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Send a message to the Minister of Finance!!!!!

ForumYour Forum is continuing to campaign for improved national and provincial budgets for social welfare services delivered by NPOs. Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan has invited people to send him suggestions for the national budget, and we propose to do just that! Let's deluge him with suggestions from our sector while he prepares his budget speech for 17 February!

Please send the MInister a message calling for a large allocation for every province, to enable all of them to improve funding for their social welfare NPO partners. This must be a conditional grant - i.e. a ring-fenced allocation that has to be spent as specified, and cannot be diverted into health services, or go into the provincial pot to be used as the provincial government chooses. In your message, please make a brief but strong statement about what your organisation does, and what the effect is on the people you serve of your services being inadequately funded. If you have had to shut down or cut back a service, please highlight this.

You can send the message via the Treasury website, on www.treasury.gov.za, via the "Budget Tips for 2010" button which is near the top of the page.

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Call for Interest: Creating a new Legislative Environment...
Call for Interest: Creating a new Legislative Environment for Social Welfare and Development Services in South Africa

An opportunity currently exists for developing a new legislative environment for social and development services in South Africa. Many NGOs & CBOs provide core social and development services, or work in this arena, providing and contributing to critical care for poor and marginalised communities and our society in general.  Right now, there is an absence of legislation regarding the non-profit sector, particularly in the area of social and development services.

The current legislative frameworks have left a vacuum in guiding the relationship between the Department of Social Development and organisations, the provision of funding for NGOs and CBOs, a shared vision and purpose for social services and development and the registration of social service organisations.

Development of a new framework could provide clarity for areas such as:
  • The creation of an enabling framework for social service and development practice through a genuinely consultative process,
  • Discussion and development of human resources policies that relate to critical issues, such as, the recruitment and retention of scarce social service workers in the NGO sector
  • Discussion and development of financing strategies for the sector including costing models and parity between government and the non-profit sector.
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Minister of Social Development Calls for Cooperation...

edna-molewa

Minister of Social Development Calls for Cooperation between Government and NGO’s providing Critical Social and Development Services

On 6 November, key national social work structures, and representatives and members of the social services sector, were invited to a Round-Table meeting with the Minister of Social Development, Ms. Edna Molewa.  The meeting indicated that government is finally beginning to acknowledge the value of the social services and development provided by the non-governmental (NGO) sector.

Minister Molewa expressed gratitude to the sector for the “sterling work” it did in helping the Department of Social Development meet its mandate. The meeting discussed the critical role of the Social Work Profession in South Africa, paying particular attention to the recruitment and retention of social workers.

The Minister said that the salary discrepancies between social workers in government and those in the NGO sector were creating an exodus of staff in search of better employment opportunities in government, and that it was necessary to consider the introduction of a recruitment and retention strategy for social workers in the NGO sector. On 28 August, thousands of social service workers presented memorandums to provincial offices around the country requesting ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’, so the recognition of the urgent need for a recruitment and retention strategy for social workers in the NGO sector is welcomed.

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Call for Emergency Provision for NPO Funding

Beulah LumkwanaThe National Welfare Forum (NWF) and the National Coalition for Social Services (NACOSS) represent the majority of subsidised social welfare NPOs in the country, along with many unsubsidised organisations, and in partnership work together to address social service delivery provision in South Africa as the Joint Strategic Committee (JSC), we request your assistance as Minister of Finance to provide critical emergency funding to the sector through the Adjustment Appropriation Bill.

On 28 August 2009, marches and other actions by provincial structures associated with our organisations took place in almost all provinces in our country, with strong support from trade unions in some regions. In all cases, the call was for a new dispensation for the funding of essential social services delivered by non-profit organisations (NPOs), on which Government is reliant for the delivery of most of the country’s social services.

Memoranda were delivered to provincial Premiers, MECs for Finance and MECs for Social Development, describing the financial crisis in which this sector finds itself. Currently, many organisations countrywide are threatened with closure or with having to terminate or cut back essential services that are required by the Constitution and numerous laws and policies. Such a situation clearly undermines the fundamental rights of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, as can be seen from the attached outline of the sector remit.

A feature of the crisis is a continuous and massive loss of staff by NPOs, resulting from the huge gap between salaries earned by social service practitioners and support staff in their employ, and those earned by their counterparts in the public service. In addition to being fundamentally unjust, this gap has a catastrophic impact on the ability of the NPOs to deliver effectively. Hence, a central call was for funding increases to allow for equal pay for equal work.
 
The NWF, on behalf of the JSC, calls on the National Treasury to use the Adjustment Appropriation Bill to provide for an urgent allocation of additional ring-fenced funds to every province to afford immediate relief to social welfare NPOs as an interim measure, while a new, just and realistic funding dispensation is developed. The subsidy framework which is in place in Limpopo, and which is far in advance of those in the rest of the country, would be a logical basis for calculating this interim allocation.

We thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yours sincerely,
 
Mrs Beulah Lumkwana, Chairperson, NWF
For and on behalf of the Joint Strategic Committee

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