As International Child and Youth Care Work Week draws to a close, the Democratic Alliance in the Eastern Cape pays tribute to the child and youth care workers, auxiliary child and youth care workers, social workers, and NGO staff who carry some of the province’s most difficult and emotionally demanding work.
Social Development MEC Bukiwe Fanta must use this week as a turning point by publishing a practical support plan for child and youth care services in the Eastern Cape.
These are the people who stand with children who have been abused, neglected, abandoned, orphaned, displaced, or placed in alternative care. They work in child and youth care centres, community-based programmes, child protection services, shelters, and family support systems. Much of this work happens far from public attention, but its value is measured in lives stabilised, children protected, and families given another chance.
This year’s theme, “Caring, Connecting and Advocating in Troubled Times”, is painfully relevant in the Eastern Cape. Poverty, hunger, substance abuse, family breakdown, violence, and neglect continue to place enormous pressure on children and the people responsible for protecting them.
The NGO sector remains one of the province’s most important child protection partners. Many organisations provide residential care, drop-in services, family support, therapeutic care, and community-based protection services in places where government reach is limited. These organisations cannot be treated as optional extras in the social development system. They are part of the frontline safety net for vulnerable children.
The same is true for DSD social workers and social service professionals, who often operate under intense caseload pressure, limited resources, difficult working conditions, and growing community need. Their commitment deserves recognition, but recognition without support does little to strengthen the system.
I have written to the Social Development MEC, Bukiwe Fanta, requesting that her department publish a practical support plan for child and youth care services in the Eastern Cape.
This plan should include reliable subsidy payment timelines for funded NGOs, clear communication with child and youth care centres, support for organisations struggling with compliance requirements, measures to reduce avoidable administrative delays, and a transparent update on social worker capacity in each district.
The department’s own documents recognise that child and family care services depend on partnerships with civil society organisations. That partnership must be visible in the way the department funds, communicates with, monitors, and supports the organisations doing this work every day.
The DA will continue to monitor the department’s support for child and youth care services, including funding for NGOs, social workers’ capacity, and the conditions under which vulnerable children are cared for.
The children of the Eastern Cape need a protection system that works before a crisis strikes. That starts with supporting the people and organisations already holding that system together.