This presentation is submitted by the South African Council for Social Service Professions at a briefing meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development on the Council’s budgeted programmes and some of its activities for the 2005/06 financial year. In briefing the Portfolio Committee the following matters are being dealt with:

1.1 A brief background of the Council.

1.2 Council’s role and objectives.

1.3 Establishing of the first social service professional boards.

1.4 Regular funding of the Council.

1.5 Funding received from the Department of Social Development.

1.6 Salaries and service conditions of social service personnel.

1.7 Social workers leaving for abroad.

1.8 1^St National Conference for social service personnel.

1.9 Education and training.

The SA Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP), the statutory regulatory body for the social service professions in South Africa, was established and functions in terms of the Social Service Professions Act, 1978 (Act 110 of 1978) as amended. The present SACSSP evolved from the erstwhile SA Council for Social and Associated Work (established in 1980), the SA Council for Social Work and the SA Interim Council for Social Work. Following drastic amendments to the Act in 1989 and 1999 the Act now inter alia makes provision for the establishment of professional boards for the various social service professions, under the auspices of the Council. One of the present priorities of the Council is to attend to the drafting of a new act to replace the Social Service Professions Act, 1978 (Act 110 of 1978).

The First SACSSP completed its five year term of office during 2004. This Council laid the foundation for the present new Council and started with the establishment of the professional boards for the individual social service professions. Continuing this process is another priority of the new Council.

In terms of the Act the Council’s comprehensive role can be summarised as follows:

With the establishment of the professional boards a reality, a specific point of focus of the organisation at present is the clarification of the role differentiation between the Council and the professional boards. Whereas the Council will have an overarching coordinating role regarding the professions and would attend to the making of the organisation’s general policies, the professional boards would deal with all matters pertaining to the profession(s) under the ambit of the board concerned.

The Council is the umbrella body and juristic person, with the various professional boards its delegates, each being responsible for the profession(s) under its ambit. History was recently made with the establishment of the first two such professional boards, namely the Professional board for Social Work and the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care. The Professional Board for Probation Services will be the next board to be established, whilst attention is also being given inter alia to establishing a professional board for community development.

A social service professional board is established by the Minister of Social Development on the recommendation of the Council, in terms of section 14A of the Social Service Professions Act, 1978 (Act 110 of 1978) as amended. The practitioners of the profession concerned should lodge an application for a board to be established to the Council. Council will then investigate the application and if it meets the Council’s criteria, will make the necessary recommendation to the Minister for a board to be established.

In order to establish the professional boards and in order for the boards to function, in recent times the following sets of regulations were drafted with the input from the different constitutions, accepted by the Minister and published in the Government Gazette for implementation:

With the first professional boards now established, the Professional Board for Social Work will take over the functions previously fulfilled by the Council regarding the social work profession and update it in the form of revised regulations to the Act. The other professional boards such as the professional Boards for Child and Youth Care and Probation services will focus on the drafting and implementation of regulations inter alia establishing registers for their practitioners, establishing the criteria for their registration, determining the acts or omissions which shall constitute unprofessional conduct, and formulating the code of ethics to be followed in the practising of the profession concerned.

With reference to the funding of the Council, it is emphasised that the Council does not receive any money automatically from the Department of Social Development. The Council’s main source of revenue is the annual and registration fees payable to it by the persons registered with the Council. Therefore, Council is responsible to obtain its own funding to provide in its operational needs.

During the previous five financial years the Council’s annual income from the annual and registration fees payable to it by the persons registering with the Council, amounted to the following:

Any funding received from an outside source, such as the Department of Social Development is not included in the above amounts.

The Councils’ activities are divided into specific programmes each with its own budget, with the budgeted expenditure for each programme being as follows for the financial year 2005/06:

Unfortunately, the low salaries paid to social workers and the conditions of service in terms of which many of them have to work, have been a serious concern for the sector for many years. Therefore, with extensive input from the different role players comprising the social service professions sector, the Council compiled a Guideline document for the remuneration, service conditions and human resource management in the social service professions in June 2002. The objective of the document was to provide a suitable guideline, which would contribute to the successful addressing of the imbalance, inequity and discrepancies in the remuneration of social service practitioners, as well as the effective utilisation of the sector. This Guideline was made available as widely as possible for general use, and for use by the various stakeholders during salary negotiations. It was also sent to the Portfolio Committee.

In addition to this, a submission titled The remuneration of social service professionals in the Public Service at entry level, was made to the Minister and Department of Public Administration, and a submission titled The remuneration of social service professionals employed by the no-governmental organisations (NGOs), was made to the Minister and Department of Social Development in March 2002. These submissions contained the guideline for minimum remuneration of persons employed in the social service professions and the Ministers were requested to attend to certain discrepancies regarding the remuneration of social service personnel employed in Government departments as well as by NPO/NGOs dependant on Government subsidies.

Following this the Department of Social Development convened a task team in conjunction with representatives from the Department of Public Service and Administration, to deal with the remuneration, grading and job descriptions of social workers employed in the public sector. This lead to certain salary adaptations having been made for social workers employed in the public sector.

On 28 January 2005, the Minister of Labour announced the commencement of an investigation to investigate the rates of remuneration, and conditions of employment with a view to establish a minimum wage and conditions of employment within the welfare sector, in the Government Gazette, in terms of Section 52(3) of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, No 75 of 1997.

