The Linc Fellowship has provided initial setup costs to support CWSA's child-headed households project in Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape province. Currently the Linc Fellowship provides technical support to the project. The support that they have rendered is meant to enable CWSA to take test cases to the district court to enable those heading households to access the foster care grant. In May 2011, CWSA and the Linc Fellowship visited some of the CWSA programmes in the area to assess progress.

Port St Johns has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the country and in 2001, it was declared one of the presidential poverty nodes sections of the country that is recognised as severely underdeveloped and needing urgent attention.

CWSA has been working with the children in Port St Johns for many years and has recently set up a local office in the area. However, funding from the Linc Fellowship – a professional network of individuals working in the children’s sector, has helped deepen the work being done here.

CWSA’s in partnership with the National Association of Child Care Workers (NACCW) and the Linc Fellowship are piloting a community based project in response to the needs of child-headed households.   The team met in Port St Johns recently to evaluate progress and plan going forward.

The project seeks to put in action the section of the Children’s Act (2009) that allows for a 16-year old or older child to assume care responsibilities for their siblings.  In order to allow such an arrangement, an adult or supervising adult must be designated by a social worker to oversee the household. This adult, according to the Act does not reside with the children but rather provides daily guidance and support.

The CWSA programme, Asibavikele: Let’s Protect Them is a pilot project in the Port St Johns community.  Asibavikele recruits and trains community volunteers in the identification and care of orphaned and vulnerable children, sensitises communities to the rights of children and establishes foster care and safe homes.

The proposed model for providing support to child-headed household involves selecting suitable candidates from the existing pool of Asibavikele community volunteers to take on the responsibilities of ‘designated adult caregivers’ or supervising adults and providing them with additional training and support. Community volunteers assigned to oversee children in a child-headed household need to be equipped with additional skills to ensure that they provide the best care possible. 

Trained community volunteers and Child and Youth Care Workers are deployed to provide the necessary care, support and guidance to children heading households.  The project not only displays service delivery to this vulnerable group but reflect how a multi-disciplinary team consisting of Social Workers, Social Auxiliary Workers, Child and Youth Care Workers and communities work together in meeting the needs of children.

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