Welcome to Department of Social Welfare

The Department works in partnership with people in their communities to improve their well-being through promoting development with equity for the disadvantaged, vulnerable and the excluded.

The Department of Social Welfare was established in 1946 by the Local Ordinance Order No. 66 with a mandate for both Social Welfare and Housing. In 1950, the Department’s mandate was limited to Social Welfare services to take the lead role in Prevention, Protection and Promotion of Policy guidelines, Regulation, Standards and Programmes for effective and efficient delivery of its Welfare Services.

The Department of Community Development is a decentralized Department under the Sector Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. It was established in 1948 through an Administrative Regulation 28 (1942) which has further been strengthened by the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936).

The Department of Social Welfare and Community Development (DSWCD) is established at the MMDAs as per Second Schedule of the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936).The guiding principles for functioning of the Social Welfare and Community Development has been formulated as follows:

• Supervise, monitor and facilitate the registration of Day Care Centers.
• Supervise and monitor the implementation of Social Intervention programmes eg. School Feeding Program.
• To intervene in cases of children in Worst Forms of Child Labour.
• Remove, Rehabilitate and Reintegrate Street Children
• Rescue, Rehabilitate and Reintegrate victims of Trafficking in Persons (TIPs)
• Provide alternative care for children without parental care such as foster care and adoption.
• Identify and Register Persons With Disabilities (PWDs).
• Conduct physical, medical and psychosocial need assessments.
• Facilitate livelihood empowerment programmes for PWDs.
• Offer psycho-social counseling to affected persons with disabilities and HIV-AIDS e.t.c.
• Provide hospital welfare services.
• Undertake sensitization and social education on social problems.
• Undertake probation and prison after care services.
• Make representation at the juvenile and family courts.
• Prepare and submit social enquiry reports.
• Identify, register and keep update data on Persons with Disabilities.
• Engage in need assessment of PWD and their significant others.
• Assist in the rehabilitation of PWDs and promote job placement.
• Offer general counselling services to PWD and their families.
• Advocate and lobby for the social inclusion of disadvantaged individuals and groups including children, women, elderly, PWDs, PLWHAs.
• Engage in Juvenile and family court sittings.
• Organise literacy and adult education programmes.
• Mobilise voluntary contributions and communal labour for the provision of facilities and services such as water, schools, library, community centres and public places of convenience.
• Teach deprived or rural women home management and child care.
• Offer employable and sustainable skills training for the youth.
• Promote and provide alternative livelihood empowerment skills for the deprived in the communities.
• Promote entrepreneurial skills, business support services and linkages to financial institutions to beneficiaries of skills training programme.
• Provide avenue for other institutions to implement community development programmes.
• Mobilise and train voluntary leaders and community-based organisations as change agents in the communities.
• Undertake community entry processes for programme initiation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Organise weekly adult education programmes.
• Hold community briefing sessions on the role of the Assembly and its Departments with key stakeholders and community members.
• Identify, maintain and update data on various groups in the community.
• Conduct community needs assessment.
• Conduct community surveys and compile profiles.
• Assist in the mobilization of resources for community development interventions.
• Mobilise community members for communal labour and self-help projects.
• Teach women home management, child care and entrepreneurial skills.
• Organise community members for the collection of inputs for the preparation of budget and Medium-Term Development Plan.
• Provide technical support to development partners.
• Compile activity, quarterly and annual reports.
• Prepare work plans and budgets.