Social Development
In the light of the ever-increasing socio-economic pressures facing communities across the province:
How is his Department ensuring that all communities are adequately supported and coordinated by delivering accessible and effective social services to individuals and families in need?
The Department ensures service access to vulnerable communities through six regional offices, and a spread of local offices including 48 service points, 3 mobile offices and 9 government-owned facilities. Within the rural areas where accessibility is often complicated by distance, the Department has established a service delivery team per local municipality supported by the mobile offices. Additionally, the Department funds over 1 000 NPOs that render a range of social development services to the public. Through this extensive network, the Department ensures that services are brought closer to communities to assist those most in need.
The Department utilises data to inform and guide the planning and implementation of services. This includes demographic data, spatial data and service trends data, and a range of non-financial data from NPOs and service points. The Department actively participates in the Joint Operations Centre (JOC) to ensure optimal coordination of support to citizens made vulnerable by disasters. Further, an after hours child protection emergency line is in operation. This line has however also been used to report cases of abuse of other vulnerable groups, where urgent intervention is needed.
The Department has institutionalized several service delivery monitoring mechanisms for both own services and funded NPOs. Within own services this includes monitoring of the implementation and compliance the generic norms and standards for social welfare services, which includes the generic intervention process and supervision framework process, as well as compliance with norms and standards at facilities. The performance of funded NPOs is monitored through desktop and onsite monitoring, including unannounced visits, supported by monitoring tools, to ensure public funds are utilised appropriately for the benefit of the most vulnerable.
To enable citizen engagement with the Department on service experiences and needs, a toll free call centre line is available for reports, compliments and complaints, and customer care officials are also deployed at all service points. A Customer Care standard operating procedure guides the management of client complaints and enquiries at regional and programme levels as well as the call centre and documents the Department’s Customer Care Services Standards.
