Public Centres for Social Welfare (CPAS)
CPASs ensure dignified living conditions by providing social assistance to residents within a municipality who lack sufficient resources to meet their basic needs.
What is a CPAS?
Every Belgian municipality has a CPAS. This service helps people who do not have sufficient resources to live with dignity. After all, every person must be able to eat, clothe and house himself and have access to healthcare.
Those who have insufficient means to pay for these basic needs and cannot receive other social benefits can ask the CPAS for help. This guarantees every citizen, under certain conditions, the right to a minimum living wage.
Support is granted objectively and fairly to anyone in need who lives in the municipality to which the CPAS is linked, regardless of his/her beliefs or private life.
Most CPASs also run rest homes for people with an illness who can no longer live at home, and rest and care homes for elderly people who need daily care and assistance.
The help provided by the CPAS can take different forms, depending on the centre in question:
- financial assistance: integration income, advances, premiums, help with utility bills ...
- assistance in kind: meals, clothing, public transport ...
- medical assistance: reimbursement of medical and pharmaceutical costs, emergency medical assistance ...
- socio-professional assistance: assistance in finding training or work, social shops ...
- family assistance: home care services, shelters, child care, domestic help, ...
- legal assistance: debt mediation ...
Conditions for obtaining assistance
Anyone wishing to receive help from the CPAS must submit an application. A social worker examines it and draws up a report for the Special Committee for Social Services (BCSD). The CPAS makes a decision and notifies the applicant. Those who disagree with this decision can challenge it before the court of labour.