Our Minister of Family and Social Services, Derya Yanık, stated that they plan to complete the first part of the National Household Visit Program by November and said, "We have changed social assistance from being demand-oriented to supply-oriented. We aim to enter all households through our 15 thousand personnel in total."

Minister Derya Yanık made a statement to the DHA correspondent about the new social assistance policy of the Ministry. Minister Yanık said that they started the 'National Household Visit with a Letter' program on July 18, 2022, and that the authority that approved the program, approved the budget and the realization of the program was President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Yanık said, "Under normal conditions, we carry out our household visit program through our two units, at two different points. One is our social service centres, and the other is the household visits of the Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundation staff. We said last year; Since our two units are doing field visits separately, let's combine them. In a national household visit, we can reach all of our 85 million people in a way, in order to facilitate and speed up the work of our units, and not to leave a household that has not been entered, and ask, 'Do they need social support, do they need social assistance?' to detect it. Therefore, this program is actually a program that we have been working on since last year and that we have brought to the implementation stage after completing the preliminary preparations."

"Social assistances are no longer demand-oriented"

Minister Yanık stated that they determined the demands by going to the homes of the citizens via the 'National Household Visit Program' and said, "We have changed the social assistance from being demand-oriented, to supply-oriented. The citizen do not have to not come and submit his/her request for social assistance when he/she needs it. We must ask 'What is here, is there a person with disabilities, is there an older person, is there an unemployed person, is there a child in need of social assistance, does the child's education need be met, is there any abuse, violence, ill-treatment?' Regarding this, our friends organize their psychosocial support immediately. What are these? If it is our ministry's work, we do it right away. For example, there is a health need; We provide the necessary contacts with the Ministry of Health and health institutions and guide them. We direct those who need a job to İŞ-KUR (Turkish Employment Agency). We direct citizens to institutions and organizations like this. This is how we manage the process.”

Noting that with the national household visit program, they aim to enter all households through 15 thousand personnel affiliated with the Ministry, Minister Derya Yanık said, "We aim to complete our first national household visit as October-November 2022. We will determine the needs of all our households, evaluate them realistically and create our services.”

Regarding the criticisms from various groups of the program initiated by President Erdoğan, Minister Yanık said, "What could be more natural than that, as the head of government, as the President of the Republic of Türkiye, our President should send a letter to the households we will visit through a work carried out by our ministry. They reflected it very differently. I am assuming that some of them do not know about our work. But some of them, unfortunately, wanted to turn the program into a completely different identity by considering completely manipulative journalism. We and our citizens know very well what the work we do is.”

Minister Yanık said that with the project they started in April 2022, they began to provide 'medical device electricity consumption support' to households in need, where ill citizens are dependent on the device due to their chronic illness and they will distribute diabetes measuring devices for the families of social assistance beneficiaries who have diabetic children aged 0-12 in the coming days.

"We provide nursery class support"

Emphasizing that one of the programs they have just started is kindergarten and nursery class support, Minister Yanık said, "This is a joint work we have done with the Ministry of National Education. Within the scope of the Law No. 3294, which started kindergarten and nursery classes, a monthly fee is paid to the kindergarten classes of beneficiary families. We noticed that children were not started in kindergarten just because of that fee. As the ministry, we will meet the kindergarten support of all these children. MEB informs us. We automatically deposit the nursery class fees of those children into the MEB's account. The earlier schooling begins, the longer children stay in school. We provide nursery class support. We provide social-economic support while they are attending school. We provide educational support in the first and second semesters. In addition, when there are acute period needs, we also provide those needs so that our children stay in school. Let our children continue their education without their education being interrupted.

Minister Derya Yanık said that they aim to reach 4 million households with a budget of 15 billion liras within the scope of the Türkiye Family Support Program. Yanık said: "We will provide support between 450 and 600 lira per household for 12 months. It will vary between 5 thousand 400 liras and 7 thousand 200 liras annually. According to them, we will provide allowance of 450 liras to some and 600 liras to others."

"Sharing of social welfare"

Minister Yanık stated that they call these assistances 'sharing of social welfare' and said:

"What we saw during our field visits is that there is no persons with disabilities, no older person in the household. But when we look at the population and income balance of the household, it needs some support. Conditions need to be improved. There is no excuse; but it should be supported. The standard we seek cannot meet social welfare. Then we said; ' let's support the households.' This is how the Türkiye Family Support Program came about. Within the scope of the program, we made our first payments on 29 July. In the first payment, we paid 427 million liras to our 831 thousand 383 households. Retirees, employees, tradesmen, craftsmen and private sector employees were also included in this program. The monthly income should be less than 1/3 of the net minimum wage. Our criterion is just that. It doesn't matter whether he is working, retired or working in the private sector. If the per capita income is less than 1/3 of the household, then we say 'we support it'. As applications come in, we review and evaluate them.”