Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable - Unicef

Department of Social Development
in the 1997 White Paper, has not found traction at a service delivery level (Giese 2010).
The ‘crowding out’ of social services by the social security budget has translated into
low levels of prevention and early intervention services being provided, especially in
communities in the more marginalised and rural provinces. 44 This is so for a number of
reasons.
First, there is a scarcity of appropriate skills to provide social services, which impacts
significantly on the delivery of prevention and early intervention services. Giese (2010: 4)
observes that the number of social workers required to implement the Children’s Act is
estimated at 60 000 and in February 2009 there were less than 25 per cent of the required
numbers, with only 14 322 registered social workers. She notes further that this impacts
heavily on the provision of prevention and early intervention services, as ‘[t]he lack of
capacity in the system forces social workers to prioritise the most urgent cases, neglecting
prevention and early intervention services. This leads to a greater number of children
requiring protection, further reducing the capacity’ (Giese 2010: 4).
The National Department of Social Development has taken two steps towards addressing
this gap. The first is the introduction of a social work scholarship ‘[a]s part of the
recruitment and retention strategy and initiative to address critical and scarce skills in the
sector’. 45 The scholarship is available to South African citizens wanting to pursue social
work degrees.
The second step is the creation of space within the Children’s Act for the recognition and
more active use of other social services practitioners to provide statutory social services,
for example, child and youth care workers, auxiliary social workers and community
development workers. It formally recognises that these practitioners may provide certain
statutory services, such as assessing partial care centres, ECD programmes and dropin
centres for registration, and monitoring long-term foster placements (Proudlock &
Jamieson 2008). However, this innovation, which has the potential to significantly address
the lack of capacity to provide social services, especially prevention and early intervention
services, is on hold until the current Social Services Professions Act (No. 110 of 1978) is
replaced with the Social Services Professions and Occupations Bill, 2008. The latter Bill
is currently under consideration by Parliament. The reason for this is that the Children’s
Act requires the registration of all practitioners that will perform the assigned statutory
functions. At present, the Social Services Professions Act only permits the registration
of social workers; the Social Services Professions and Occupations Bill permits the
registration of a much wider class of social service practitioners.
Second, the scarcity of appropriate human resources is compounded by the widespread
inappropriate use of the child protection system to access FCGs for children living with
their extended family members. A social worker employed by the DoSD in the Eastern
Cape confirmed this in an interview conducted in August 2010 in her statement that ‘our
core business is foster care grants’. (This concern is discussed in more detail below.)
Third, insufficient funding affects the quality and sustainability of child protection services.
Given the severe capacity constraints within government, NPOs currently provide the bulk
44 For example, in Limpopo province, where 83 per cent of poor children live in poverty, only R15 per capita was
allocated for social services, compared to the Western Cape where only 36 per cent of children live in poverty but
where R114 per capita was allocated in 2008 (Giese 2010: 4).
45 http://www.dsd.gov.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=240&Itemid=143
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