State of boarding rest homes pertaining to the social safety system in the South Urals during the initial periodof market reforms (1992-2000)

Arranging stationary social service for elderly anddisabled people is an integral part of the problem of the major problem of formation and development of the social safety net in the post-Soviet Russia. Low efficiency of this system presents one of numerous reasons for a considerable part of population to feel aversion towardsliberal reforms of the last two decades. This system's low efficiency also accounts for slowing down the rate of the reforms. Along with thebeginning of radical reforms in the field of socioeconomic relations the state of in-patient rest homes reached the critical point. In summer1992 supervisory bodies of regional administrations carried out inspections at a number of boarding rest homes. The inspections identifiedsubmarginal conditions of their facilities, bad housing conditions, poor quality of medical services, mass plundering. According to the reportssuch a situation was typical of all boarding rest-homes without exception. They charged a fault for identified deficiencies on directors, chiefaccountants and doctors, who were accused of being not demanding enough to staff members and of not maintaining work discipline.Despite the administrative actions taken, during the first 5 years of the 1990's the situation was not amended, while during the second half ofthe decade it even took a turn for the worse. A wave of fatal infectious diseases swept over the boarding rest homes. An enormous scale ofidentified deficiencies by itself makes us assume that the problem rooted much deeper. For example, ubiquitously the financing of socialservices institutions was so poor that over a lengthy period of time they could not afford to improve facilities and premises of the boardingrest homes, but in fact they could not afford even just to support the material resources in a more or less acceptable condition. Lack of normalfinancing led to cutting down twofold the food standards that had been scarce even before that. It was malnutrition, shortage of medicalsupplies, absence of sound health maintenance that triggered the epidemics. Transfer from monetary financing to "barter" or exchange ofcommodities objectively provoked violations of financial discipline and abusive practice. Neither directors of boarding rest homes nor seniormanagement of the branch had economic leverages to cope with the situation. By the end of the 1990's the situation became so impendingthat the President had to issue a special Decree, according to which the Pension Fund of the RF was to take part of maintenance expense onitself starting with 2001. In total the Pension Fund spent on these needs 3 bln. roubles countrywide in the year 2001. At the same time the"barter" system was finally abandoned. Thus, attempts to solve the problem by purely administrative methods did not bring about any qualitychanges. The situation began to change only after financing increased.

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