Doctoral Degrees (Social Work)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Social Work) by Subject "Child caregivers -- South Africa"

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    The rights of child-headed households to care and protection: reflections of role players on social service delivery
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Diago, Niccoh ; Strydom, Marianne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Across the world, there are many children who are left behind in child-headed households by their parents due to socio-economic challenges, illness, death, or general neglect. In South Africa, children living in child-headed households not only have to cope with going through life without their caregivers; they are also vulnerable to violence, abuse, crime, and a lack of social services. However, in terms of South African legislation and international treaties, social workers must ensure that child-headed households are cared for and protected. It was established that, in South Africa, there was no general research or research from a social work perspective on the rights of children in child-headed households to care and protection or about social services delivered to such households. This indicated that there was a possible lack of appropriate social services available to children living in child-headed households, which thus formed the topic of this study. In order to highlight the injustice, inequality, and poverty of child-headed households as well as how they are marginalised or excluded in society, the human rights-based perspective was applied in this study. This approach also served as a guide in the implementation of remedial strategies. To identify the possible services that should be rendered to child-headed households, based on the identified circumstances, the ecological systems perspective was further utilised. With this study a qualitative research approach was applied as it was an exploratory and a descriptive study within a purposive sample selection of seventeen social workers and five social worker supervisors in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Eastern Cape and one designated person of the provincial Department of Social Development. The primary research instrument utilised in this study and that was based on themes emerging from literature, was the semistructured interview schedule. Ten themes were derived from the participant interviews by way of thematic analysis. These themes were then further divided into subthemes and categories. The study revealed that children living in child-headed households were exposed to emotional difficulties and traumatic situations due to the loss of their parents, sexual abuse, and them having to assume adult responsibilities. It became clear that these children needed emotional support and nurturing households as well as counselling services. It was brought to light that other services, such as appointing adult caregivers and rendering family counselling services were difficult to deliver to these children due to social workers’ high caseloads and lack of resources such as vehicles. It was also found that these children received minimal support from extended families and as a result they were socially burdened and would engage in underage drinking and smoking, drop out of school, and in the case of girls, were vulnerable to early teenage pregnancy. It was revealed that, as these children were exposed to poverty and food deprivation and lived in inadequate shelters they needed sufficient income, sustainable food packages and adequate shelter. It was further found that child-headed households could not be regarded as a protective measure, as this form of household did not consider the best interests of these children because many of their rights were being infringed upon. This was exacerbated due to social workers who found it increasingly difficult to deliver social services to child-headed households as these social workers were exposed to multiple challenges, such as high caseloads, staff shortages, transportation shortages and limited funding. It is recommended that sufficient funding be provided to designated child welfare non-profit organisations and that more social workers should be employed to ensure that effective social services are delivered to children living in child-headed households. Finally, due to the grave and difficult circumstances that children of child-headed households are exposed to, there seems to be a need to revise and adapt the current legislation and consider children living in child-headed households to be children in need of care and protection in line with section 150(1) of the Children’s Act of South Africa.