Question NW581 to the Minister of Social Development
14 April 2023 - NW581
Shaik Emam, Mr AM to ask the Minister of Social Development
Whether her department has a system and/or some mechanism in place to monitor children who receive social grants to ensure that they are attending school regularly and benefiting from the specified social grants, by providing annual reports on performance attendance and so forth; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
Reply:
Regulation 7(6) of the Social Assistance Regulations of 2022 places an obligation on the caregiver to ensure that a child between the ages of 7 and 18 is enrolled and attends school or an educational institution. Such proof has to be provided to SASSA upon approval of the Child Support Grant. However, the Department has observed that the enforcement of this provision is not feasible.
To close this gap, the Department has developed a draft policy on integration of children’s grants with services amongst others, education, health and early childhood development. The draft policy emphasises the need of building linkages between children’s grants and other developmental services for children. The approval of the policy and amendment of the legislation will enable the Department to share data with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) amongst others. In this manner, the Department will be empowered to monitor and track school attendance in compliance with the regulations. Consultations on the draft policy will be concluded by the end of the 2023/24 financial year and processes to seek Cabinet approval of the draft policy will be initiated in the next financial year (2023/2024).