USE
OF THE STATUTORY FOSTER CARE SYSTEM TO SUPPORT LONG-TERM KINSHIP CARE: IMPACT
ON THE SOCIAL WELFARE SYSTEM AND THE SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION
DISCUSSION
PAPER
1. INTRODUCTION
Since the
beginning of the current decade, the number of children on social work
caseloads who are in statutory foster care has increased dramatically. The vast
majority of these children are in the care of members of their extended family,
often termed “kinship care”. The
argument is increasingly being advanced by practitioners that what is reflected
here is a situation of mass poverty combined with the impact of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic, and that these huge problems cannot be effectively dealt with by the
statutory child protection system, of which formal foster care is but one component.
This system was already severely under-resourced and dysfunctional before the
recent spiralling in the numbers of children in foster care. Child protection
workers report that services are being further crippled by the massive new
demands created by this influx. Appeals are being made for a creative approach
to kinship care which would combine access to social security with accessible,
community-based support programmes for vulnerable children and their
caregivers. Such an approach would benefit the broad population of
socio-economically deprived children and families, and would not be limited to
those who qualify for statutory care. It would be in line with the principles
of developmental social welfare, and the many policy documents that call for a
renewed emphasis on prevention and early intervention in preference to
statutory care.
A key aspect of
the present problem is the acute national shortage of social workers, and the
question of how the available members of this profession can best be deployed.
Social work caseloads have been pushed up by the numbers of children in foster
care to a point where meaningful professional services have become impossible.
Those concerned are in effect performing a “rubber-stamping” function which
gets children onto the Foster Care Grant rolls while ignoring the services
which are required thereafter. Meanwhile, aggressive staff recruitment by
government to address the backlog of children in the queue to get into foster
care is resulting in wholesale depletion of staff from NPOs. These
organisations have been delegated most of the government’s responsibility for
developmental social welfare services to vulnerable persons, groups and
communities in the country. The exodus of their staff is working against the
constitutional rights of the vulnerable groups served by these organisations,
including children in or awaiting foster care placement who simply happen to be
on NPO caseloads rather than government caseloads. Government and civil society
together face the challenge of working out how to develop a stable workforce in
the sector, and how social workers can best be deployed so as so meet the
demands of the entire developmental social welfare system. This requires
strategic and holistic thinking.
THE
NATIONAL WELFARE, SOCIAL SERVICE AND DEVELOPMENT FORUM STRONGLY SUPPORTS THE
DRIVE LED BY THE MINISTER AND THE NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL DEPARTMENTS OF SOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT TO GIVE ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN ACCESS TO SOCIAL SECURITY
AND SUPPORT SERVICES.
AT THE
SAME TIME WE CALL FOR A CHANGE IN APPROACH BY THE STATE ON THE ISSUE OF KINSHIP
CARE. WE CALL FOR A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH WHICH MEETS THE NEEDS OF THESE
MARGINALIZED CHILDREN, ALLOWS THEM TO ACCESS AND ENJOY THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL
RIGHTS, AND ALSO CATERS FOR THE OTHER URGENT RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT SECTOR.
2.
SOME RELEVANT STATISTICS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS
·
Numbers
of children in foster care.
In April 2 000
the number of children in statutory foster care stood at 49 843.[1] By
October 2006 this figure had reached 375 647[2] – an
increase of over 650% in six-and-a-half years. All the signs are that this
number is still climbing daily. In January 2007, about 60 000 children were
known to be awaiting placement.[3] If we
take into account that each of the children concerned requires a social work
investigation and a children’s court enquiry, as well as continuing social work
services and ongoing monitoring by the provincial Departments of Social
Development (DoSDs), it would follow that there should have been a huge
commensurate increase in the relevant staffing and infrastructure of the
relevant systems. This has not taken place and is arguably not possible. The
relevant systems have therefore been plunged into crisis.
