Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / This study investigates caregiver’s perceptions of the purposes, uses and adequacies of the Child Support Grant (CSG) in Mfuleni (Cape Town, South Africa). Moreover, the research was underpinned by the following research questions: What is the CSG intended for in South Africa? To what extent does the CSG enable caregivers to use it? What is the perception of caregivers with regards to the uses and purposes of the CSG in Mfuleni? What is the perception of caregivers regarding their power and agency to influence policy in terms of how the CSG should be structured (both in terms of benefit level and how it is administered)? A model by DFID (2011) focusing on the causal pathway for cash transfers was used as the conceptual framework for the study. Qualitative research methods were utilized to achieve the aims of the study. Ten interviews and a focus group discussion comprising six caregivers were conducted. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The study revealed that caregivers understood the CSG is proposed for children, households and being a source of income for caregivers. Caregivers also revealed the CSG was utilized towards the basic needs of children. Through the CSG many caregivers had agency and power in their household and could establish small businesses.

Magister Artium - MA / Cash transfers continue to be one of the tools used by many developing countries in order to alleviate poverty. South Africa was not left behind in applying this system. In 1998, the Government of South Africa introduced cash transfer programs in order to replace the old Social Maintenance Grant (SMG) that was available to single mothers when their husbands: die, get imprisoned, disabled or are untraceable. Also, this grant was supporting poor children during the apartheid era. In terms of children, the SMG did not achieve enough coverage, for instance, by 1990, it had assisted only 0.2% of African children and 1.5% of White children as well as 4.0% of Indian children and 4.8% of Coloured children (SASSA, 2012). However, the new democratic government managed to introduce a new program, which has now shown a very large achievement and has become one of the best social protection systems in Africa (UNICEF, 2012). Also, the new democratic government managed to expand the coverage to the children from age 0-16 to children of age18 years, including refugee children. With regards to refugees, after the fall of apartheid, the democratic Government of South Africa opened its doors to migrants and refugees. These refugees include children who are the most vulnerable persons. As such, in the first part of 2012, the Government of South Africa decided to provide and promote the well-being of refugee children, particularly those who are exposed to vulnerable conditions and living in poverty (CoRMSA, 2007). Despite the provision of the Child Support Grant for refugees, the beneficiaries of the grant are still facing many challenges especially those who have a low income. The study explores the perceptions of the caregivers of refugee children in Cape Town on the utility of the grant. The study adopts a qualitative research approach which is exploratory and descriptive in nature. In this regard, this study draws on in-depth interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions with women caregivers of the refugee children. In-depth interviews were conducted with 28 women participants who come from different countries but live in Cape Town, who were selected by using the snowballing sampling technique. The findings reveal that the grant was used for educational expenses and for food or clothing. The study also finds that the grant provides households with income security, improves school attendance and contributes towards improved access to health care and transport. However, the study also showed that there were challenges associated with the provision of the grant. Firstly, some of the caregivers reported irregularities of the system and waiting in long queues. Secondly, the caregivers reported inadequacy of the grant. Lastly, the receivers of Child Support Grant for refugees noted that documentation required by the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is also another major challenge they are facing. Unemployment and accommodation are also mentioned as the challenges the caregivers of refugees’ children face. The majority of them stated that finding a job in South Africa is not easy. Furthermore, the caregivers reported the issue of finding a good place to rent. In terms of accommodation, the majority of the caregivers stated that landlords require many papers which they do not have and they cannot afford the rent required by them. The recommendations made are that participants felt that, they wish the Government of South Africa can allow them to work, as the majority of them have qualifications. However, others felt that it will be a good idea if the Government of South Africa increases the size of the grant. The SASSA staff advised that the caregivers of refugee children must submit the entire set of documentation required in order to receive or to apply for the Child Support Grant on time. The study concludes that the Child Support Grant for refugees provides children with a safety net and enables them to access basic services. However, this program needs to be monitored and evaluated in order for the service to be better rendered. The findings of this study have the potential to influence social welfare policy-makers to address the challenges associated with the provision of the grant. The findings of this study would also allow the policy makers to establish ways of ensuring the sustainable provision of the grant. The outcomes of this study will also have the potential to allow the policy makers to create ways of ensuring the sustainable provision of the Child Support Grant for refugees.

Thesis (MPA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The present study is about community perception on child support grant (CSG) in Lepelle Nkumpi, in the Limpopo Province. The main aim of the study was to investigate the use of CSG by the beneficiaries and the community perceptions thereof on CSG abuse in South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). The objectives were to investigate the use of CSG by the beneficiaries, to identify the weakness in SASSA policy on the granting of CSG, to analyse the community perception about the abuse of CSG and to provide workable solutions to the existing problems of child grant. Structured interviews, questionnaires and literature were used to collect data. The study concluded that SASSA employees and community members believe that beneficiaries are abusing child support grant while beneficiaries believes that child support grant is used properly.

