South Africa: Government’s Social Development Response to Children Made Vulnerable by HIV/AIDS - identifying gaps in policy and budgeting

South Africa is one of the countries in the world most affected by HIV and AIDS. One of the effects of HIV and AIDS is the increasing the number of vulnerable children. Children are being made directly vulnerable by infection and related ill-health, or are orphaned when their parents die of the disease. This paper analyses the policy and budget action of one government department – social development – in relation to assistance for children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS and vulnerable children in general.

The paper begins by explaining the service delivery role of the social development department in relation to caring for children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. The paper discusses the child rights and legal context underpinning social development service delivery to vulnerable children. Next, the paper provides an overview of the policy framework developed to coordinate and guide social development service delivery to vulnerable children and identifies its shortfalls.

Shortcomings in the framework include:

• lack of comprehensive view of how all the parallel processes on policy, programming and identification of vulnerable children and coordination fit together
• lack of clear outline of how the National Action Committee for Children Affected by HIV and AIDS (NACCA) is to set up structures and the costs of implementation
• insufficient clarity about the extent of the support for the NACCA led plan from other quarters in government and from civil society organisations

The paper assesses budgeting for service delivery to children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. It explains how the public budgets allocated for social development interventions are determined, highlights the funding crisis that has built up over the years, and provides an overview of trends in budgets over the period 2004/05-2007/08

The paper concludes that social welfare services for all vulnerable children are not receiving enough public resources, and it is imperative from a child-rights and morality perspective, that vulnerable children can access social welfare services and income support. Finally, some recommendations about actions for addressing the gaps are offered. These include:

• development of more extensive and effective measures to raise the income capacity of poor families and communities caring for children affected by HIV and AIDS
• establishment of a more effective monitoring system in relation to care being provided by other children and carers in residential facilities
• adjustment of financing policy for social welfare service delivery to clarify the government’s responsibility to fund services delivered through the non-profit sector

Further information

• International Budget Project: Open Budget Index
• The International Budget Project: A Guide to Budget Work for NGOs
•  IDASA: Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard…Especially Not on Budget Issues
• Save the Children: Where's the Money Going? Monitoring Government and Donor Budgets
• Save the Children Sweden - Eastern and Central Africa Office: Good Governance and Budget Tracking from a Child Rights Perspective
• CRIN's page on rights-based approaches to budget monitoring