social service, social care service, evaluation, availability standards, regions of the Czech Republic

Social services are evaluated from a qualitative as well as quantitative perspective, which is used as a benchmark for standards. In connection to the development of social services, the paper aims to provide a quantitative evaluation of social-care services according to the amount of costs in the Czech Republic and by standards of availability in regions of the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on similarities and differences. Following the advised quantitative standards of availability, it concentrates on and evaluates six services of social care for the elderly and the disabled in years 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2015. The results showed that Central Bohemian, South Moravian, and Moravian-Silesian region show the highest availability of residential, ambulatory and field services of social care, while the Karlovy Vary and the Liberec region the lowest. According to the structure of availability of social-care services, availability of places in retirement homes, special care homes and the number of people with community care service are prevalent in most regions in the Czech Republic. The similarities and differences of the regions in the Czech Republic in the availability of selected social-care services were evaluated in 2015 by means of cluster analysis and box plot. The largest differences were observed mainly in the availability of residential services of social care (the number of places in retirement homes per 1000 persons aged 80+) in the second (Central Bohemian, Moravian-Silesian region) and the third cluster (Karlovy Vary and Liberec region).