Ann Eveleth
Gauteng residents will have a “legal obligation” to care for their elderly parents, and could face fines of up to R50 000 or up to five years’ imprisonment if they are found to be “negligent”.
This is one of the proposals of the Securing the Future for Gauteng’s Elderly Bill – one of six draft Bills set to form the bedrock of the province’s welfare reform package.
The Bill aims to shift limited state resources from institutions for the aged to a community-based care system accessible to all. But it also gives Gauteng MEC for Welfare and Population Development Ignatius Jacobs the power to launch “legal action to compel the children of an elderly person to care for them”.
Deliberate abuse and neglect form separate categories of offences, with even stiffer penalties proposed for abuse of the elderly.
Jacobs said the Bill was “not intended to be punitive, but to encourage caring”.
However, Johannesburg Institute of Social Services director Alida Boshoff warned that the powers granted to the MEC sounded “very high-handed”.
“You can’t regulate everything by law and you can’t force people to look after their parents if they don’t want to,” she says.
Jacobs countered the Bill was “not advocating locking up people all over the show”.
“Elderly people have asked us what legal recourse they have if they are dumped at a home or cheated out of their assets,” she said.
“Right now the situation in the white community is when grandma and grandpa get old, they are put in a home. In the black community, the tendency is to keep them in the community.
“We are saying let’s keep the elderly, except those who require frail care, in the community where they can continue to make a contribution,” she said.
Gender commission head Phumelele Ntombela- Nzimande warned that the punitive proposals, although admirable, could have negative implications for women unless coupled with an increase in state resources for community-based care programmes for the elderly.
“I’m wary of the punitive aspect. The framework of community care is good, but care for the elderly is a complex issue. There must be a place where [elderly] people can go. Otherwise you go back to a situation where the woman is forced to stay at home to care for elderly parents,” she said.
Jacobs pointed to the recent growth of “luncheon clubs” for the elderly as a means of broadening community care and providing a monitoring system where the need for frail care and instances of abuse could be picked up.
But Osizweni Community Centre representative Laura Kganyago argued luncheon clubs were voluntary associations which did not receive government subsidies. Her organisation is one of a handful of multi- purpose centres catering for youth, women and the elderly.
“Another option was to have day-care drop-in centres for the elderly. But will the government finance that? We don’t know,” said Kganyago.
Three other Bills introduced by the Gauteng Department of Welfare and Population Development this week seek to address the issue of welfare funding, but have also drawn mixed reactions from organisations at the forefront of service delivery.
The Regional Social Welfare Institutes Bill aims to set up six regional institutes to co- ordinate the funding of the estimated 1 000 welfare organisations in the province.
But Jackie Loffell from the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society warned that this and other legislation currently under debate provided “draconian powers for the MEC” who would have the power to appoint the committees and the final say on appeals by organisations who were denied funding.
Loffell lauded the Bills as a “concerted attempt to promote equity in an accessibility of services throughout the province”.
But she warned that competition for access to a new social development fund envisioned by the Attaining Self- Reliance – A Social Development Fund Bill could foment “unprecedented division and conflict among social service bodies”.
Jacobs said these and other Bills introduced this week, including the Provincial-Local Government Welfare Relations Bill; the Erection and Administration of Street Children’s Shelters Bill and the Barrier-Free Access for Persons with Disabilities Bill, marked the “first step” toward a new social development model.