Department of Social Development Quarter 3 & 4 Performance; STTOP & Athlone Visits & Annual Committee Reports

Meeting report

Department of Social Development: Performance Report

Ms M Johnson, Chief Director: Business Planning and Strategy, Department of Social Development (DSD) said for the sake of time she would be only focusing on those targets that the Department had not achieved.

Programme 1: Administration

All indicators for programme 1 were achieved except one. The Management of Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) indicator was not achieved because the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) withdrew that management standard in August of the previous year under review.

Programme 2: Social Welfare Services

The Department under performed with respect to the number of older persons accessing residential facilities. There were a number of people under the age of 60 years old who occupy these facilities because they were frail and they have nowhere else to go. The Department could not count these people as they were under the age of 60.

With respect to the indicator dealing with the number of older persons accessing assisted and independent living facilities, the Department was currently engaging with the sector because there was a lack of independent and assisted living facilities.

The indicator for the number of persons with disabilities accessing funded residential facilities was not achieved because the mortality rate among people who were severely disabled was relatively high. There were also issues of affordability with respect to vacancies. The Department of Social Development (DSD) subsidy was too low and the facilities could not keep up with operational costs. Facilities often left beds vacant because they could not afford to fill them. This was quite a big problem for the Department.

With respect to the protective workshops, a lot of the time there were issues of ill health, where people could not get to the workshops, and there was also a transport challenge. On the other side, they had people who used to be employed in workshops who obtained employment outside of workshops.

The number of persons with disabilities in DSD-funded community-based day care programmes was not achieved also because of ill health, which resulted in clients not being able to attend the programmes.

Programme 3: Children & Families

The target for the number of children reunited with their families or alternative caregivers was not achieved. Reunification was a long process and it relied on whether both the child and the parents or caregivers were ready to come together. Therefore the Department could not really put a time period on the reunification process.

The indicator for the number of Children’s Court inquiries opened was not achieved. This was a relatively new indicator. The Department had to wait for the court to initiate an investigation.

With respect to the number of form 38 reports submitted to the Children’s Court, a lot of the time investigations took a long time to conclude and to a large extent it was dependent on the documentation that was available. Birth certificates were a big problem. The courts had instructed social workers to make sure that birth certificates were obtained, so social workers had to go to home affairs and complete the documentation, which was a lengthy process. The Department had met with the courts, SAPS and Home Affairs around developing an appropriate referral pathway for child protection.

The Department did not achieve their target with respect to the number of children in funded Early Childhood Development (ECD) services. The ECDs had experienced a number of challenges with regard to the requirements for ECD re-registration, and also if they did not re-register in time it resulted in non-compliance, which resulted in deregistration and the Department could not fund them. The Department had centralised the registration process so that they could see more rapidly how to assist ECDs with re-registration.

Programme 4: Restorative Services

The reason why the Department did not achieve its target on the number of children in conflict with the law assessed was because the Department only assesses those who SAPS refers. A positive of this might be that there may be fewer arrests and therefore fewer referrals.

For the target on the number of children in conflict with the law referred to diversion programmes, the target was not achieved because the courts would decide who was referred to a diversion programme, and it also depended on the nature of the offence.

The target for the number of children who completed diversion programmes was not achieved. Although courts order children to diversion programmes, they do not ask the children to come back after the completion of a diversion programme. There was also a problem where many of the diversion programmes took place in areas where gangs were prevalent and children could not go there. The Department was looking at how they could have diversion programmes on sites that were relatively neutral.

Programme 5: Development & Research

Ms Johnson said this programme had done extremely well and there was only one indicator where the Department had not achieved its target. The indicator where the Department had underachieved was the number of youth cafes operational. Because there were challenges with the Villiersdorp youth centre, the Department could not count them as operational. Despite that, there were programmes being run from where the Villersdorp municipality offered premises.

Discussion

Ms P Lekker (ANC) asked what normal process was undertaken by the Department to identify those requiring independent and assisted living facilities

Ms Johnson said she did not know the exact process.

Ms Lekker asked what it meant by specialised non-profit organisation (NPO) services.

Ms Johnson said that referred to the kinds of support that families and carers of disabled persons needed, such as training, counselling services, family support intervention and providing relief for carers

Ms Lekker asked if the Department had established if there were children who did not have birth certificates. What was the Department doing to assist those children to obtain child care grants? Was the Department talking to Home Affairs to address the issue of children who did not have birth certificates? Were there records of the number of children who did not have birth certificates?

Ms Johnson said that the Department was in the process of discussing this issue with Home Affairs, SAPS and the courts. The Department was assisting where they could to ensure that children that could not access their birth certificates immediately got assistance.

Ms Lekker asked, with regard to the registration of ECDs, what the Department was funding the ECDs for? Who monitored the curriculum that ECDs followed?

