The absorption capacity and contracting European funds are priority issues for analysis, for either the policy makers or academic environment. Increased interest for this lies in concerns about Romania's ability to access funding, based on estimates of specialists and the results obtained in the first phase of their launch. Without excluding the importance of amounts raised and spent, our focus is on how the funds are used in social services and their contribution to the development of social assistance. Absorption capacity is an issue we are interested in from the perspective of ensuring the continuity of already developed projects and the impact of organizational development in the area of social services providers. We will also analyze the specific factors of social services sector which may constitute obstacles to attracting structural funds and the implications of the distribution of resources in the absence of a viable strategy of social development: increasing disparities in coverage of services, maintaining an underdeveloped primary sector of social assistance or the weak relevance of services created with funding from the Structural Funds.