota regions. They want to demonstrate that, given the complexity of the systems, efficient control of resources is best done at regional level. Experience shows that those seeking help visit up to 10 organisations before they find the right body. For the first time, Regio Help will establish a self-learning regional knowledge management system, created by Graz Technical University, for those seeking help. Those concerned can make use of this offer at face-to-face information centres, at all regional authorities, by telephone or via the Internet. The shared technical base also allows them to seek special offers in the neighbouring country. In addition, a platform will be established for all organisations in order to coordinate demand with the planned offers. The University of Maribor is supporting this new regional health and social management in optimising processes and is evaluating the effects of this against the relevance of the activities, as well as the costs of the system. The welfare department of the state of Styria and the Centre for Social Work of the Slovenian Ministry of Social Affairs are very interested in this new approach and are also expecting that there will be significant additional use through the broadly defined bilateral knowledge transfer. Both countries have developed many new solutions, which can also be very useful for a neighbouring country with the same or similar problems.

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