Thesis (M. Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2016 / This study seeks to investigate the impact of Child Support Grant with special reference to Moletjie Moshate Village. The government in its efforts to alleviate poverty to the previously disadvantaged and vulnerable segments of our communities, introduced several poverty alleviation strategies such as the Child Support Grant which replaced the Maintenance Grant. The Child Support Grant has proven to be successful as it was able, according to the Minister of Social Development, Ms Bathabile Dlamini, to help millions of poor children. However, as successful as it may be, the Child Support Grant as a social welfare strategy is inadequate. People are still facing poverty due to lack of job opportunities. The findings of the present study show that a lack of family planning that unprotected sex, moral degeneration and absent fathers are challenges which derail any positive impact. The study further reveals that the majority of the respondents experience hardships in terms of property ownership, employment, and education, training and skills development, emotional and financial support. The main aim of this study was to investigate if the grant was used properly and to make recommendations towards a solution. The study also sought to answer the question whether there was any alternative to Child Support Grant. It also asks if it is important to get support of grant even after the child has reached 18 years. Quantitative methods were used. Questionnaires were used as Interview schedules. The research was focusing on two phases being the impact on recipients and on the beneficiary himself/herself. The government helps through other poverty alleviating mechanisms like food parcels, school nutrition systems and free health services, which are complementary to poverty alleviation. This is a challenge for the government and the community at large; if the situation is not changed it will cost government huge amounts which could be used for other projects.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Food insecurity exists when people lack access to sufficient quantities of safe and nutritious food which encourages normal growth and development. Given South Africa’s high poverty and unemployment levels, food insecurity has become endemic in many communities. The purpose of the study was to determine and explore the relationship between food insecurity, child care arrangements and the child support grant (CSG). The study was conducted among a sample of 120 participants, comprising both CSG recipients and non-recipients (who were purposefully selected from an ongoing cohort study), residing in Langa township in Cape Town. A sequential, mixed-model research design was used, in which both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied. Data was collected by means of questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The results were analysed using SPSS and Atlas ti software. The ecological systems theory being used as a theoretical framework to explore the different dimensions of child care arrangements. In the literature it is hypothesised that food insecure families are more likely to have child care arrangement instabilities. Interestingly, the study’s findings did not support this hypothesis. Although most of the participants were unemployed, they generally stayed at home to care for their children because they were recipients of the CSG. Therefore, despite being food insecure, many households had stable child care arrangements because of the CSG. Child support grant recipient households experienced hunger less acutely than households that did not receive the grant. Of course, social protection mechanisms, like grants, do not represent a sustainable solution to South Africa’s unemployment and food insecurity challenges. The researcher therefore provides a number of recommendations on how government and civil society can ameliorate the plight of poor households.

Thesis (M. A. (Sociology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / In most developing countries including South Africa, the anti-poverty programmes aim to enhance and improve the living condition of the helpless people in the society (DSD, SASSA and UNICEF,2012). In addressing children poverty after the apartheid era, the Child Support Grant (CSG) was implemented in 1998 subsequently the State Maintenance Grant (SMG) was abolished after the review in 1997 by the Lund Committee (Grinspun, 2016 and Xaba, 2016). After twenty-two years of CSG existence, this study aimed to examine the successes of CSG in addressing child poverty and vulnerable households at Ha-Mulima. The study was guided by Structural functional theory as a theoretical framework and a qualitative research methodology was applied to examine the ways or mechanisms through which the Child Support Grant has been successful in attending to the problem of child and household poverty. An exploratory case study approach was used as a research design and the participants were selected through a purposive sampling procedure. In addition, data was collected from participants through semi-structured interviews and focus groups, while thematic content analysis was employed to analyse the findings. The findings of the study show that there are positive outcomes of CSG in relation to the utilisation of grant to eradicate child poverty and household poverty. The study found that the CSG has a positive impact in reducing child poverty since it reduces hunger, children access education and caregivers utilize the money to buy clothes for them. Regardless of caregiver’s dietary diversity in the households, the CSG has positive impacts on food insecurity and improved food consumption since families can use the money to buy food. The findings indicated that the CSG promotes self-reliance in communities whereby the caregivers create their own jobs and affiliate to various stokvels with the aim to empower themselves financially to avoid the dependability on the grant. The significance of the study lies in the way it has the potential of unravelling the dynamics of the Child Support Grant in rural communities. / HW SETA PHARMACY PRO

Social protection has become an important tool in efforts to eradicate poverty in developing countries and also risen strongly on the global development agenda the last decade. This thesis will look at different approaches to social protection and their relation to the human right to social security with South Africa as a case study. In using different scholars in the field of social protection and social justice together with qualitative fieldwork, the thesis explores the importance of social protection and the politics underlying efforts to protect the right to social security of South Africans living in poverty. The thesis suggests that South Africa’s social protection system lies somewhere in between rights and relief and more universal systems comply better with a rights based approach to social protection. Although significant progress has been made to social protection in South Africa the last decade, more needs to be done for South Africa to reduce rampant inequalities and combat poverty in the future.

