Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable - Unicef

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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 73
Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable children in SA of prevention and early intervention services to children and families. These NPOs face severe financial and other challenges which impact negatively on the quality, continuity and sustainability of the prevention and early intervention services they provide (De Sas Kropiwnicki 2010a). The DoSD conducted a review of prevention and early intervention projects and services and observed that some of the NGO-run projects are beset by ‘[p]oor management and leadership [which] weakens the structural provision of services exposing the communities to more maltreatment, sexual violence and family dysfunctionality’ (DoSD 2009a, in De Sas Kropiwnicki 2010a). Fourth, given that prevention and early intervention services aim, in part, to address the underlying socio-economic and cultural risk antecedents in communities, it is not surprising that the most effective prevention and early intervention models of service delivery are premised on collaboration between all stakeholders with a development mandate. A challenge in providing quality and sustainable effective prevention and early intervention services is the inconsistent and erratic quality of the relationships between NPOs and government departments. In addition, the level of support provided to NPOs by municipalities tends to be ad hoc, situational and determined on a case-by-case basis by local variables. In summary, ‘Networking, coordination and meaningful collaboration between civil society, NGOs and government is an ongoing challenge’ (De Sas Kropiwnicki 2010a: 7). A related challenge identified by De Sas Kropiwnicki (2010a) is the lack of intergovernmental collaboration and coordination to provide integrated care and support to families. The Children’s Act anticipates and seeks to address a number of these resource, funding and quality concerns. Section 145 requires the minister for social development to develop a comprehensive national strategy aimed at securing the provision of prevention and early intervention programmes to families, parents, caregivers and children across the country. Once this is established, the MEC for social development must, within the national strategy, provide for a provincial strategy aimed at the provision of properly resourced, coordinated and managed prevention and early intervention programmes. In preparation for the development of the national and provincial strategies, the DoSD has initiated the process of developing a national conceptual framework for prevention and early intervention services in South Africa. The Department has commissioned the development of a conceptual framework which will provide guidance and regulate the development of standardised quality prevention and early intervention programmes within a common framework. The process for the development of the framework builds on the work done thus far in the arena of prevention and early intervention, through a review of relevant programmes that have been implemented in South Africa in order to identify and document relevant best practices which will inform the framework. The framework will be premised on the standardisation and replication of these sound elements of best practice, which will ensure sustainable and quality early intervention and prevention programmes in South Africa (De Sas Kropiwnicki 2010b). In addition to addressing questions of quality, standardisation and accountability of prevention and early intervention programmes, the Children’s Act also potentially addresses some of the funding constraints and sustainability challenges faced by many 74
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Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable - Unicef

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