Assessment of the efficiency of social services management for patients with dementia through mechanisms of public control

Problem setting. Ukraine often avoids considering a wide range of issues about the lives of vulnerable people in today's social and economic context, including the elderly population and people with dementia as well. As a result, the government becomes a monopolist in providing social services for this group and assumes the functions of a customer, service provider and control over its performance simultaneously.

However, more and more people, who are legally guaranteed to be provided with qualified social services by the government, remain without satisfying their own needs. But the citizens themselves have the power to influence these problems by means of the law, which gives them the right to participate in the administration of public affairs.

Recent research and publications analysis. The works of many scholars, who had looked at different directions and aspects of the activities of social service providers, became the scientific basis of the study. In particular, O. Davidyuk, V. Zhuravskaya, S. Inkizhinova, L. Kukhtinova, and N. Sokolov are engaged in research of the issues of social policy efficiency, social work and provision of social services. Issues of providing social services to different categories of population at the community level are analyzed in works of O. Sakharuk, T. Semigina, M. Kravchenko. Organizational and economic trends of improving social protection mechanisms based on the introduction of new models are justified by K. Pavlyuk.

Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. Although some aspects of improving the efficiency of the social protection system of the population are presented in the current scientific literature, insufficient attention has been paid to the mechanisms of public control over the quality of services provided to patients with dementia, and the use of these mechanisms to improve the cost-efficiency of using resources and decision making.

The purpose of the study is to substantiate the feasibility of using modern public control mechanisms, which would help to improve the transparency of decision-making in the sphere of providing social services to different segments of the population, in particular, for patients with dementia, and hence would contribute to the efficiency of budgetary funds use.

Paper main body. Public control as a type of social control and a mean of ensuring legitimacy in the activity of state and local self-government bodies differs significantly from other types of control. This difference is, first of all, that all public control entities act as members of the public, not the state; their supervisory powers are usually not legally authoritative and decisions on the results of inspections are of an advisory context, i.e. remain at the level of recommendations.

To analyze the activities of state institutions providing social services, as well as the efficiency of using budget funds or developing medical and social services, which could be used in these facilities, the state procurement system could be a valuable tool for both public and governmental control.

The greatest public attention in the context of dementia issues can be focused on social welfare institutions, such as geriatric homes and psychoneurological establishments/dispensaries, where are mainly concentrated for continuous settlement the patients with different forms of dementia.

In an extensive network of social welfare institutions, including inpatient care for the elderly, the use of the state procurement mechanism as a tool for analysis and public control gives:

• instruments for improving the efficiency of use of funds by public and communal institutions, which are very important in the context of scarce resources;
• the ability to assess the priorities of institutions through the volume and direction of procurement;
• an opportunity to compare the similar state institutions that can provide paid services;
• the ability to identify the areas of activity of the institution that is the least funded by the state and require extra-budgetary resources;
• to identify potential directions for optimizing the activities of these institutions, which will affect the quality of social services and, consequently, the quality of life of its residents.

Using the described in the article ProZorro system, we have analyzed the purchases made by the inpatient facilities of the social welfare system of Lviv region. This mechanism made it possible to evaluate the efficiency of using funds by these institutions. Although the legislation clearly indicates the necessity to conduct all procurements through the e-procurement system ProZorro, many institutions/organizations try to avoid tendering procedures due to a banal lack of experience, negative prior experience, and unwillingness to improve their knowledge.

Conclusions and perspectives for further research. The function of control for both the activities of social service providers and the targeted use of budgetary funds is vested in central and local executive authorities, local government bodies, but there are not specified monitoring mechanisms or performance appraisals of social services and their employees, as well as mechanisms of quality of service control and effective sanctions for violation of the quality of services. Therefore, to our mind, the only effective mechanism for the public to control the activities of social service providers is to analyze the state procurement system, which also opens up great opportunities for these institutions.