Since April 2016, 21 social referees in the Danube Valley have changed their way of working. When arriving at their offices, in the Public Services for Social Assistance, the referees have turned on their tablets instead of PCs and, with the World Wide Web at their hand, they opened new windows towards the best practices in social work.

Offered by the Foundation Terre des Hommes through REGAL project, the tablets help the 21 social  referees to prepare and report their field visits much faster, to exchange information with General Directions for Child Protection without delay, to support Community Avisory Boards in establishing meetings as well as to monitor legislative changes and emerging opportunities in their field of interest. At the same time, being just one email away from each other, the 21 social referees can innovate in their everyday practice, by sharing experiences and synchronising their work.

In addition to this, tablets users can access anywhere and anytime Tdh’s ressourses for the professionalization of child protection services. For example, social referees can participate in case discussions and webinars organized on ChildHub, the online platform for child protection in Eastern Europe; they can report human trafficking by using the mobile app “Stop trafficking children!”; they can participate in the zefiR project implementation, helping to improve Roma people’s access to education and health; finally, they can visit archive.tdh.ro to learn about new funding&development opportunities offered by the foundation.

Thus, we can expect social referents from South West Oltenia to grow into a professional community that will deliver quick and effective response to those in need of assistance. Their success story is just at its beginning, but we trust that they will use the tablets to tell us the sequel and we wish them a lot of success in operating on it.