Ms Johnson said that the Department was currently allocating R15 per child per day, and that had to cover the meals and the payment of the teachers. The Department would have to provide more detail of the funding in writing. The Department did have a set curriculum and they had monitoring and evaluation (M & E) people who go out to see that the ECDs and teachers were following it.

Ms Lekker asked if the Department had been engaging with the courts on how to remedy the situation on the court referrals of children to diversion programmes.

Ms Johnson said there was very little social workers could do at this point in time if children did not want to complete the programme. The Department was working with relevant parties to see how to remedy the situation.

Ms Lekker asked why the budget had not increased much for poverty alleviation. How was it determined whether to increase or decrease the budget?

Ms Johnson said their budgets had not increased for most of their programmes.

Ms Lekker asked where the Department-funded sites are. What assistance was given to those who were mending those sites? How much was the Department paying per site?

Ms Johnson said a list of sites could be provided.

Ms M Wenger (DA) referred to the number of children in funded ECD services. She asked if the Department was working on its own requirements for ECD registration. Had there been benchmarking with other provinces to see if the Western Cape had made any progress?

Ms Johnson said there may be difference at a municipal level. She was not sure about the benchmarking with other provinces.

Ms Wenger asked what happened to the children if there were problems with the re-registration of ECDs.

Ms Johnson said the Department would try to continue funding the ECDs as much as possible.

Ms Wenger asked why the target on the number of children in conflict with the law was not set as a percentage.

Ms Johnson said that they were not allowed to do so. They had previously set targets as percentages, but the Department was told by National Treasury and provincial treasury that they were not allowed to do so.

Ms D Gopie (ANC) referred to the funded protective workshops for persons with disabilities. She asked what the Department meant by people getting employment outside of the workshop.

Ms Johnson said a lot of the time these people got jobs in the mainstream economy. She would have to ask people from the workshops for further information regarding where they got jobs.

Ms Gopie referred to the fact that a target had not been set for the number of ECD practitioners in funded ECD centres meeting minimum qualification requirements. She asked what the hold up was of not receiving certificates from a national accreditation body.

Ms Johnson said she thought it was a national problem, and not only a problem for the Department of Social Development. Organisations were not providing certificates to people fast enough.

Ms Gopie referred to the indicator for the number of children in conflict with the law awaiting trial in own and outsourced Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs). She asked what happened to those children for whom there was no bed space.

Ms Johnson said that when the Court referred a child to the Department, they had to find a space.

Ms Gopie asked why the Department had not received funding from the national government for youth programmes.

Ms Johnson said she was not sure why they had not received funding for that programme.

Ms P Makeleni (ANC) raised concern over the Department’s lack of youth and women’s programmes.

Ms Makeleni asked if the Department planned on increasing the number of residential facilities for persons with disabilities from 35. Were these 35 fairly scattered around the Province?

Ms Johnson said that this was a budgetary issue. The disability programme was working on expanding spaces in facilities. A list of the facilities could be provided to the Committee.

Ms Makeleni asked what the protective workshops were for, if they were not achieving their goals.

Ms Johnson said that she would take it back to the Department.

Ms Makeleni raised concern the Department did not inform the Committee on how it planned to deal with some of the challenges that it was facing.

Ms Makeleni asked whether the number of beneficiaries receiving meals, were doing so from the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) programme. Was the Department using its resources to do a task already covered by SASSA?

Ms Johnson said that their feeding programme was separate from SASSA’s feeding programme. The Department had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with SASSA where they worked together on certain projects.

Ms Makeleni referred to about the indicator on the number of youths linked to job and other skills development programmes, and asked how many of those were linked to jobs and how many to skills development. Were these permanent jobs or expanded public works programme (EPWP) one-year programmes?

Ms Wenger asked what the ECD budget covered, given the difference between the R15 subsidy per child and the difference between that and the total allocation per child.

Ms Johnson said that they also funded ECD non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who also did training and capacity building with ECDs. The Department could provide a complete breakdown of the budget to the Committee if necessary.

Ms Johnson said that there were a number of questions that she could not answer directly. She requested that the Committee submit those questions she could not answer to the Department.

The Chairperson said they would submit to the Department those questions Ms Johnson could not answer, and thanked the Department for the presentation.

 

Consideration and adoption of draft reports

 

The report on the STOPP programme of 24 April 2018 was considered.

The report was adopted with minor amendments.

 

The draft report on the unannounced visit to Athlone on 5 June 2018 was considered.

Ms Wenger suggested that the order of the numbering from 1.2 to 1.4 be changed.

The report was adopted.

 

The Annual Activity Report for the 2017/2018 financial year was considered and adopted without amendments.

 

The draft minutes of 29 May 2018 were considered.

Ms Wenger suggested some minor changes regarding wording.

The report was adopted.

 

The draft Committee programme for 2018/2019 financial year was considered and adopted.

 

The Meeting was adjourned.