Over the last 25 years, Lithuania has experienced strong economic performance, introduced bold reforms, modernised its public administration and substantially improved the well-being of its citizens. Despite rapid growth over the past few decades however, Lithuania has a higher share of its population at-risk-of poverty than other EU countries (21.4% in 2020 compared to an average of 16.3% among EU countries), with some people, often people with multiple and complex needs, being more at risk of living in poverty than others. People in vulnerable situations tend to rely more on public services and so timely access to personalised public services is crucial to ensuring the effectiveness of public policies aimed at improving their well-being.
This report assesses options to strengthen public service provision for people in vulnerable situations, specifically for people with disabilities, people leaving prison and young people leaving care, and to increase the involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the design and delivery of those services. Across these three groups people who may require personalised public services is higher than the OECD average. However, in comparison with other OECD countries, Lithuania allocates fewer resources to the delivery of social services. Public social expenditure for in-kind services amounted to about 5.8% of GDP in 2017, compared to the OECD average of 8.0%.
There have been significant administrative reforms to improve service provision for the three groups in recent years. However, while the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders supporting people with disabilities are now well defined in legal frameworks, this is not the case for the other two groups. Government strategies in employment and social policy areas include objectives, measures, and targets for some vulnerable groups but remain limited for others. Furthermore, while co‑ordination at the national level for people with disabilities is well-developed, institutional mechanisms for co‑ordination remain weaker in the case of people leaving prison and young people leaving care. Lack of institutional capacities is also a challenge and there remains significant scope to strengthen monitoring and evaluation activities.
The involvement of NGOs in policy design and service delivery can inform policy and service design, help outreach to target groups, promote their access to services and increase government accountability. The involvement of NGOs relies on a protected civic space, a strong NGO sector and enabling governance structures. While co‑ordination between NGOs and public institutions is enabled through national and municipal councils of NGOs, and an NGOs Fund is being set up to further support development of the sector, a lack of awareness and skills among public officials for engaging NGOs in decision making, a lack of capacity in the NGOs sector, and difficulties for NGOs to take part in public procurement processes remain barriers to greater involvement.
Overall, the Lithuanian Public Employment Service and many social service centres in the municipalities have the essential prerequisites for providing services according to individual user needs and co‑operating with other service providers to offer holistic support. Day-to-day implementation of these approaches can however be insufficient. Primary difficulties include an absence of guidelines for social service provision in many municipalities and a lack of integration of employment and social services and/or referral processes. In addition, the current IT infrastructure does not support a sufficient level of service provision: data exchange is difficult, interfaces are not very user-friendly, digital coverage of core business processes is limited, and solutions for monitoring reports and supporting evaluation activities are inadequate.
The Catalogue of Social Services of the Ministry of Social Security and Labour sets out a list of clearly defined services that can be provided across Lithuania. While the Catalogue is comprehensive, municipalities are free to provide additional services, although, in practice, they rarely do. The planning of municipal social services relies on information gathered retrospectively about service use, that is neither comprehensive nor accurate. In addition, municipalities do not have detailed and up-to-date data about people who are not accessing services (i.e. target populations), which means planning and implementation decisions are often made without good information about the real need for services.
Workshop discussions with service users and those who work with them revealed that, although many public services are available, there can be shortcomings in those services and/or in the way they are provided. Specific challenges include a lack of co‑operation among public institutions, exacerbated by poor information flows, a lack of preparation and planning for independent living, inadequate support for family members, and stigma.
To ensure personalised services are well integrated and tailored to meet individual needs, Lithuania should consider actions that address both the general challenges to delivering effective, well-integrated public services as well as specific challenges relating to each of the three groups. Specifically, the OECD recommends that Lithuania considers:
Improving public governance arrangements to deliver integrated policies and services by assigning clear responsibilities through legal frameworks, mainstreaming consideration of vulnerable groups, providing solid bases for institutional co‑ordination, ensuring adequate institutional capacities, and enhancing monitoring and evaluation processes.
Strengthening the role of NGOs by investing in measures to protect and promote a civic space, strengthen their participation in policy and service design, facilitate their access to public procurement opportunities, and enhance the impact of the NGOs Fund.
Increasing co‑operation and co‑ordination across public services, particularly between employment and social services providers, by establishing formalised proactive referral processes and improving existing IT infrastructure to support data exchange and case management activities.
Requiring all providers of social and employment services to develop, implement and systematically revise individual action plans jointly agreed with every client, to guide the service provision and integration journey.
Investing in the IT infrastructure of both social and employment services by implementing the plans to change the digital infrastructure in the Public Employment Service and initiating a replacement of the Social Protection and Services Information System with a modern IT system.
Strengthening existing services and addressing service gaps by regularly reviewing the Catalogue of Social Services, developing a methodology and related guidance for municipalities to systematically assess the use and need for social services in their territories.
