Thousands of unemployed South African youths and an embattled social services sector will benefit from a bilateral cooperation agreement signed between the department of social development and the government of Cuba.
Under the agreement just more than 9 000 auxiliary social workers will be trained in the next year in a move to provide relief to overworked social workers.
A typical local social worker is responsible for between 300 and 500 cases — up to eight times the ideal of 60.
The details of the package, including where the training will take place, still have to be negotiated following the signing ceremony in Havana two weeks ago by Minister of Social Services Zola Skweyiya and Cuban Minister of Labour and Social Security Alfredo Morales Cartaya. Social workers welcomed the agreement.
Jackie Loffell, the advocacy coordinator at the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, said: ‘Our social welfare and development sector is in the grip of a huge social personnel crisis and we need all the help we can get to address this.â€
Loffell said social workers were battling. ‘In 2000 there were about 49 000 children in court-ordered foster care. By early this year there were 400 000 — an increase of 700% in seven years.â€
The agreement with Cuba envisages that the jobless youth — to be trained as social auxiliary workers — will come from rural and poor communities. In South Africa young people make up the largest part of the unemployed.
The department of social development’s spokesperson, Lakela Kaunda, said South Africa needs at least 16 000 social workers in the next three years. In addition to ‘various social challengesâ€, the Childrens’ Act was passed recently.
The successful implementation of the Act will require a brigade of well-trained social workers, she said.
The department wants to train 9 360 social auxiliary workers by 2010 — about 1 000 youths per province. Upon completion of their training, the youths will be deployed in their communities to help the department to deliver services to the poor, Kaunda said. Cuba’s spokesperson in South Africa, Liber Puente Baro, said the agreement would cement the ‘good bilateral relations†established between the two countries since 1994.
Cuba already runs a ‘two-pronged work training programme comprising a formal university-level programme and a rapid 12-month social work training programmeâ€. The idea is to ‘replicate†this model in South Africa to reduce the critical shortage of social workers.
Baro said the curriculum will cover areas like social security and social assistance, services to vulnerable groups including children, the elderly, the youth, women and people with disabilities, poverty mitigation, community development and training of social services professionals in various fields.
The registrar of the South Africa Council of Social Service Professions, Iveda Smith, welcomed the agreement. The council regulates the social services sector.
She said the need for auxiliary social workers who can do time-consuming legwork, such as making the initial home visits and accompanying children to hospital, was identified 10 years ago and the council introduced a 12-month programme at further education and training college level. Entry to the course is open to learners who have passed grade 10.
The price tag
In the past similar training has cost about R27 000 per learner over a 12-month period. The cost relates to the training of learners drawn from the ranks of the unemployed, who were entirely sponsored for the duration of the training.
From the total cost, R8 000 went directly to training, while R1 500 covered monthly stipends and the rest paid for other essentials, like transport and accommodation.
Assuming the number of trainees is confirmed, and using the total cost of past years as a benchmark, it will not be far off the mark to suggests the total cost of the training programme could be almost R1-billion.