Minister Lindiwe Zulu was asked to introduce a new child grant to close the gap between the care grant and child benefit. Archive photo: Barbara Maregele

• Several organizations have asked Minister Lindiwe Zulu to introduce a new child benefit.
• This would be possible with regard to changes to the Social Welfare Act, which can currently be commented on publicly.
• The top-up grant would partially close the gap between the Foster Care Grant and the Child Support Grant.
• Civil society organizations say this will reduce the lag in the care system.

Civil society organizations have asked Minister Lindiwe Zulu to introduce child benefit for orphans in the care of large families.

They say this is a necessary step to remove the care backlog and the increasing workload on social workers.

The draft amendments to the Social Assistance Act provide that the minister will prescribe additional payments related to a social grant as needed. Another change concerns the establishment of an independent tribunal to review grantees’ complaints against the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA).

In a statement, the Children’s Institute, the Center for Child Rights, Child Welfare in South Africa, the Children in Distress Network and the Black Sash Zulu have called on the introduction of a top-up scholarship. The top-up grant is intended to help orphans whose carers receive the child benefit grant but who do not have access to the foster child grant, either because they have not completed any care applications (which can take up to three years) or because their order from the care court has expired. The child benefit is around R450 and the foster child grant is around Rl 1,040. The top-up grant would cover part of the difference.

Paula Proudlock of the Children’s Institute said the top-up scholarship would mean extended family members caring for orphaned children would not have to wait years for care applications to be filled out, but could go straight to SASSA.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, it would take a year to three years for a care application to be completed, with the stalemate mainly due to the workload of social workers.

“We don’t have enough social workers to handle the large number of children who need the care grant,” Proudlock said.

Zita Hansungule from the Center for Children’s Rights said that many of the children who apply for foster care do not need care because they live with an extended family. But because the care grant was so much more, some of these children were accepted into the care system. The top-up grant would allow these children to be removed from the care system while allowing their extended family members to provide adequate care.

Social workers would then have more time to actually provide care services for children who are abused and neglected. She said social workers often spent a lot of time administrative work to extend hundreds of nursing jobs.

According to Proudlock, the top-up grant will also reduce the risk of children in foster families losing their foster child grant every two years and getting stuck in a backlog of over 300,000 expired care orders.

Social workers have to seek foster care every two years – to write a report, go to court, and extend the grant for an additional two years. “And here’s the backlog,” she said.

If the court order expires after two years, SASSA will stop paying the foster child benefit as a court order is required for payment.

Proudlock said the charge would only be effective if the regulations weren’t too strict, such as if relatives were required to provide evidence of care they couldn’t provide.

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