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Breaking down barriers to social support
 HIV/AIDS is sweeping illness and death through our country, robbing households and even whole communities of breadwinners and caregivers, and leaving grandparents and young children, who are in many cases ill and very poor, to fend for themselves or for each other. What is being done to ease the financial burdens placed upon these shoulders?
ACESS (Alliance for Children?s Entitlement to Society Security) is a national body of over 500 organisations mobilising for the reform of social policy for children in South Africa. Through raising awareness, providing updated information, networking in communities and training, it aims to empower poor people and those affected by HIV/AIDS with the knowledge they need to obtain social grants for themselves, their families, friends and neighbours. ACESS also fights for the rights of those who are unable to obtain these welfare funds; the Alliance calls for the Department of Social Development to accept alternative proof of identity (such as signed school reportcards) in cases where applicants do not have bar-coded ID-books or other required documents, and to provide help for transport costs to for those who cannot afford to get to the offices handling these applications.
The Department of Social Development is making efforts, despite the challenges of staff training, lack of administration capacity and increasing levels of false documents and social grant fraud (which costs the government over R1,5 billion per year), to widen its reach and ensure that more grants are made accessible to those in need. Minister Zola Skweyiya has committed his Department to strengthening families and households so that more children, as well as elderly and disabled citizens, can be supported, and has confirmed that assistance with transport costs is provided.
?By March this year,? he has said, ?over 7,7 million of the poorest of the poor received social grants; 10 years ago, only 2,6 million beneficiaries were recorded.? In order to speed up registrations of births and deaths, there are now 134 mobile Home Affairs Offices set up next to Social Development offices, and regular community outreach programmes target residents in deep rural areas. Information for the public about these efforts has been sent out through newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts. Pamphlets stating the new age limit (14 years old) to qualify for child support grants, and the dates on which this limit takes effect, are being distributed.
Thandanani Children?s Foundation (TCF) is a registered Non-Profit Organisation working in KZN to support and protect orphans and vulnerable children. TCF has noted that because of home births and HIV/AIDS in very poor communities, up to 50% of South Africa?s children to do not have birth certificates or identity books. These important documents are needed throughout one?s life, whether to apply for social grants, to enter the education system, to prove South African citizenship, to apply for a job, to get a driver?s licence, or to vote during elections.
Those who do not have them are, socially speaking, ?invisible?. To address this crisis, TCF is running a campaign called YOUR RIGHT from March to December 2004, and is offering, free to all, STEP-BY-STEP Guides in isiZulu, as well as posters and brochures, describing how to obtain a birth certificate and an ID-book. TCF will also be running educational workshops in communities, and publishing the guidelines in KZN?s The Witness and Echo newspapers to spread this information as far afield as possible.
If you wish to find out more and obtain free information materials, make contact with any of these partners in social support, by writing to or calling them as follows:
ACESS:
PATRICIA MARTIN Tel (021) 761 4938
Office 1, Suite 1, Findlay and Tait House
Corner of Gabriel and Main Roads, Plumstead 7800
Dept of Social Development:
TOLL-FREE HELP-LINE = 0800 60 10 11
Thandanani Children?s Foundation:
EMMA MORTIMER
Tel: (033) 345 1879
Private Bag X9005, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal 3200
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