The question of what social services should be is considered here, especially
what the unique role and value of social service is, instead of what social
service is, to enrich the discussion of the concept of social service. While
informed by the development history of social welfare, it is understood that the
unique value and role of social service is to provide social care of various
types suit to individual needs, in order to support and enable people to
maintain their dignities, fully participate in society, and realize themselves. This
is to recognize unstandardized features of individual needs and to support to
meet them, unlike the conventional role of social welfare that standardizing
needs and meeting them with standardized benefits. In this respect,
user-centeredness is critical to accurately find, reflect and meet individual
needs. From this point of view, the change of social service can be described
as entering the second step of citizenship-democratic model emphasizing user
participation, via the first phase of market oriented consumer model. This
procedure saw the improved service satisfaction and cost-efficiency and left
tasks for further development including adequate support for fully exercising the
right of choice and domain-specific approach, while letting us question the
fundamental adequacy of this private and market oriented strategy to care.
New strategical possibilities can be arosed when we deep inquiry into the
unique value and role of social service.