DISASTER RELIEF: CAREGIVERS LEFT BEHIND

FOOD security experts in South Africa warned early on that the lockdown instituted to manage the spread of Covid-19 would threaten children’s nutrition.

South Africa’s extensive social grants programme transfers close to 18 million grants to low income and vulnerable people each month. But it was unable to protect children and their households against shocks.

Covid-19 amplified the inequalities and vulnerabilities that already existed and drew attention to gaping holes in the safety net. These included the fact that the child support grant – R440 per month in 2020 – wasn’t enough to provide for a child’s nutritional needs.

The crisis also foregrounded the total absence of social grants for adults of working age (unless they had a disability), whatever the structural conditions that affected their lives.

There was some temporary relief in the form of a disaster relief package. It included a R300 top-up to the child support for just one month and R250 top-ups to the other existing grants for six months. It also included a new caregiver grant of R500 for five months and a Covid-19 social relief of distress grant of R350 per month for working age adults who were unemployed and not receiving any other grant.

The package of disaster relief grants was scheduled to last until October 2020. The October Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement included provisions for the extension of the social relief of distress grant, and a further extension was announced by the president this month.

But there were gaps. The grant topups were not extended after October and neither was the caregiver grant. Caregivers who received the child support grant for their children were excluded from applying for the social relief of distress grant for themselves.

UN human rights bodies have advised that families with children should be prioritised in material relief programmes. Yet there is no disaster relief for caregivers. There’s no allowance for them in the child support grant and there’s no recourse to the Covid-19 grant if the caregiver is unemployed.

This is an impossible paradox and it’s punitive to working-age caregivers, the vast majority of whom are women.

A strength of the child support grant is that it’s legislated as a permanent grant during ordinary times, not only during disaster, and therefore, it cannot be taken away. The Covid-19 social relief of distress grant is a temporary disaster relief grant. It can be reduced or discontinued at any time.

There are three recommendations that flow from this:

◆ The government must invest in increasing the child support grant.

◆ The Covid-19 social relief of distress grant must be changed into a permanent (legislated) income support grant for adults.

◆ The income support grant must be made available to unemployed caregivers, including those who receive the child support grant.

An increase in the value of the child support grant is key – if not to the level of the other grants, then at least to the food poverty line as a minimum benchmark. This needs to be complemented by programmes to support the nutrition and mental health of pregnant women, and service delivery improvements to ensure early uptake of the child support grant.

Tackling the persistent burden of malnutrition is an urgent imperative. It will be costly in the short term, but failure to do so will be too costly for children.

Children and the women who care for them can no longer be told to tighten their belts.