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The 2010 National Antenatal Sentinel HIV and Syphilis Prevalence Survey found that 10% of 10 to 14 year old pregnant girls are HIV positive. This is alarming. Girls are participating in sexual activities under the legal age of consent.

Social workers have an enormous role to play in helping young children make healthy lifestyle choices, but there is a critical shortage.

To realise the goal of an Aids-free generation requires strict social interventions. We need social workers to help adolescents cope with the physical and emotional challenges associated with adolescence and HIV/Aids.

This is simply not the case in South Africa.

At least 60 000 social workers are needed to implement the Children’s Act. As at October 2011, there were 15 611 registered social workers and 2 953 registered social auxiliary workers. This represents almost a 75% shortage of social workers.

Tomorrow, President Jacob Zuma will release the government’s four-year plan to fight HIV/Aids in South Africa. We only hope that the President’s plan will take the chronic shortage of social workers into account.

To address the shortage of social workers, the DA recommends that the government should:

• Improve the social work career path, by making it more attractive and lucrative.
• Create better support networks for students pursuing a social work degree and for qualified social workers.
• Increase the rate of sponsoring students with bursaries. In the 2010/11 financial year, there has been an increase from 4 200 to 5 574 social work graduates. This is not fast enough if the goal is to reach 60 000 social workers.
• Maximise government outsourcing of services to good NGOs working in the field.
• Contract manage the funded NGOs effectively to ensure accountability.

South Africa continues to experience a wide gap in delivering quality social welfare services, amidst the increasing challenges faced with the HIV/Aids pandemic. We need to get back to the basics and invest more in increasing the number of social workers.