The Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) is a municipal association that provides services to the 8.5 million people in the Westphalia-Lippe region. The LWL has approximately 13.000 employees and provides services in the areas of social welfare, psychiatry, hospital treatment orders, youth/schooling and culture. The LWL has 35 special schools, 19 hospitals, 17 museums and is one of the largest German support payers for disabled persons. The LWL fulfils tasks in the areas of social welfare, care for disabled persons and youth welfare, as well as psychiatry and culture, that are best performed for the whole of Westphalia. The 9 county boroughs and 18 counties in Westphalia-Lippe are members of the LWL. They support and finance the regional association, which is controlled by an assembly consisting of 100 members appointed by local authorities.

Find out more about the areas of responsibility and the structure of the LWL below:

• Care for disabled persons
• Integration office / main welfare office
• Pensions office
• Psychiatry
• Hospital treatment orders
• Special schools
• Youth welfare
• Culture

• The LWL - a municipal association
• Membership Organisations
• The Regional Association Assembly
• Finances
• Personnel
• Sites of the LWL facilities
• Municipal economy

Since January 2008, the LWL-Pension Office Westphalia has taken over the tasks related to welfare compensation rights from the previously responsible pension offices in Münster, Soest, Dortmund, Bielefeld and Gelsenkirchen and has centralised them in Münster.
Persons who have suffered damage to their health can receive state services if specific conditions are fulfilled. These services are intended to compensate the persons concerned for the damage to their health. They are referred to as "welfare compensation", as the general public pays for the damage to the individual.
This includes services required to: 
• maintain, improve or recover the health of the persons concerned, 
• provide appropriate economic support to the persons concerned, and 
• support of surviving dependants, i.e. widows, widowers, partners, orphans and parents.  
Various pensions and services ensure appropriate economic support.

Contact
LWL - Head of the Welfare Department 
Matthias Münning  
LWL-Disabled Care, Integration Office,  
Main Welfare Office Westphalia and LWL-Pension Office Westphalia 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-237 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-265  
matthias.muenning@lwl.org
 

The LWL-Psychiatry Association Westphalia offers a range of services for the treatment, rehabilitation, re-integration and care of mentally ill or mentally handicapped persons. It is a health care provider with approximately 6.500 beds and care places and is one of the main pillars of psychiatric support for the 8.5 million people of Westphalia-Lippe. The tight integration of all offers, institutions and services of the LWL ensures a high level of support for the people in this region. The LWL-Psychiatry Association Westphalia has more than 100 facilities and branch offices and covers the whole of Westphalia-Lippe: eleven clinics for adult psychiatry and three clinics for child and youth psychiatry provide the hospital services. They are associated with 37 acute day wards and 38 outpatient care centres. More than 50.000 persons per year use the (partially) in-patient care services of the clinics. In addition, many persons are treated as out-patients. The LWL-Psychiatry Association Westphalia has five centres for the medical rehabilitation of addicted persons and two institutes for the rehabilitation of mentally ill persons. Mentally disabled persons and those with multiple disabilities are provided with special care and support in ten independent living centres, seven care centres, two day-care centres and one workshop for handicapped persons. The service spectrum is characterised by differentiated and specialised offers that are provided close to the place of residence.

Contact
LWL - Head of the Hospital Department
Helga Schuhmann-Wessolek 
LWL-Department for Hospitals and Health
LWL-Psychiatry Association Westphalia 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-230
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-6589
helga.schuhmann-wessolek@lwl.org
 

The LWL provides government services related to hospital treatment orders within Westphalia-Lippe: the treatment and accommodation of mentally ill and addicted persons that have committed a crime due to their illness. The goal of the therapy is to enable the patients to live a crime-free life and, if possible, to live a largely independent live within society. Qualified treatment and care of forensic patients is provided by appropriate specialist staff using special constructive and electronic safety measures. Currently, the LWL maintains five hospital treatment order clinics with approimately 1.150 patients in Lippstadt-Eickelborn, Marsberg, Stemwede-Haldem and Dortmund, as well as a transitional facility with 84 places in Rheine. The State has decided to create additional places at other sites as part of its concept for decentralising hospital treatment orders. As a result, a new LWL clinic with 90 places is planned in Herne.