In addition, the Finance Minister announced in Parliament on 23 February 2005 in his Budget Speech for 2005/06, that the salaries of social workers in the public sector are to be improved. This is what the Task Team, facilitated by the Council, had requested but at the same time it was requested to also increase the salaries of those in the NPO/NGO sector. Therefore, this announcement contributed to further widening the gap between the salaries paid to social workers in the public sector vis-à-vis that paid to social workers in the NPO/NGO sector

This further widening of the gap may well be the final straw for many social workers employed in the NGO/NPO sector. The result will impact severely and disastrously on the social work profession and the NGO/NPO’s continued existence as service providers both in the present and the future. It is communities, the poor and the vulnerable that stand to suffer the most.

The situation regarding the remuneration of the social workers in the non-government sector is of great concern and a very real crisis in the sector has been building up over the years. The NGO/NPO sector is a major provider of direct services to people at grassroots level. Social workers employed in this sector undertake community development, poverty alleviation, statutory services in terms of a number of Acts, prevention, continuing care services and early intervention.

Since, and even before the Minister’s announcement, there have been numerous enquiries, appeals, meetings and submissions about this matter. Various groups of social workers have made submissions and recently a mass meeting was held in Gauteng. Although some provinces have increased subsidies somewhat the basic situation in the NPO/NGO sector has remained virtually static.

However, the increased subsidies paid by some provinces to NPO/NGOs caused a new discrepancy as the matter was being dealt with on a provincial level and not on a national level. The problem being that personnel employed by the same NGO but in different provinces, that previously earned the same salary, now earned different salaries.

The Department of Social Development has produced a draft Retention Strategy for Social Workers and it is trusted that once it is accepted it would address the whole sector, including those in the NPO/NGO sector.

The National Coalition for Social Services (NACOSS) is presently conducting research about this matter amongst more than 700 NGOs in the 9 provinces concerning information provided on more than 2 500 social workers and social auxiliary workers.

The results of this research should be of interest to the Portfolio Committee. The research is not completed yet, but some of the preliminary results of this research, applying to all levels of social workers concerning social workers in the NGO sector, indicate the following:

The above results paint a most disturbing and dire picture of social work practitioners employed in the NGO sector that does not bode well for the immediate present and the future in respect of the achievement of social service delivery aims and objectives. It therefore is of imperative importance for government to increase the subsidisation of salaries of social workers in the NPO/NGO sector.

The so-called "brain drain" amongst the professions, of professionals leaving the country to work abroad, also is a concern regarding social workers.

No statistics regarding social workers who immigrated are available. However, the following figures give an indication of how many social workers obtained Certificates of Status from the Council when leaving for abroad (these certificates are required to register as social workers in most foreign countries):

Against this background it seems that probably not as many social workers have left the Country as is often thought. However, more social workers have probably left the country without obtaining the Certificates of Status from the Council.

In the absence of specific research, one could only speculate about the reasons for these people leaving. Reasons often put forward as contributing factors are the following:

Another factor that could also play a role is the effect of the "global village" and the fact that many newly qualified young people want to spread their wings and gain some overseas experience, earn some pound or dollars to pay of their study loans, to return after a few years. In such cases the country could benefit from their overseas experience.

The first National Conference for the Social Service Professions was held during October 2004. The theme of the conference was Dialogue across disciplines – Partnership in development and it was co-hosted by the Council and the Department of Social Development. The Department funded the conference with an amount of R580 000, whilst the rest of the expenses were covered by the conference fees paid by delegates.

Numerous attempts were made to include papers presented by as many different social service practitioners as possible. Nevertheless, most of the papers were submitted by academics and social workers.

The conference was attended by 658 delegates, consisting inter alia of the Deputy Minister for Social Development, Provincial MECs, Heads of Social Welfare Services, representatives from the Office of the Premier, representatives from local training institutions and from Botswana, social service professionals/providers representing the cross spectrum of disciplines within the social service sector, including social workers, Child and youth workers, social auxiliary workers, community development workers, probation officers and community members.

The objectives of the conference were achieved and the conference afforded the Council and the Department of Social Development an opportunity to establish positive working relationships with all social service professionals.

At the end of the conference, the conference issued the following declaration:

An action plan is being compiled to execute the implementation of the Declaration and it is foreseen that a follow-up conference will be held in due course.

With reference to the Council’s objectives in respect of the education and training of social service practitioners, the Council continues to play an important role.

One of the latest developments in this respect is the impending name change of the social work qualification to that of Bachelor in Social Work (BSW) Degree which is to be the same at all universities nationally. All universities will also comply with the exit level outcomes formulated by the Standards Generating Body (SGB) for Social Work.

These outcomes were developed to be in line with the requirements of the needs of the present day South African population and are to be implemented on 1 January 2007.

Council is also to play an active role in quality assuring the contents of the various social service learning programmes. On the lower levels for instance, the quality assurance in the social auxiliary work learner ship as approved by the Department of Labour, will ensure that proper attention could be given to the primary needs of communities as part of the execution of the social work services, with the social auxiliary worker being the assistant to the social worker.

Furthermore, as far as the FET Certificate in Social Auxiliary Work is concerned, it is important to note that the SACSSP facilitated the following developments:

With reference to the profession of Child and Youth Care, probation services and any other profession for which a professional board would be established similar attention would be given to the regulation of matters pertaining to the education and training of the profession concerned.

The South African Council for Social Service Professions once again sincerely appreciates this opportunity to present the Portfolio Committee with some of the highlights comprising the most contentious issues that the Council presently deals with.