South Africa faces shocking shortage of thousands of social workers

Please find an attached soundbite by Gizella Opperman MP.

The Department of Social Development (DSD) revealed, in answer to a question from the DA during deliberations on the Children’s Amendment Bill (CAB), that South Africa has a shortage of at least 52 500 social workers. The country currently has 17 500 social workers who provide services, but we need 70 000 to implement the CAB alone.

In 2003, social work was already declared a scarce skill and critical profession by government. It was the insufficient number of magistrates and social workers to process applications that caused the backlog of processing foster grant applications in 2006.

It is unacceptable that while the current pool of suitably qualified social workers are insufficient to meet the demand in South Africa, more than 9 000 qualified social workers are unemployed due to due to funding constraints, lack of capacity and a lack of adequate tools of the trade within the DSD.

According to government, about 5 000 social workers need to employed to implement substance abuse legislation, and a further 3 000 to implement the Older Person’s Act. The costing of social workers to implement gender-based violence (GBV) legislation, as well as the Social Development Bill currently under development, still needs to be done. And while the demand for new psychosocial services increased over the past decade, the number of social workers to address the issue never increased.

Unmet demand for social workers are resulting in unavoidable negligence due to high caseloads and under-implementation of the State’s welfare services.

The DA recommends that all social worker vacancies be funded as a matter of urgency; an increase to the number of auxiliary social workers; improved general working conditions; increased student registration into social work; and raising the image, salaries, and status of the social work profession.

Without the necessary social workers, government would never be able to fulfil its welfare obligations to the poor and vulnerable.