Children at risk as department fails to pay NGO subsidies

With non-governmental organisations running out of money for petrol and salaries, child welfare organisations have warned that the Eastern Cape’s child protection system is under severe threat as the department of social development again failed to pay subsidies.

The deputy chairperson of Child Welfare in the province, Dalene Ritter, said the majority of organisations providing foster care and child protection services had last received subsidies from the department in December.

She said this placed the foster care system under severe threat as all the cases currently being handled by NGOs and NPOs in the province would fall back to the department if these organisations closed down.

“NGO social workers are empowered to remove children from homes and place them in safety with foster parents or homes,” she said.

“They also look into the rehabilitation of the family. They have to provide constant reports to the courts on these children. If you miss a deadline it could place the child at severe risk,” Ritter said.

Irma Vermaak, from Child Welfare in Humansdorp, said they had two social workers and one assistant social worker serving an enormous rural area and none of them had been paid since December.

“We are not able to continue our work. Who will do the job?” she asked. Vermaak said social workers had to deal with cases in Humansdorp, drive about 80km to Clarkson, and also visits farms.

“We can’t drive without money and there are a lot of problems on the farms.”

She said the subsidy from the department was used solely to pay social workers.

“I think there are currently 140 children in foster care handled by the two of them,” she said. “That doesn’t include the work they do with alcohol and drug abuse, gangsterism and domestic violence.”

Dave Malherbe, who is the treasurer for Child Welfare in Kenton-on-Sea and Bushman’s River, said they last received a subsidy in October and had to scramble to find money to pay salaries. “In 2018 we only received 50% of the subsidies we were promised. We are owed six months of subsidies.

“We are in a desperate situation,” he said.

Malherbe’s own letters to the head of the department Ntombi Baart have gone unanswered.

“We look after 150 children every day. We run two houses and also after-school services. We also run a soup kitchen.”

The chairperson of the portfolio committee of social development in the Eastern Cape legislature, Christian Martin, said he had received a message from Baart after asking about the non-payment on Tuesday.

Martin said he had asked for a full analysis detailing which NPOs and NGOs had received payment and which had not.