·
Nature of and reasons for foster
care placement
In a study
commissioned by the national DoSD, it has emerged that 91% of children in
foster care in 2005 were in the care of extended family members, usually their
grandmothers or aunts.[4] In
48% of cases, both parents were deceased, and in 80% at least one parent was
deceased. Fully 70% of the children were living with their grandmothers
following the death of their mothers. In only 6.3% of cases were children in
foster care due to maltreatment or inadequate parenting, while in 9.7% of cases
they had been abandoned. Hence the broad picture which emerges from this study
is one of an overwhelming majority of children who are in permanent kinship
care due to the death of one or both parents, rather than due to state
intervention resulting from abuse or neglect. This does not imply that these
families do not require services, but it has huge implications for the type of
services that are indicated.
·
Availability
of social workers and social auxiliary workers
|
CATEGORY OF PERSONNEL Registered with SACSSP 2005 |
NEEDED TO IMPLEMENT CHILDREN’S BILL |
|
|
Implementation Plan
Full Cost Low Scenario
High Scenario 2005-6 2010-11 2005-6 2010-11 |
||
|
Social workers 11 372 Social auxiliary workers 1 849 |
8 656 16 504 7 682 14 648 |
47 305 66 329 34 158 48 660 |
Adapted
from
As at April 2005,
11 372 social workers and 1 849 social auxiliary workers were registered with
the SA Council for Social Service Professions.[5] The
report on the costing of the Children’s Bill shows that for the implementation
of the Bill at the lowest of four possible levels of service delivery
considered, 8 656 social workers and 7 682 social auxiliary workers would
already have been needed for the relevant services as they stood in the year
2005-6. By the year 2010-11 the figures would be 16 504 and 14 648
respectively. At a more acceptable level of service delivery, and allowing for
equity of service provision between the nine provinces (using quite modest
standards of service as a basis), the figures would be 47 305 social workers
and 34 158 social auxiliary workers as at 2005-6, and 66 329 social workers and
48 660 social auxiliary workers by 2010-11.[6] The
burgeoning numbers of children entering court-ordered foster care are a major
component of these calculations.
Hence we already
need at least 76% of the country’s social workers just for the
implementation of the incoming Children’s Act at the lowest level, leaving
a mere 24% for all other services needed to fulfil the nation’s mandate to
children dealt with under other legislation and other categories of vulnerable
persons, families and communities. Given that the country’s training
institutions are at present producing only about 500 new social workers each
year,[7]and
that the supply of social auxiliary workers is at this stage minimal, we are
looking at a catastrophic scenario as regards the staffing of the developmental
social welfare service system as a whole. The national DoSD’s concerted effort
to increase the numbers of social workers and social auxiliary workers who will
enter the sector is of great importance to the sector, but it will not impact
substantially on crisis described above unless there is a major change of
direction with regard to the service model we use in addressing kinship care of
orphaned and vulnerable children. If we bear in mind that the Children’s Act is
only one among a raft of new statutes and policies that are coming on stream for
the sector, each of them with its own needs for a bigger and more highly
developed cadre of staff, it becomes clear that we need to take urgent action
to prevent disaster. Social service professionals in all existing categories
will need to be deployed with great care in the positions in which they will be
able to have the greatest impact, and jobs will have to be structured in such a
way that these people are able to perform to the maximum of their potential. We
need to think laterally about what type of service can most effectively be
performed by what category of staff, and to strategise in new ways to ensure
that appropriate and effective services are delivered to those who need them.
3.
IMPACT OF THE CURRENT APPROACH
ON THE CHILD PROTECTION SYSTEM
·
Unmanageable caseloads
In 2003 many NPOs
delivering child and family welfare services in
·
Paralysis of protective
services, secondary abuse and children trapped in the “system”
The Department of
Social Development in its Integrated Service Delivery Model (2005) provides a
generic norm, for a mixed social work caseload, of 60 per social worker.
