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18. Summary of 2005<br />
Annual Report<br />
The Council for <strong>Social</strong>ly Marginalised<br />
People report contains a total of 20<br />
chapters. In addition to the introduction,<br />
the report holds 13 theme chapters<br />
(2-14), 5 chapters enumerating the<br />
Council’s activities, its terms of reference<br />
and members and this summary in English.<br />
Chapters 1 and 2 comment on the<br />
overall perspectives of the Council’s<br />
work. The Council has noted that it has<br />
gained recognition as a key partner in<br />
the public debate, and that the Government<br />
listens to the Council’s advice.<br />
The Council is very pleased that the<br />
Government has in the past year realised<br />
several of its recommendations for special<br />
activities. In contrast, the Council<br />
has experienced how difficult it is to<br />
modify society’s mainstream policies that<br />
impact decisively on the lives of socially<br />
marginalised people. New cuts are introduced<br />
on social benefits for socially<br />
marginalised people, their housing problems<br />
are intensifying, and often general<br />
policies on increased free choice for<br />
users, dialogue and user influence fail<br />
to consider socially marginalised people.<br />
Actually, in the public debate proposals<br />
often advocated the introduction of<br />
more compulsory measures vis-à-vis socially<br />
marginalised people. In the housing<br />
area, Denmark experiences heightened<br />
segregation despite the objectives<br />
of improved integration.<br />
This is why the Council will in future<br />
focus its attention on general social<br />
development and the design of comprehensive<br />
welfare schemes. The Council<br />
will strive to counter the trends towards<br />
increased social division and threats<br />
against society’s power of social intertwining.<br />
Chapter 3 describes the annual event,<br />
BaZar, which the Council hosts to allow<br />
users and their organisations to have a<br />
direct say. The debates at BaZar centred<br />
on two themes “How users and the system<br />
meet” and “What can be done to<br />
improve the conditions of socially marginalised<br />
people?”.<br />
In the debate on the first theme, many<br />
contributions showed that dialogues<br />
with caseworkers were unsatisfactory,<br />
triggered by too many and changing<br />
caseworkers, lack of understanding of<br />
socially marginalised people’s conditions<br />
and situation as well as activities arranged<br />
to reflect the caseworkers’ own standards<br />
rather than professional knowledge.<br />
www.udsatte.dk<br />
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