Department Of Social Development Gauteng, Social Development works to ensure that the needs of the vulnerable members of our society are catered for. These include planning, implementing, coordinating, and monitoring the delivery of developmental social welfare services to our communities.
Mandate of the Department
The Department of Social Development operates within the mandate from national policy and legislative frameworks. The functional mandate of the Department of Social Development is derived from the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997) and White Paper for Population Policy for South Africa (1998). According to the first White Paper(1997), the provincial departments of welfare will primarily be responsible for the following functions in conjunction with the relevant governance structures:
- Provincial policy and planning: To formulate, coordinate, maintain and review provincial policy and planning in consultation with all stakeholders.
- Legislation: To review, formulate and administer social welfare legislation within the framework of the national policy.
- Social welfare services: To plan, implement, co-ordinate, and monitor the delivery of developmental social welfare services; to implement and monitor programmes in accordance with national norms and standards; and to develop and render specific services.
- Social welfare governance structures: To initiate and facilitate the development and maintenance of social welfare governance structures.
- Social security: To administer an equitable and appropriate social security system.
- Funding: To negotiate for provincial funding and to maintain financial management systems; to administer disaster and relief funds; to regulate fundraising at the provincial level; to finance social welfare programmes provided by organisations in accordance with national policy and to formulate and review the criteria for such funding
Vision statement
A Caring and Self-reliant Society.
Mission statement
To transform our Society by building conscious and capable citizens through the provision of integrated Social Development services.
Strategic Objectives
The Ten Point Plan below reflects the priorities of the National Department of Social Development to which the Gauteng Department of Social Development subscribes:
- Restoration of the ethics of care and human development into all our programmes. This requires the urgent rebuilding of family, community and social relations in order to promote social integration.
- Implementation of an integrated poverty eradication strategy that provides direct benefits to those who are in greatest need with a sustainable development approach. This entails addressing poverty in rural and urban areas with the prime beneficiaries being women, youth and children. This requires that all our programmes support this orientation.
- Develop a comprehensive social security system that links contributory and non-contributory schemes and prioritises the most vulnerable households. Such a system must reduce dependency on non-contributory cash payments and give consideration to food security.
- We must respond to the brutal effects of violence against women and children as well as effective strategies to deal with perpetrators.
- Our welfare programmes must include the provision of a range of services to support the community-based care and support for people living with HIV / Aids as well as those affected, such as AIDS Orphans.
- Urgent attention needs to be given to the development of a national strategy to reduce youth criminality and youth unemployment within the framework of the National Crime Prevention Strategy.
- Making social welfare services accessible and available to people in rural, peri-urban and informal settlements as well as ensuring equity in service provision is critical to the transformation process.
- Redesign services to people with disabilities in ways that promote their human rights and economic development.
- All work must be based on a commitment to co-operative governance that includes working with different tiers of government and civil society. The Department will work in partnership with communities, organisations and institutions of civil society. A particular challenge here is to work with organisations that are located and have competencies to reach beneficiaries. Capacity will have to be built where needed and will result in re-allocation of resources.
- Train, educate, redeploy and employ a new category of workers in social development to respond to the realities of South Africa’s crisis. Review the training and reorientation of social service workers to meet the developmental challenges of South Africa and link these to our regional and global demands.