The Breakdown of the Incomplete Social Service System in Spain

Abstract

Traditionally, the Social Service system has been the State’s pillar of welfare that has shown itself to be the vaguest, weakest and most sensitive to social, economic, political and cultural changes, giving rise to the need for permanent retooling. In today’s environment of neoliberal globalization, vulnerability, society at risk and structural crisis, it has a special significance: it is an even more essential system for the prevention of social exclusion, for the promotion of groups affected by inequality, such as women, and for the protection of outcasts. The situation of Social Services in Spain, however, despite the enormous effort made to get in step with the countries around us, considering its adherence to the Mediterranean sort of Welfare State, and a history with some unique characteristics which hamper a culture of care, such as a private sector with an impressive strategic capacity and a weakness in the defense of universal subjective rights, is one of deconstruction. That process, which demonstrates its growing vulnerability, is driven by a combination of two primary factors which compromise the intensity, universality of rights and equality of access to services: uncommitted, insufficient funding and imperfect decentralization.