Question NW2427 to the Minister of Social Development
11 July 2023 - NW2427
van der Merwe, Ms LL to ask the Minister of Social Development
Whether, following the Estimates of National Expenditure 2023 shared by the National Treasury, that under Programme 4: Welfare Services Policy Development and Implementation Support Programme, her department will spend 7,2% of its budget over the medium term on consultants, her department intends to effect a skills transfer; if not, why not; if so, (a) how will the specified consultants transfer their skills to staff, (b) how long will the specified process take and (c) what total number of staff members will be impacted?
Reply:
Children’s Services
The contracted consultant is required to transfer its skills to the staff.
a) The contracted consultant will provide mentorship and training on how to conduct research to two (2) early career staff within the department.
b) The mentorship and training indicated in (a) will be conducted for a period of eight (8) months.
c) Two (2) staff members from the Department of Social Development will benefit from this process.
Children’s Legislation
a) The consultant appointed to develop a costed Implementation Plan for the National Child Care and Protection Policy will transfer skills for data collection approaches, and processes for developing implementation plans to the project manager. The consultant will further transfer skills to identified officials through capacity building session workshop.
The consultant appointed to develop Regulations for the Children’s Amendment Act transferred skills for legislative drafting to different business Units through focus group sessions.
b) The workshop for skills transfer for the development of costed Implementation Plan will take one day. Skills transfer for the drafting of Regulations has been completed.
c) The total number of officials impacted for skills transfer on the development of a costed Implementation Plan is six (6). The total number of staff impacted for skills transfer for developing regulations is 70.
Services to Families
(a) The consultant appointed for the development of the policy on homelessness will transfer skills through workshops, meetings, project documents, and public consultations with the key stakeholders working closely with the project team. Skills transfer and methodology have been included in the terms of reference.
The skills to be transferred include data collection and analysis; facilitation skills; project management; policy development, writing, and analysis skills; stakeholder analysis, engagement, and management; literature review; etc
(b) This process will be linked to the duration of the contract, which in this case is one (1) year
(c) Close to 30 officials, from both the task team and the technical team, will benefit from this process by the end of the project and this includes officials from other key national departments, provinces, and officials from National DSD. Yes, this is linked to a & b
Recruitment and Retention Strategy for SSP’s
- Skills transfer by consultants will be done through project team meetings, which are held after development of each deliverable for quality assurance purposes.
- The process is ongoing during the design and development phases and conducted over a period of three sessions per project (there are currently two projects) and each is allocated one day for skills transfer purposes.
- Three staff members will benefit from the skills transfer process (social work policy manager, social work policy developer and scholarship project coordinator).
Service Standards
(a) The consultant appointed to conduct a Readiness Assessment on the Implementation of the White Paper on Social Development will transfer skills to the project team through project engagement meetings on a continuous basis.
(b) The consultant will further transfer skills to identified officials within the national department of DSD through a training workshop. The workshop for skills transfer for the Readiness Assessment will take one day.
Four officials from the national department of DSD will be impacted.
(c) The consultant appointed for refining and editing the White Paper on Social Development will transfer skills to the project team on a continuous basis through project engagement meetings officials.
The consultant for refining and editing the White Paper on Social Development will further transfer skills to identified officials within the national department of DSD through a training workshop. The workshop for skills transfers for the Readiness Assessment will take one day.
Four officials from the national department of DSD will be impacted.