Contact
LWL - Head of the Hospital Treatment Order Department 
Tilmann Hollweg 
LWL-Hospital Treatment Order Department Westphalia 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-231 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-6512 
tilmann.hollweg@lwl.org
 

The LWL-State Youth Welfare Office Westphalia is a partner to the 89 youth welfare offices and the independent providers of youth support in Westphalia Lippe who provide local child and youth support. The LWL-State Youth Welfare Office supports them as follows:

· Additional education for full-time and volunteer staff in youth support
· Consulting to youth welfare offices and development of model projects
· Consulting to more than 5.500 institutions working in youth support (including child day-care institutions, inpatient-type youth care institutions) as well as quality assurance for these institutions
· Financial support of facilities and projects in youth support, in particular support of disabled children in day-care facilities.

In addition, the LWL-State Youth Welfare Office maintains its own facilities, i.e. three child and youth asylums, the educational centre “Jugendhof Vlotho” as well as a professional college for specialists in youth care and disabled care.

Coordination Office for drug related issues
The LWL-Coordination Office for drug related issues informs and advises carriers and employees of the approximately 600 institutions and initiatives for aid to addicted persons in Westphalia-Lippe. It organises specialist congresses as well as professional education options and explores new ways of helping addicted persons and preventing addiction.

Contact
LWL - Head of the Youth Welfare Department 
Hans Meyer 
LWL-State Youth Welfare Office, Coordination Office for Addiction 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-225 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-5854  
hans.meyer@lwl.org
 

The 17 LWL-museums display art, cultural, economic and social history, as well as providing fascinating exhibitions and entertaining action for all age groups:

• LWL-Open Air Museum Detmold, Westphalian National Folklore Museum
• LWL-Open Air Museum Hagen, Westphalian National Museum for Trade and Technology
• Foundation Monastery Dahlheim, Lichtenau, LWL - National Museum for Monastery Culture
• LWL-National Museum for Art and Art History, Münster, Westphalian National Museum
• LWL-Museum for Archaeology, Herne
• LWL-Roman Museum, Haltern am See
• "In der Kaiserpfalz" Museum, Paderborn,  "From the time of the Carolingians to the 17th century"
• LWL-Natural History Museum, Münster, Westphalian National Museum with Planetarium
• "Heiliges Meer", Recke, Branch of the LWL-Natural History Museum

LWL-Industry Museum - with eight sites that give a vivid impression of industrial development from coal mining to glass production.

Westphalian National Museum for Industrial Culture:

• Zollern Mine, Dortmund
• Nachtigall Mine, Witten
• Hannover Mine, Bochum
• Henrichs Steelworks in Hattingen
• Ship Hoist in Henrichenburg
• Textile Museum in Bocholt
• Brickworks in Lage
• Glassworks Gernheim, Petershagen

The culture calendar at http://www.lwl.org/LWL/Kultur/Kulturabteilung/Kulturkalender/ provides you with information on the latest exhibitions and events.

The LWL-Cultural Services provide assistance, consulting and support to the regions, cities and municipalities, but also to interested individuals in Westphalia. This concerns the preservation of historical monuments, archaeology, landscape and buildings, as well as archive maintenance. The Museum Office also provides help with queries concerning collections and exhibitions. The LWL-Media Centre Westphalia offers varied collection of images, films and sound documents.

Within the framework of  Westphalian national history research, six scientific commissions closely cooperate with the universities. They perform research in the fields of archaeology, ethnology, geographical national history, dialect and names as well as literature. The LWL-Institute for Westphalian Regional History pursues regional historical research up to the 19th and 20th century.

The LWL is involved in the current cultural scene by awarding prices in painting, music and literature as well as the support of Westphalian national history research. It initiates own exhibitions and supports various promising activities concerning regional cultural work, for example in the fields of music, theatre, fine arts and the cultivation of local traditions.

