Maria David
THERE is an insufficient number of social workers in the country to respond to all reported occurrences of child abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
This was revealed by Minister of Gender, Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Doreen Sioka, during a consultative meeting on the amendments of the Child Care and Protection Act held in Ongwediva on Wednesday.
According to Sioka, her ministry has employed a total of 83 social workers across the country to meet the needs of children.
This number translates to about one social worker for every 13 000 children.
“This emphasises the magnitude of the task that our social workers face in resolving our social concerns,” she said.
Sioka said there is an urgent need to expand the number of social workers to at least 242, or at least one social worker for each constituency.
Sioka added that with the existing staff complement, they are unable to offer social workers to all constituencies, with some social workers serving two or three constituencies at a time.
This means that social workers can only deal with crises and often cannot probe deeper into issue of abuse, neglect and exploitation.
“This makes it hard to deliver comprehensive services and to complete their investigations into allegations of child abuse and exploitation within the time frame specified,” she said.
Between 2019 and 2021, social workers in the country dealt with a total of 293 cases of abandoned or baby dumping, 1 587 cases of children neglected by their parents, 883 cases of children who were physically abused, and 1 566 children who were sexually assaulted.
During the reporting period, social workers from the Gender-Based Violence Protection Units also offered psychosocial help to a total of 3 122 children and their families.
“This data does not include services delivered to children who are not enrolled in GBV Units,” she said.
Sioka further explained that the CCPA amendments are intended to strengthen the administration of justice for children, remove policy gaps, and ensure that the Act is resilient and responsive to the changing needs of Namibian children.
