Leatt, Annie

English

Cape Town University OpenUCT

This was the question that theChildren’s Institute tried to answerin a new working paper calledGranting Assistance: An analysis ofthe Child Support Grant and itsextension to seven and eight yearolds. For this paper we asked thedepartment of social developmentto provide us with reports for allgrants at the end of each month,and for the special reports pro-duced through SOCPEN for thepurposes of recording the exten-sion of the Child Support Grant.With this administrative informationwe were able to answer a whole lotof questions about how many chil-dren got the grant and under whatcircumstances. By the end of March 2004, nearly4.3 million children were getting aCSG every month. This is up from2.6 million children one year earlier- which is a massive 62% increase.The biggest increase camethrough the extension, and884,026 children aged seven andeight started receiving the grantfrom April 2003 to March 2004.Many more children up to the ageof six also managed to get thegrant, and in fact the numbersincreased by 29%.It is very pleasing that so many newchildren were able to access theChild Support Grant. But just know-ing the numbers does not tell us ifeveryone who should be able toget the grant did, and which fami-lies couldn’t manage to get grants.Further investigations revealed thaton a national average, 85% of poorchildren (using a poverty line of R215 per month per person) agedseven and eight were able to get agrant. However, the findings inHow good is servicedelivery now?The Grant’s barometer: The graphshows how many children were registered for the Child Support Grantas at the end of May 2004* Number of poor children aged 0-7in South Africa (Woolaard, in Leatt,A. Granting Assistance, May 2004)March 19980 million1,5 million2,2 million3,4 million4 millionOct 2001Oct 2002July 2003May 2004some provinces were much lowerthan this national average. Forexample, the Eastern Cape onlymanaged to deliver Child SupportGrants to 55% of eligible children inthis age group. On the other hand,Gauteng and the Western Cape didmuch better than the national aver-age. Almost 220,000 children registeredas newly eligible, but then fell offthe system once they reached theprescribed cut-off age, forcing themto reregister when the next age limitkicked in. This is wasteful and diffi-cult for care givers and theDepartment. Caregivers must makeat least a second trip to reapply. The minimum administrative costto the Department is R6.6 million.This is what it would cost to give anextra 3,500 children the CSG for ayear. Because of this, one of therecommendations of the report isthat the department should changethe way it interprets the regulationsso that once a child is registeredfor a grant, they do not fall off againuntil they reach the upper age limit,which is 14. Having looked at these, and otherissues, the Children’s Institutemade a number of recommenda-tions to the Department to improvethe rollout this year to 9 and 10year olds. This  included workingclosely with the provinces withlower uptake to support improvedaccess to more children in the nextyears of the rollout. . The CI alsocongratulated the Department,ACESS, church groups, CBOs andcare givers on their hard workwhich has resulted in so manymore children accessing the CSG. How much are children’s grantsAs at 1 April 2004:CSG - R 170.00 per monthCDG - R 740.00 per monthFCG - R 530.00 per monthService deliveryHow did the first year of the CSG extension go?Extracted from an article by Annie Leatt, the Chidlren’s Institute, UCT. For a complete copy go to www.uct.ac.za/depts/ci or contactAnthea@rmh.uct.ac.za.  13+*million children16

How good is service delivery now?

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