By Liu Yanling & Wang Bingwen, Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, DRC

Research Report, No. 114, 2020 (Total 5858) 2020-5-19

Abstract: Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China has attached great importance to the protection of vulnerable social groups, solidly carried out the work of ensuring people’s livelihood, and formed the following experience: strengthening monitoring to achieve early detection and early assistance, optimizing and simplifying the process to ensure timely “rescue”, boosting temporary assistance and enhancing protection of people’s livelihood, focusing on building protective “barriers” for senior citizens and children, and improving financial support for enrichment of assistance. However, there are still some problems to be addressed such as the incomplete verification mechanism for the vulnerable social groups in response to public health emergencies, the lack of targeted social assistance classification policies, the need to improve the system and means of social assistance, and to widen the coverage of assistance to social entities. We need to establish an accurate identification mechanism by strengthening the awareness of case finding with a positive approach; implement classified policy to highlight the pertinence and the flexibility of temporary assistance in a targeted manner; strengthen the building of social assistance system to cultivate social assistance culture; expand assistance channels with more service methods, enhance coordination between government and social organizations, and improve social assistance mechanisms for responding to public health emergencies.

Keywords: public health emergency, social assistance, social protection of people’s livelihood