Experience shows that even this allows for intensive work only with a small
number of families, plus occasional supportive services to the remainder. A
person attending to acute cases of child abuse on a full-time basis cannot
manage more than about 20 such cases at a time. This amounts to an average of about
one day’s work per family per month including report-writing, supervision,
court time, travel, training and agency meetings as well as actual time spent
with a child and family. If this work is done properly, children are given the
benefit of effective protection and services which should make a genuine
positive impact on their future. They are enabled in due course to leave the
system and make way for others. If they are simply dragged mechanically through
“protective” procedures they may receive no protection at all, or may end up
drifting in the statutory care system for their entire childhood. They may in
the course of their encounter with child protection services experience many
forms of systemic abuse and neglect which may leave them worse off than when
they were initially referred for help. The constitutional right of children to
effective protection against maltreatment is, under these circumstances, being
ignored. The situation is made all the worse by the crippling turnover of
social work staff which is occurring in the context of the current financing
dispensation for NPOs, to which the Department delegates most of its
developmental social welfare service mandate.
In the context of
excessive caseloads, meaningful investigation and support even of routine
family foster care cases becomes impossible. The only service being delivered
in such a context is that of making a grant available for the support of the
child concerned – a vital service indeed, but one which does not in essence
need the attention of the country’s scarce children’s court and social work
resources.
An overloaded
child protection system is a system that is ineffective for some children and
dangerous for others. The Department of Social Development has since 1995 been
seeking to upgrade the formal child protection system – i.e. the network of
services aimed at preventing child abuse, neglect and exploitation, and
managing reported cases. A National Policy Framework and Strategic Plan for the
Prevention and Management of Child Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation is to be
submitted for Cabinet approval once costing processes have been completed. But
there is no chance of this strategy being implemented as long as most of the
resources of the child protection system are being consumed by the process of
moving hundreds of thousands of children in permanent kinship care into
court-ordered foster care.
·
Loss of vital elements in foster
care services
Foster care
programmes are essential to the functioning of the child care and protection
system. They are normally designed to provide alternative family care to
children who are unable, for some period of time, to live with their biological
families due to abuse, severe neglect or abandonment. Social workers delivering
this type of service are normally expected to perform a range of tasks
including the following:
n Recruitment,
assessment and preparation of new foster families.
n Preparation of the
child and his or her family for foster care placement. Removal of children is normally a traumatic process
regardless of their circumstances, and careful preparation is required. This is
also a crucial time for engaging with the biological family and securing their
co-operation with the process where possible.
n Permanency planning
and the implementation and review of permanency plans. This has to do with
ensuring that children do not drift in uncertain care arrangements for long
periods, but have the benefit of a plan whereby they will either return to
their original families after appropriate services have been delivered, or
permanently settled elsewhere, preferably in an alternative family, which may
turn out to be the foster family. Successful permanency planning requires very
intensive services to all concerned including the child, the biological family and
the foster family.
n Monitoring the
wellbeing of the child and helping him or her deal with previous traumatic
experiences, feelings about being in alternative care, and feelings about his
or her original family.
n Helping the foster
family to understand and deal with the behaviour of the child in care. Typically
a child in foster care at some stage displays very difficult behaviour
behaviour which reflects lags in development, acting out of past traumatic
experiences, a need to test how much the new family can tolerate without
rejecting him or her, or even just a need to find out what limits apply in the
new household. If the foster family do not understand such behaviour and
respond appropriately, it may cause the collapse of the placement, the retraumatisation
of the child, and disruption of relationships within the foster family.
n Supporting the
children of the foster parents in adjusting to the newcomer.
n Arranging and
providing support in relation to contacts between the child and the biological
family. Children in foster care typically come from families with multiple
problems. Often the parents are disturbed individuals who may be prone to
substance abuse and/or violent or volatile behaviour. Sometimes close
monitoring of contact with the child will be necessary; in other cases the
foster family will manage them successfully with help when necessary.
Debriefing of all concerned may be necessary following contacts, at least in
the early stages of the placement.
n Where applicable,
providing needed services to the biological family to enable them to ultimately
resume care of the child.
n Linking the child,
the foster family and the biological family with appropriate services in the
community.
n Support for all
concerned when the child leaves the foster home, whether this is due to an
inability to continue the placement, a planned move back to the child’s own
family, or other reasons.
