The service

What is a CPAS?

What are the CPAS's tasks?

1. The CPAS takes all the initiatives necessary to give you information on the different forms of aid that it gives.
2. The CPAS takes the necessary steps to assert applicants' rights. For example: membership of a mutual insurance company.
3. The CPAS provides psycho-social, moral and educational help through guidance which can help you gradually to overcome the difficulties you face by yourself. For example: guiding a family faced with a debt problem.
4. The CPAS gives the material help needed in the most suitable form. The right to social integration (income support) is granted to any Belgian or foreigner on the population register who does not have sufficient resources and is not capable of procuring them by their personal effort or by other means.
5. The CPAS can set up and manage institutions or services of a welfare, curative or preventative nature. For example: meals and care in the home, residential and nursing homes, centres for the elderly, mental health centres, services to help families and the elderly, care in the home, social housing for the 3rd age, children's homes, etc.
6. The CPAS exercises wardship over certain minors entrusted to it.
7. When you have to prove you have worked for a certain period to obtain the full benefit of certain welfare benefits such as unemployment benefit, the CPAS will take all the appropriate measures to find you a job. Sometimes, it acts as employer for the relevant period.
8. The CPAS must carry out all the tasks entrusted to it by the municipal authority in terms of welfare action. It is the municipality's "welfare arm".

(sources: website of Minister Courard, in charge of home affairs and the civil service)