THE ROLLER COASTER PROFESSION.....CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

There is again concern on social media that child and youth care workers are leaving the profession. This time,  having studied social work whilst employed, or are currently doing so, or are moving to education, or are simply leaving. Reduced numbers    can't be filled with the through flow of graduates or child and youth care workers with a Diplomas.This leaves vacant posts, or else, a compulsion for child and youth care workers at the auxiliary level to perform some of the more advanced tasks in the scopes of practice.

There was a book shown on Facebook last week called Social Work The Rise and Fall of a Profession. It's context is the UK, but I thought the title captured something of the trends in the child and youth care profession in South Africa. The cover of the book shows a roller coaster ...the upward hikes and the scary drops. In previous blogs, this analogy proved useful....the rises and the falls for us as child and youth care workers in South Africa has spanned decades.

The first Professional Board for Child and Youth Care was inaugurated in 1998 after years of being statutorily in the Council for Social Service Professions Act. The first five years were spent drafting regulations for the registration of child and youth care workers at the Auxiliary and the Professional levels. The scopes of practice became a hurdle. The question was always, how does child and youth care practice differ from other helping professions and does it have enough original content to make it a separate profession? Was child and youth care yet a profession or an emerging profession, or an occupation that needed to first be an extension of the arm of other "established" social service professions. It was an ongoing debate.

Academics saw child and youth care as belonging in their various academic departments....Social Work, Psychology, Mental Health Care. All this resulted in there being no elected Professional Board for Child and Youth Care for a full 5 year term. No warm bodies.....No Board. The Department of Social Development came to the rescue and funded an "Interim Committee/Board" which functioned to continue the work in the interregnum.  

The 18th draft of the proposed regulations was signed into law in October 2013.
( See: Lodge. B. 2015 Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, Professionalisation of Child and Youth Care Work in South Africa Vol 28, No4, p5.)

It was in that period that Social Work was declared a scarce skill     (and a critical skill). Like the UK, it was experiencing a "down". Poor salaries resulted in numbers of social workers drifting away....leaving the profession for industry or the UK. Study bursaries were made available to offset the dwindling numbers. It worked. Some say that it worked too well as there was a time when we had unemployed auxiliary and graduate Social Workers. I am saying this because bursaries for university study were not available for child and youth care workers at that time and the University of South Africa shut down it's child and youth care degree. 

A very successful model for community-based care called Isibindi was designed and rolled out nationally by the National Association of Child  Care Workers ( NACCW). This provided employment of large numbers of child and youth care workers and learners at the auxiliary level. In 2013, the then Minister of Social Development undertook to adopt Isibindi as a national  model. The Department financed the training of 10,000 child and youth care learners.The learners were paid a stipend and required to register with the South African Council for Social Service Professionals.The agreement was that for 5 years the NACCW would be the training service provider and employ the mentors to ensure the continuity and standards of the model. . In the five year period social media hosted expressions of disappointment by child and youth care workers in comments that they struggled to find appointments into the more senior posts.

The contract ended in March of 2018.

Social media exploded. Some Provincial Departments announced a "dry season"....no funds...no pay.  Delayed payments of stipends, suspended training. Some projects closed. Qualified child and youth care workers at the auxiliary level were still paid learner stipends. Monies in the community based projects bore no comparison with child and youth care workers in residential facilities.

Here began the drift, reminiscent of the social work crisis of 2012/2013.

In 2017, National strike action was taken. It lasted 6 weeks The trade union had a 13 point list of demands. They included better and equal salaries for all social service practitioners, the removal of the ceiling placed on the salaries of child and youth care workers at levels 4,5 and 6 on the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD). It was agreed that these demands would be met on the 31st October 2017. The date came and went and were not implemented. Apparently changes to the OSD have to be made at a very high level in the National structure and can or do take a very long time to fix. 

This week on social media, it seems that child and youth care workers may be running out of patience. It was said ...they can't wait.

This brings us to this week's social media posts.

The move of child and youth care workers out of the profession is a matter of concern. In one province it was said ... Yesterday only 38 child and youth care workers were transferred to Social work.
More are doing social work studies at the auxiliary level.
" Our profession is dying a slow and painful death". Social media comment speaks of confused and mixed emotions. Even now, one child and youth care workers in one of the provinces said that in their project they had not been paid since October of last year. (Sometimes this can be a problem within the holding agency)

There is evidence of a lift. Training and compulsory training is emerging. An Isibindi styled model is underway. There is talk of more universities interested in offering a professional degree in child and youth care work. Some provinces, it was said, will or have made increases in salaries  ( if little)

AND the resilience and loyalty of child and youth care workers to serve the best interests of the nation's children persists as a beacon of inspirational light. Child and youth care workers are encouraging each other not to become despondent, but to hang in. Feels as if they are anticipating another haul upward on the roller coaster.