South Africa is faced by a huge problem of inequality, twenty years after the dawn of independence. Such inequalities have been addressed by policy intervention such as the social security and assistance of citizens through various classes of grants. One of the grants targeting children under the age of 18 years is the child support grant. However there are deserving children who have been left-out of mainstream social security through social exclusion. The study sought to investigate the problem of the social exclusion of children from the child support grant in the Nkonkobe municipality. Through the use of the Basic Needs Approach (BNA) to understand the need for any state/government to promote the social welfare of its citizens, the study took a triangulated research paradigm which used both quantitative and qualitative research approaches to collect data from forty respondents by way of a questionnaire survey. The study found out that, inter alia, poverty remains high in the Nkonkobe municipal area, there is rampant social exclusion in the area, the amount paid for the child support grant is little and that the effects of the withdrawal of the grant when the child reaches the age of 18 are unbearable to the child. Some of the recommendations which the study made in line with improved mainstream social security in relation to the child support grant are that, the government needs to improve information dissemination about grants to the populace, there should be mandatory policies to make sure all citizens have identification particulars, the government should be mobile and take services to the people and there should a consideration to review the amount paid for the child support grant upwards. The researcher is quite optimistic that the study will play a part in improving policy implementation.

This study aims at investigating the managerial imperatives of teen motherhood in public secondary schools in the Mamaila circuit, Limpopo province. The focus is on the managerial imperatives of teen mothers that principal must fulfil; the experiences of principals that have teen mothers in their school; the ability of the principals to fulfil these managerial imperatives; and the kinds of support principals give teen mothers. The study was informed by the legal framework entrenched in Chapter 2 (Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of South Africa, especially such concepts as equality, human dignity, security, the interest of the child, the right to basic education and the safety of learners. In South Africa it is illegal to expel pregnant girls in terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (hereafter Constitution) (RSA, 1996a). Schoolgirls who become pregnant are allowed to return to school after giving birth (Kaufman, De Wet and Stadler, 2001:147). The learner pregnancy policy (DoBE, 2007) puts obligations to principals to deal with each case confidentially (i.e. to respect the human dignity of the learner); to support the learner by encouraging her to continue with education prior to and after the delivery of the baby; to put in place appropriate mechanisms to deal with unfair discrimination, hate speech or harassment that may arise. The findings have revealed that most of the principals are not aware of the departmental policy on learner pregnancy, but they acknowledge that it is unconstitutional to expel a pregnant learner. Principals find it difficult to liaise with learners who are on maternity leave in terms of giving them school tasks as advocated by the learner pregnant policy (DoBE, 2007). Learners who are entitled to receive a child-support grant disrupt school on the social grant payday by queuing for permission to go to local pay points. Principals also experience late-coming and absenteeism from teen mothers due to a lack of reliable people to care for their babies during the school day. The performance of teen mothers deteriorates due to the household chores of taking care of the baby and having no time to attend extralessons or afternoon study sessions at school. The study has also revealed that principals engage the local clinics officials to present pregnancy awareness with the learners as a way of educating them. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Thesis (MPA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / This study sought to investigate the role and impact of social security grant on poverty alleviation on a case of Child Support Grant at Mankweng. Child Support Grant is a poverty alleviation mechanism implemented with the aim of exploring new alternative policy options targeting children and families in South Africa. The grant has proven to be successful as it was able to put about 8 million orphans and poor children in the safety net in 2008. However, although the grant has proven to be successful, not all the deserving children receive the grant. Children‟s access to a full measure of security and the basic needs as prescribed in the Bill of Rights remain agitated with problems as the grant‟s extent of coverage due to the limited amount structure does not provide all the basic needs of the children. The study also revealed that majority of participants due to the grant‟s extent of coverage experienced hardships in terms of inflation rate. The participants‟ stressed about the price of goods which is perennially increasing as they are unable to cope with price trends, which led them to adopt the practice of layby. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilised which adopted structured questionnaires and in-person interviews to hear the participants‟ perspective on the impact that Child Support Grant has as a poverty alleviation mechanism on the livelihoods of the beneficiaries as well as the challenges of Child Support Grant‟s administrative system. The study recommended that the Child Support Grant despite its limited amount structure enables people to participate on economic activities wherein they are able to engage in farming activities in that during harvest time they are able to sell their produce to the market like Pick „n Pay and Shoprite though its seasonal.