Further information: http://www.lwl.org/LWL/Kultur/Kulturabteilung

Contact
LWL - Head of the Culture Department
Dr. Barbara Rüschoff-Thale
LWL-Culture Department
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-233
Fax: +49 (0)251 591 268
barbara.rüschoff-thale@lwl.org
 

The 9 county boroughs and 18 counties in Westphalia-Lippe are members of the LWL. They support and finance the LWL, which provides services to the people of Westphalia-Lippe on request.

The LWL specifically handles tasks that can be provided more efficiently by an association of counties and county boroughs. These include:

• Special tasks for which the financial capacity at local and county level is not sufficient, e.g. special schools for disabled children, psychiatric support and care places.
• Tasks that have a Westphalia-wide context due to their nature. These include a wide range of cultural tasks that relate to the historical cultural region of Westphalia.

Two examples:

• On average, approximately 230 young people with cognitive impairments or physical disabilities live in each of the county boroughs or counties in Westphalia-Lippe. However, it is not viable to provide separate special schools for children with visual, auditory, speech or physical impairments at a local level. The LWL therefore maintains 35 special schools at various sites in Westphalia-Lippe.
• The LWL-Open Air Museum Hagen is aimed at making the history of trade and technology in Westphalia accessible to the public. Visitors from all parts of Westphalia can attend numerous workshops to familiarise themselves with the historical working methods of various trades and to understand the development of trade and technology.

LWL-budget – expenses 2008

The total LWL-budget for 2008 is approximately 2.3 billion Euro. Approximately 83 percent are spent on welfare services, particular in the field of the integration of disabled persons. The LWL budget is mainly financed by the regional association contributions of the member organisations, i.e. the counties and county boroughs, which currently amount to 1.5 billion Euro. A smaller part is covered by general-purpose financing of the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to its own budget, the LWL also administrates considerable capital (special capital of the LWL, capital in the state budget, budgets of the pension funds), so that the total expenditure amounts to 4.4 billion Euro.

Contact
First District Administrator and Treasurer
General Deputy of the LWL-Director  
Dr. Fritz Baur 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-215 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-252 
fritz.baur@lwl.org
 

Most of the 13.000 employees (approximately 90 percent) work locally in clinics, independent living centres and care centres, special schools, museums and cultural offices. The variety of responsibilities reflects the various professional groups of the employees.

Most of them work in the fields of welfare and health (special medical doctors, nurses and care workers, staff in the fields of psychology, educational science, social work, occupational therapy and physiotherapy). The employees of the cultural services are a comparatively small group and most of them provide specialised services.

Contact
First District Administrator and Treasurer
General Representative of the LWL-Director  
Dr. Fritz Baur
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-215 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-252 
fritz.baur@lwl.org
 

In order to handle its tasks, the LWL maintains approximately 200 facilities and branch offices in Westphalia-Lippe. They are located in a total of 53 municipalities.

Shareholdings
One of the concerns of the LWL is to create living conditions of equal value in Westphalia-Lippe and to contribute to the improvement of the economic structure. It is therefore participating in companies in various economic sectors:

• 3 financial services providers (NRW.BANK, Provinzial Nordwest, WestLB)
• 2 energy supply companies
• 4 transport companies.

It uses these shareholdings to provide support to local municipal partners (counties, county boroughs, municipalities) for business and regional development.

Contact
LWL–Shareholdings 
Markus Dillmann 
Freiherr-vom-Stein-Platz 1 
48133 Münster  
Tel.: +49 (0)251 591-4790  
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-3009 
markus.dillmann@lwl.org

Municipal pension funds
The management of the pension funds of Westphalia is also part of the municipal economy. These funds provide benefits (pensions, corporate old-age benefits) for the employees of municipal employers.

Contact
Municipal Pension Funds for Westphalia-Lippe
LWL - Head of Department Matthias Löb 
Telephone: +49 (0)251 591-3112 
Fax: +49 (0)251 591-3114 
matthias.loeb@lwl.org