Children betrayed

Child abuse and neglect are rife in South Africa, and child-headed households common, but social workers are in short supply and many leave the occupation after only a few years because of the workload and other stresses.

The dire shortage of trained social workers has crippled child welfare services, which, as a result, are failing the children who need them most.

As many as 66000 trained social workers are needed but there are only 8913.

Experts have urged the government to do something about the shortage as a matter of urgency.

"Social workers cannot protect children any more," said Edelweiss Schieke, managing director of the NGO Cristelike Maatskaplike Raad North.

"NGOs are expected to do everything but we don't have the manpower. There should be more money available to pay social workers."

Ursulla Rhodes, national programme manager of Child Welfare SA, agreed: "There is a shortage of social workers, especially in the NGO sector . this really compromises the work we do.

"Social workers in the NGO sector are not paid as well [as in the public or private sectors] . the NGO sector is severely financially compromised."

With foreign funding drying up because of the global financial crisis, many NGOs have cut back their services and reduced staff.

In comparison with countries such as the UK, where a social worker might work on 12 to 20 cases at a time, social workers in South Africa are "overburdened".

"I have come across social workers with caseloads of more than 150 families and it becomes impossible for them to manage this," said Joan van Niekerk, director of Childline SA.

Iveda Smith, registrar of the SA Council for the Social Service Professions, said social workers who dealt with fostering could deal with as many as 500 cases a month.

Huge workloads often prevented social workers from dealing with urgent cases involving child abuse, said Jackie Loffell, advocacy coordinator for Johannesburg Child Welfare.

The paperwork social workers were required to process to qualify for grants kept them away from counselling and from intervening in abuse cases. The processing of grant applications could take months.

"C hild protection services are suffering significantly because a great amount of time is being spent on child-fostering grants," said Van Niekerk.

The experts agree that it is the children who suffer most.

"Children learn from experience and, without help, struggle [in dealing] with inappropriate adult behaviour. The damage runs across generations," said Van Niekerk.

Childline SA knows of a number of instances of social workers neglecting clients because of high caseloads.

In one case, Palesa (not her real name), who lived in a foster home, became pregnant after being abused by a relative of her foster mother. The social worker became aware of this but allowed the girl to return to the foster home because she did not have time to arrange alternative accommodation. Palesa was given a medical examination.

She was physically abused again when she returned to the foster home - her punishment for disclosing the original abuse to her social worker.

Childline SA says Palesa's whereabouts are unknown.

Social workers can be reported to the SA Council for the Social Service Professions if a case is not dealt with timeously.

"That is why we say that we cannot take on more cases because we might jeopardise the ones we already have," said Schieke. "There are instances in which we have turned down cases of abuse or neglect because there is just too much work."

Social workers are bound by the Children's Act. In order to implement the act effectively, South Africa needs between 16000 and 66000 social workers.

Smith said the total number of registered social workers and social auxiliary workers, who have a one-year qualification, is 25337.

"We can't produce an adequate number of social workers because of lack of capacity, and human resource limitations, at universities," she said.

Said Rhodes: "We lose social workers. Many go overseas or move from the NGOs to the government for better salaries and more benefits," said Rhodes.

Department of Social Development spokesman Lumka Oliphant said: "We are putting more money into training of community caregivers."