Many of the above
ingredients are not applicable to the child who is in permanent kinship care.
Others are applicable to varying degrees. But the current emphasis on rapid
processing of hundreds of thousands of children into court-ordered foster care
as if on a conveyor belt often renders these tasks impossible for service
providers, with serious consequences for those children who do need them and
for the child protection system as a whole.
IMPACT
OF THE CURRENT APPROACH ON THE BROADER DEVELOPMENTAL SOCIAL WELFARE SYSTEM
·
Removal of resources from other
areas of need
The impact on the
rest of the child protection system of the deluge of cases of children in
kinship care coming into statutory foster care has been discussed above.
However, it is increasingly not only these services which are affected. In a
context where there is intense pressure on provincial DoSDs to fill posts to
address the foster care backlog at all costs, agencies engaged in every other
type of work are also suffering the effects. It is crucial, when planning
services to address the needs and constitutional rights of children needing
social security, that we bear in mind the needs and rights of all other
vulnerable groups, including children who are being actively maltreated, older
persons, those with disabilities, those in need of developmental services to
address poverty, those affected by crime and violence; those with mental
illnesses, and so forth. Otherwise we
continually destabilise the system and render it increasingly ineffective.
·
Continuous loss of trained staff
and weakening of the service ethic
Due to pressure
on every provincial DoSD to address its backlog of cases of families awaiting
processing through the children’s court and onto the social security rolls,
these departments are engaging in aggressive recruitment campaigns, and are
targeting NPO staff in these efforts. Because salaries and benefits offered by
government are far in excess of those which these organisations can afford,
there is a continual exodus of staff from them to the DoSD. Some leave with 24
hours’ notice. It is not unusual for staff to leave to take up offers from the DoSD
after only a few weeks or months of service in an NPO. Many of these
practitioners have had no time to consolidate what they are learning in the
agencies in question. Social workers who stay long enough to become grounded in
practice, develop the skills they need to serve the community effectively, and
gain the trust of those they serve seem to be becoming an increasingly rare
commodity. An attitude which enables professionals to walk off the job without
consideration for the impact that this will have on their clients has become
widespread. There are signs that a cynical, self-serving attitude is developing
among staff which can be expected to have dire consequences for the entire
sector if it persists. This is being actively promoted by current recruitment
drives.
·
Damage to the service
infrastructure
The loss of professionals from the NPOs is
having a highly damaging effect on the service infrastructure on which the
whole sector depends. The NPOs in many provinces serve as government’s delivery
arm. The harm to their functioning is severely undermining the sector’s ability
to deliver on its mandate. Among the many consequences is a severe erosion of
those structures which nurture the various specialisations in social work. In
the national Department’s Recruitment and Retention Strategy for Social
Workers, strong emphasis is laid on specialisation as a key means for promoting
the recruitment and retention of staff.
4.
POSSIBLE WAYS OF MEETING THE
CHALLENGE
The
NWSSDF believes that the problems described above urgently need to be addressed
on a number of levels. The following measures are proposed:
·
Government and civil society together
must strategise for the effective human resourcing of the developmental social
welfare system as a whole.
The National DoSD’s Recruitment and Retention Strategy for Social
Workers is a sound basis from which to address part of the problem for part of
the system – i.e. government’s own need to recruit and retain social workers.
It needs to be supplemented by measures to address all the social service
professions and other categories of personnel in the sector, on the basis of
the personnel needs of the NPOs along with those of the state. The practice of
planned poaching of NPO staff needs to end – we further damage the system if we
try to plug up one hole in the service system by creating a host of others. The
financing of NPO services in such a manner as to enable them to retain staff is
of course a key issue.
·
In addition to growing the supply of
social service personnel, we must work out how to effectively deploy those we
have.
We have a very limited supply of social workers in relation to the
needs of the country. We cannot afford to be using a large percentage of these
professionals in what has been reduced to a mechanical, rubber-stamping role.
