THE IMPLEMENTATION OF FAMILY PRESERVATION SERVICES: PERSPECTIVES OF SOCIAL WORKERS AT NGOs

South African Child and Family Welfare Services: Changing Times or Business as Usual?

“…Despite research results repeatedly demonstrating that child and family welfare organisations do not have sufficient funds to provide comprehensive preventative services, no serious attempt has been made to adapt the current welfare funding model (Streak & Poggenpoel, 2005;Strydom, 2010). Social welfare organisations are therefore expected to meet increased demand from within their existing budgets.…”

“…The unsurprising consequence has been that service delivery, in child and family welfare services, remains statutory in nature (Ndonga, 2015;Strydom, 2010;Van Huysteen & Strydom, 2015) with developmental and preventative programmes being dependent on the time remaining after the provision of statutory services. The inadequate funding of services delivered by NGOs was raised in all provinces during the review process of the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997).…”

“…Issues were related to insufficient funding for preventative and early intervention services, as well as the fact that funding was reduced in some provinces, which led to cutbacks in certain services (Department of Social Development, 2016). In consequence financial limitations as a result of neoliberalism continue to have a detrimental impact on service delivery (Knox Haly, 2010) and, sadly, the intended shift to preventative services has not taken place effectively (Ndonga, 2015;Strydom, 2010).…”

Social Workers’ Experiences With the South African Policy Manual on Family Preservation Services

“…Various authors share similar views with regard to the nature of these services that they are family centred, have a crisis orientation, being of short duration and delivered in the home (Strydom, 2010;Berry, 1999;Puyenbroeck, Loots, Grietens, Jacquet, Vanderfaeillie, andEscudero, 2009 andDSD, 2008b). Due to several broad definitions presented in the Manual, the study revealed that social workers reflect vague knowledge and understanding of the definition of the concept of family preservation services.…”

“…The issue of high case-loads is directly linked to a shortage of social workers, as well as high turnover among social workers in NGOs (Strydom, 2010).…”