Mail & Guardian reporter
The Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security is calling on the government to move the age limit for child support grants from age seven to 18 years and to take cognisance of the needs of children affected by HIV/Aids.
These recommendations emerged at a ground-breaking social security workshop in Cape Town last week, convened by the University of Cape Town’s Child Health Policy Institute, Soul City and the Children’s Rights Centre. They will feed into the government’s transformation of the present social security system. The alliance is a new and influential grouping of civil society organisations, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions and key role players in the children’s sector. At the workshop, the alliance noted a growing crisis among South Africa’s children, nearly two-thirds of whom live in poverty. At present only one-third of children targeted receive the R100-a-month child support grant. This translates to only 7% of children in need who get any assistance, with many children unable to access the grants. The bid to raise the age limit to 18 is viewed as an emergency measure. In addition the alliance has called for the increase of the child support grant to a more realistic amount, linked to an objective poverty measure and to the costs of providing for the basic needs of the child. And the care dependency grant should be immediately extended to all children infected with HIV/Aids. The groups of children in immediate need are those who are affected by HIV/Aids, such as Aids orphans; all child-headed households; and street children.
At present less than 10% of the whole social security budget is allocated to children. The alliance has called for a fairer balance in the distribution of resources. “The first call must be to children,” said Teresa Guthrie, senior policy researcher for the Child Health Policy Institute. “This is what the government is constitutionally bound to.”
Other recommendations for the transformation of social security include the provision of a basic income grant for adults and children as well as an additional grant for children with special needs due to a health condition or a compromised home circumstance, such as children orphaned by the Aids/HIV pandemic. Fezile Makiwane, chief director of social security within the Department of Social Development, said the alliance’s recommendations, both immediate and for the longer term, are important and meet with his department’s approval. “Civil society and academics got together last week to make children the first call in poverty alleviation, and they debated this from the grassroots … The Constitution places an enormous emphasis in terms of the protection of the rights of the child and we have ratified international instruments in this regard. So the development of this alliance is very useful.” Dr Shereen Usdin of Soul City argued that “the onus is on the state to ensure that the money and resources to protect children’s rights are made available. South Africa is constitutionally bound to prioritise children in the budget.”
The present system of grants for children fails in many areas; for example, nearly half of South Africa’s children do not have birth certificates, a current prerequisite to receiving the grants. “In one small district in the Eastern Cape, for example, there are scores of children who should qualify and they and their families are in desperate need of the present grant,” said Dr David Sanders of the public health programme at the University of the Western Cape. “But they are unable to get it, mainly because of various bureaucratic obstacles to even apply for them. Others are too poor to pay for transport to apply for grants.” Yvonne Spain, coordinator of the Children in Distress Network in KwaZulu-Natal, said the biggest single impediment to children getting access to the present grants lies with the Department of Home Affairs. “I would urge the minister to work closely with the department of social development to streamline the processes.”