The Regional Guidance on the Development and Use of Social Service Workforce to Population Ratios in ASEAN are an important milestone towards increasing the prosperity, connectivity, resilience, and security of children of ASEAN Member States.

The development of this Guidance is to support the operationalisation of the ASEAN Road Map for the Implementation of the Ha Noi Declaration on Strengthening Social Work Towards Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN Community. This ASEAN Guidance is intended to support policy makers, managers and members of the social service workforce in ASEAN Member States to consider the ways in which they can develop a sufficient workforce to population ratio. Better workforce planning, using well-chosen workforce ratio targets, which can vary considerably between countries enables better planning of the social service workforce. Once ratios are developed, their main benefit can be in providing the numbers needed for advocacy, policy making and budget setting, when highlighting the gaps in the workforce that need to be filled, either overall or in certain roles or locations. Such ratios also aim to ensure that social service workers are not overwhelmed by the volume of work they face.