Minister of Social Development, Ms Bathabile Dlamini, has officially launched the 2014 Social Development Month campaign by calling for a new and radical approach to rebuilding and preserving the family structure as a way of addressing the social challenges the country faces.
She was addressing the National Summit on the 20th Anniversary of the International Year of the Family taking place in Kempton Park, Gauteng.
President Jacob Zuma has called for a radical socio-economic transformation to push back the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Taking her cue from this, Minister Dlamini has called for a new model that enables government and other social role players to intervene not just at a community level, but also at a family level, in order to restore faith in the family unit as an effective defence to social challenges.
The 2014 Social Development Month campaign, which started yesterday, would also be geared towards making an immediate and lasting impact in poor communities.
Social Development Month aims to increase access to and utilisation of social services through direct intervention by building effective service delivery partnerships between government, communities and other role players.
The Summit, a key programme of Social Development Month, “is therefore about guiding us towards finding the right approaches and interventions in reversing the trend of the disintegrating family structure in society,” said Minister Dlamini.
One of the topics the Summit, which started on October 1, has explored is the roll out of a family- and community-based response to HIV prevention.
Kenau Swart and Tintswalo Maringa – for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention – presented findings of the Families Matter! programme (a family- and community-based response to HIV prevention) which has been implemented in a number of African countries, including Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Namibia.
Through this programme, they have found that family-based interventions are viable and welcomed by HIV at-risk communities as demonstrated by participant enrolment and retention rates, as well as their evaluation of the programme.
They have also found that the programme can be implemented in resource constrained settings, making it ideal for roll out in poor and rural communities in South Africa.
Swart and Maringa also advocate for finding new vocabulary in the fight against HIV. Their view is that a term such as ‘mother-to-child transmission’ (a reference to HIV positive mothers passing on HIV to their unborn babies) perpetuates the inaccurate perception that women spread HIV. Instead, a term such as ‘parent-to-child transmission’ should be considered.
The Summit brings together social experts and practitioners, research and higher learning institutions, traditional leaders, government representatives, faith-based organisations and non-governmental organisations, to name a few, with the view to finding evidence-based solutions to the problems facing families in South Africa.
The Summit takes place at Emperor’s Palace, Kempton Park, and concludes on October 3.
Media inquiries may be directed to:
Lumka Oliphant
Cell: 083 484 8067
E-mail: lumkao@dsd.gov.za
