Official reply:
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
QUESTION 1738/2013
FOR WRITTEN REPLY
Date of publication on internal question paper: 26 July 2013
Internal question paper no: 23
1738. Mr M Waters (DA) to ask the Minister of Social Development:
(a) What progress has her department made with the development of the
database of orphans and vulnerable children and (b) on what date will the
database be fully established?
NW2085E
Reply:
a) The National Department of Social Development currently does not have
the database of Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The following
developments have been made to keep records of orphans and vulnerable
children:
⢠Section 137 of the Childrenâs Act 38 of 2005 outlines a range of
statutory processes to be undertaken in relation to child-headed
households. At the core of these processes is the assessment and
recognition of the household as a child-headed household by a
provincial head of social development. Once the statutory process has
been completed, the details of the household must be captured on the
National Register for Child Headed Households. The Department has
already embarked on the process of developing this Register, which
will provide the number and details of both child-headed households
and youth headed households. The Register will be fully operational by
end of September 2013.
⢠The HIV and AIDS Chief Directorate, through the Home and Community
Based Care programme (HCBC) have trained Community caregivers (CCGs)
who conduct home visits, to identify and record OVCs at a Community
Based Organization (CBO) level. The CBO then reports the numbers to
the District and Provincial Departments. The provincial Departments
report the numbers of OVCs to the National Department.
⢠The Department of Social Development through the Chief Directorate:
HIV and AIDS have developed the Community Based Intervention
Monitoring System (CBIMS), an online reporting system for all CBO`s.
This Monitoring system will help in keeping the database of all
beneficiaries including Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The system
will be fully functional by March 2014.
⢠The Department of Social Development through the Chief Directorate:
HIV and AIDS have also developed Children Services Directory (CSD).
The Directory contains information on non-profit organizations that
are registered with the Department of Social Development, to provide
services and support to vulnerable children in South Africa. The CSD
is designed to help care givers, service providers and community
memberâs access services for Orphans and vulnerable children and for
referral purposes in every province of South Africa.
⢠Furthermore, the Department of Social Development has a Surveillance
System of Maternal orphans which is Institutionalized within the
Monitoring and Evaluation Unit. The Surveillance system of maternal
orphans uses data from both birth and death files extracted from the
Vital Registration System of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The
System is developed and institutionalized to track and report on the
creation of maternal orphans as well as to locate them by province and
district municipality on a continuous basis. The system is used to
match its data with other data sets, e.g. Socpen, Lurits (Learner Unit
Record Information System), to check the number of maternal orphans
receiving social grant and also attending school. According to the
Surveillance system there is a total of 1,346,300 maternal orphans in
the country. The System is able to provide data for the maternal
orphans only because the details of the child is matched with the
motherâs details which is provided during the birth registration
process while the fatherâs details is optional.
The table below illustrates the number of maternal orphans per province
from 2003 to 2013, according to the Department of Social Development
Surveillance system.
|Province |Surviving maternal orphans |
|Eastern Cape |222,431 |
|Free State |90,522 |
|Gauteng |214,813 |
|Kwazulu-Natal |350,293 |
|Limpopo |153,801 |
|Mpumalanga |113,582 |
|North West |98,517 |
|Northern Cape |30,824 |
|Western Cape |59,676 |
|Total |1,346,300 |
The above mentioned system was launched by the Minister of Social
Development in December 2010; and it is fully functional. The main aim of
the system is to identify and track maternal orphans by their geographical
location (province and district municipality). Furthermore, the system aims
to assist Social Development Sector and Social Development partners in
designing & implementing appropriate interventions to a growing number of
maternal orphans in South Africa.
b) Community Based Intervention Monitoring System (CBIMS) has been
developed and will be fully functional by March 2014.
The Register for Child Headed Households will be operational by end of
September 2013.