Those seeking the support provided by the various agencies and directorates within the Foundation for Social Welfare Services are predominately women, according to research carried out by the foundation.
Through Aġenzija Appoġġ, Aġenzija Sedqa, the Agency for Therapeutic and Community Services, the Directorate for Alternative Care, Child Protection and Gozo, the foundation provides a range of services, regardless of gender: from substance misuse to domestic violence services, dealing with abusive behaviour, community services, intake and family support services, child protection and alternative care through its 900+ professional staff across the Maltese islands.
Our research team regularly analyses the available statistics from each agency and directorate within its remit and identifies trends emerging from the data collected. The statistical reports are accessible online to educate, inspire and inform about high-quality interventions to improve the well-being of children, families and communities.
The foundation also strives to provide a map of the situation and studies the persons who are accessing our services. One such investigation is to determine if there are any gender differences in the problems or need for services.
All the agencies worked with more than 20,000 cases in 2020. The number of service users accessing our services has also increased. While our professionals worked with over 18,600 cases in the previous year, there were over 16,200 cases in 2018 and just over 14,200 cases of service users requiring our services in 2017. This represents a 40 per cent increase in cases worked when we compare 2020 to 2017. In 2020, more than half, 54 per cent, of cases processed were female, 44 per cent were male, 0.3 per cent were gender X and the rest were ‘other’.
Delving deeper into the numbers, we find that there were just over 10,000 new and re-contact cases across all agencies and directorates in 2020. Looking at this by gender, one notices immediately that 54 per cent of the foundation’s cases were predominantly women. This trend has remained stable over the last three years.
When the 2020 figure is broken down further by agency or directorate, it results that Aġenzija Appoġġ, the agency that provides adult services, including domestic violence, human trafficking, health and intake and family support services, had just over 4,100 new cases and re-contacts across all the services it provides. Women accounted for 60 per cent of these new and re-contact cases.
There were just over 10,000 new and re-contact cases across all agencies and directorates in 2020
On the other hand, as regards the Agency for Community and Therapeutic Services (ACTS), which is the agency that provides domestic therapeutic services and community services in different localities, just over 1,400 new cases and re-contacts were opened in 2020, of which 67 per cent were female.
As regards Alternative Care − the directorate providing for children, including fostering, adoption and looked-after children, to name a few − recorded new and re-contact cases for 2020 for this directorate were just over 1,500 cases, of which 52 per cent were female.
The same situation can be seen within the Child Protection Directorate with a majority of 51 per cent of new and re-contact cases accessing child protection being female. The same trends were also observed for the Gozo Directorate.
The same cannot be said of Aġenzija Sedqa, the national agency that aims to raise public awareness of the harm caused by addictive behaviour and imparts skills to prevent or delay the development of such patterns. The service users who primarily accessed services from Aġenzija Sedqa in 2020 were predominantly male. In fact, males accounted for 64 per cent of new and re-contact cases in 2020 and this trend has remained stable over the last three years.
Focusing on the addiction support system, one of the main services provided within Aġenzija Sedqa, 71 per cent of new and re-contact cases opened in 2020 were male. The same trend can be observed for other services offered by Aġenzija Sedqa and, therefore, it can be concluded that there may be gender differences in service-use behaviour at the service level as well.
Indeed, while addiction-related services were mainly used by men, a different trend emerged at the Domestic Violence Unit under Aġenzija Appoġġ. For the year 2020, the cases there were predominantly female. Of the approximately 800 new and re-contact cases opened in 2020, 90 per cent were women and this high percentage of women accessing the facility has been an observed trend since the service’s inception.
At the community level, one also finds differences in the primary problems for which service users sought help. Data from Community Services within ACTS show that, in 2020, women were most likely to seek a service for financial problems, lack of support and housing problems while men sought help for financial problems, unemployment and homelessness.
This raises the question of whether there is a gender dimension or difference in the social problems people face. In some cases, such as domestic violence and addiction problems, gender differences are also well documented in international research. In other cases, such as financial problems, the differences in service use may be less clear.
The Foundation for Social Welfare Services is an inclusive service provider, however, it monitors gender trends not only for recording purposes but also to respond to them. In this way, the foundation can ensure that it is meeting the needs of individual service user because for every member of the foundation every person counts.
Claudette Abela Baldacchino is director, international relations, research and quality assurance, and Christine Marchand-Agius is a senior researcher at the Foundation for Social Welfare Services.