This also results in a situation where practitioners will not have the
opportunity to develop as professionals, and will be unable to make the
contribution that will be needed from them towards the support and training of
those coming on stream further down the line. Every social service professional
must be able to function in a job that is structured so that it is practically
possible for him or her to carry out the duties associated with that job. This
is a central ethical responsibility of employer bodies, and of government as
the key entity which delivers or outsources the relevant services.
·
An alternative strategy must be developed
to link orphans and vulnerable children and their extended families with social
security provision and psycho-social support.
The country has no prospect of having sufficient social workers or
children’s courts in the foreseeable future to manage the massive numbers of
orphans and vulnerable children who are in permanent kinship care, via
court-ordered foster care. Attempts to do so are causing a collapse of the
child protection system as well as serious gaps in the broader service network.
This pattern is set to intensify rapidly, as the number of children in this
form of care continues to grow at more than 50 000 per year, while the number
of social workers emerging from the training institutions, even if
substantially increased through present efforts by government, cannot possibly
keep up. The approach initially proposed by the SA Law Reform Commission in its
Review of the Child Care Act provided for families offering long-term kinship
care to have access to social security and other forms of support which were
not specifically dependent on the courts or social workers. Models based on
this idea have been put forward by organisations making submissions for changes
to the Children’s Amendment Bill. Appendix A provides a summary of the
suggestions which have been made. It is proposed that the SALRC’s approach be
revised and the more recent recommendations be examined as a matter of
urgency. In addition to the relevant
changes to the Bill, there is a need for an urgent interim strategy to rapidly
link orphans and vulnerable children to appropriate support and services while
avoiding further damage to the broader service infrastructure.
5.
CONCLUSION
The
national tragedy created by the death and incapacitation on a massive scale of
parents of
APPENDIX A
A POSSIBLE APPROACH TO LONG-TERM KINSHIP CARE FOR
ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN
Elements
of an alternative approach to kinship care that have been identified by several
NPOs in submissions to the relevant Committees in Parliament, the National
Council of Provinces and the Provincial Legislatures, in relation to the Child
Care Act and the Children’s Amendment Bill, are as follows:
1. There
should be a return to the model for substitute family care initially proposed
by the SA Law Reform Commission, in terms of which long-term care of children
by relatives is viewed separately from formal foster care when these relatives
have taken on this role of their own accord, due to the death, disappearance or
incapacity of the biological parents, and where there is no need for formal
state intervention to protection the child from maltreatment. This is in
keeping with the approach in a number of other African countries. As is the
case elsewhere, the rights and responsibilities of relatives undertaking this
responsibility would be spelled out in the law. A simple administrative process
to recognise the status of the relationship could be undertaken if necessary.
2. The
age ceiling to the Child Support Grant should be removed and the gap between
this and the Foster Care Grant should be reduced, and the means test relaxed.
3. An Informal
Kinship Care Grant could be made available to such families, as recommended by
the SALRC. This grant could be means-tested and could be equal to or different
from the Foster Care Grant, as deemed appropriate.
4. Alternatively,
the Child Support Grant could be paid at a different level to caregivers who
are not the biological parents of the child.
5. There
should be a national roll-out of community-based support programmes to address
issues relating to income generation, life skills, child care and parenting,
dealing with bereavement and other forms of trauma, and support for older
caregivers. These could involve the full range of social service professionals,
assisted by personnel in other categories and volunteers. This roll-out should
give priority to the poorest communities and those with the highest rates of
orphanhood. It could incorporate the existing process of developing Child Care
Forums for orphans and vulnerable children. The emerging corps of community
development workers could play an extensive role here, and these activities
could be built into the Integrated Development Plans of local authorities.
Provision for such activities should be incorporated in the Children’s
Amendment Bill as part of the chapter on Prevention and Early Intervention.
6. The
concept of schools as nodes of care and support should be made a reality and
every school should link up with the local resource system and serve as a site
for prevention and early intervention.