Commissions in the Social Assistance System of Ukraine (UKR)

The report describes the role of commissions in the Ukraine’s social assistance system. Commissions are formed in order to grant benefits to low-income families and housing subsidies in exceptional cases when an applicant does not meet all the eligibility criteria, but is eligible by income. However, the number of applications satisfied by commissions “as an exception” is too large to be considered an exception, which distorts the procedure of granting benefits. The commissions’ activity is characterized by low efficiency; the cases they consider are of low fraud risk. The paper presents recommendations for increasing efficiency of commission’s work and reconsidering their role in the welfare system.