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FILE | Shelter in Johannesburg.
Non-Governmental Organisation Helping Hands Assistant Social Worker Dickson Solomons says shelters alone are not the solution.
His remarks follow President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) commitment to scale up survivor-centred support, expand access to shelters and one-stop service centres, strengthen mobile and rural outreach, and place social workers in police stations.
Solomons questions the government’s ability to implement these promises. “If the government is just selling, we all can sell to people but execution, we want to see it happen, we don’t wanna hear about stories, we don’t want hear about dreams, we want to see them happen. It’s a beautiful thing to say that you want social workers in all police stations, what about the schools? The schools are also in trouble. What about the hospitals? The same challenge is there. So the SAPS is not the only place. Shelters is not always the solution because we want families to return back, what plan do they have when the families come back? And why only shelters?”
He adds that some organisations are still waiting for funding. “It’s like if you’re not friends with the people from the inside, you get nothing and you can sell a dream, it comes to execution. It sounds nice when you hear it on all that mobile and all those things, but on the floor currently, people have lost hope, especially in the government… Organisations that have been doing the work without funding are the ones that are still struggling. So again, for me, when it comes to, the President can say so many things. We will have to see what happens after the vote, or did he just say all that in order to win votes? ”
SHELTERS STRUGGLING
Solomons says, ” I can only tell you what’s happening on the floor, on the floor, Ikhaya Lethemba is a government shelter institution that’s been closed for a year. We had so many success stories that came out of that and we would like that program to continue because currently they’re closed, and now, there’s no funding for most of the shelters that have closed and the ones that are surviving are relying on handouts, meaning when you go to a shelter you have to give like a R 500 rand, 150 or something, or some of them don’t have anything, they just ask for groceries.”
He says, “That is what’s happening currently on the floor. We have Khulisa already placed in most of the police stations, Khulisa itself is also hanging by its thread because what happened is that some of them had to restructure after 2021 after COVID, but most of them didn’t get funds, they didn’t have clients, so we know how it was, so some of the branches closed, some people have lost.”
SOCIAL WORKERS
Solomons says social workers are sitting at home without jobs. “Currently, I’m between jobs. My old job don’t even have funding anymore. So I’m looking at a different organisation that I can do volunteer work with. I hope that they are going to assist me. I’m just an auxiliary. There are social workers with four or five degrees and they can’t get jobs. I still have a small family. You can imagine for them, some of my social worker friends don’t have jobs.”
Solomons adds, “They’re at home selling ice. They’re at home selling fat cakes and stuff. Others are trying catering companies. So you have a skill set at home. Who’s going to do the recruitment and where do they start? Because if you want social workers in all the safe places, the police stations. Well, where do you start? Who do you employ? Are you looking at brand new kids that just finished their studies or are you going to start with the older ones? That’s been years now outside doing social work and selling fat cake at the same time. You saw on the street polls how they’re standing there with their degrees and with their cloaks. That’s a reality, my friend. I don’t know where we’re going to apply.”
