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1ST DRAFT BASELINE DOCUMENT FOR THE
DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL POLICY FOR FAMILIES (JULY 2003) INDEX
ANNEXURES 1ST DRAFT 2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Even though families play a critical role in the socialisation, development and education of children and youth, it is important to advocate for the benefits of supportive family life for everyone in society. 2. From studies conducted in many parts of the world, stable and emotionally supportive family life has been found to be associated with:
4. Policy to support and strengthen families is consonant with the Moral Regeneration Movement, the primary focus of which is to strengthen those institutions that teach and reinforce values that serve the general good and are in the public interest. SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE NATIONAL POLICY FOR FAMILIES A policy framework needs to highlight the importance of the resources for families and the costs they bear in meeting the support and care needs of members. Policy to support and strengthen families should be consonant with the Moral Regeneration Movement with the primary focus being to strengthen those institutions that teach and reinforce values that serve the general good and are in the public interest. As reiterated by the Moral Regeneration Movement, the policy should further promote the spirit of Ubuntu which encourages caring of one another within the communities. Family policy formulation should be sensitive to the cultural diversity of South Africans that require the policy to be dynamic and adaptable. There is a gap between idealisation of the family and the reality which affects all South African communities as they find themselves living in conditions which make it difficult to actualise cherished beliefs about what families are and should be. Family policy needs to reinforce the functions of families despite changing family structure. The policy should aim to facilitate integrated service delivery and adequate resources between stakeholders for families and communities to promote family life. SITUATION ANALYSIS Families are subject to a wide-range of social influence. However, they simultaneously mediate how individuals respond to social change. Throughout the world, changes in families are evident. Many of the traditional livelihood and care functions of families are being performed by other service providers. Decreased birth rates mean that families are getting smaller. Families are becoming highly diverse and include single-parent families, couples without children, and increasingly people are living in non-family households. Since families go through defined life cycle stages, their needs differ. The needs of family members also vary because resources and opportunities are differentially distributed among members. Although some regard the family as an institution in decline, many see changes in family life as dynamic forms of adaptation to changing social and economic conditions. Migration, colonisation, urbanisation and globalisation have not only caused people to move away from their families, but have also resulted in value reorientations which have in turn stimulated the formation of non-traditional families. In South Africa urbanisation affects family life, including sexual partnerships, household formation rules and patterns, the care of children and the maintenance of kin networks. The migrant labour system had the most dramatic impact on family life, particularly among Africans who predominate in the migratory labour system. Most South Africa households consist of family groups although non-family households are increasing. These non-family households also have rules and patterns which guide their daily living. Nuclear families are the most common family type amongst all groups, except rural Africans. Nonetheless, extended families occur in a quarter to a third of all households. The maintenance of traditional family values and traditions has enabled many people to cope with the stresses of oppression and separation. Families and households carry social and financial costs in terms of their functions of education, care, protection and normalisation. Families sustain family members, socialise and educate children, and take care of dependants, including children, older persons, unemployed family members, the sick and members with disabilities. Families also carry the costs of dysfunctional members who transgress norms by abusing substance or committing crimes. These costs are met by the family’s availability resources generated from income, household amenities, assets, grants and social support. Family costs, in terms of higher dependency ratios and
fertility levels amongst others, are skewed with poor Africans especially
rural families. These families are bearing the highest costs with the
lowest resources. Child care facilities are inadequate and working women are unable to find adequate, flexible and affordable substitute care to support their participation in the labour force. Many poor children do not attend school. In the poorest rural areas, 35% of the children do not attend school. Grade repetition and dropping out of school are significant problems. The proportion of older persons in South Africa is increasing, and few older persons have savings or access to medical insurance. They are thus dependent on the old age pension and on their families for care. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is placing a significant burden of care on families, as there is limited national public assistance for the home-based care for sick and family members with disabilities, as well as the care of orphaned children. Crime, substance abuse, family and gender violence, and child abuse and neglect all place substantial burdens on families and are expensive for the state to deal with. The alternative is to invest in family support as a preventive strategy to reduce social problems. Families provide resources and support to members through their stability and the network of loyalties that families engender. Families change and sometimes dissolve through separation, divorce and death. When this occurs, resource and support functions provided to members, especially vulnerable and dependant family members, may be dislodged and cease to function. South Africa has low marriage and divorce rates. In fact, marriages in the country are more likely to dissolve through death than divorce because of unacceptably high adult mortality rates. Cohabitation is high at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, with both poor and better-off groups having higher than average levels of living together. South Africa has a fertility rate of 2.9 children and contraception and termination of pregnancy are available to women. Orphaning, with a base rate of about 2% in developing countries, is starting to rise rapidly as a result of AIDS-related adult mortality. Child fosterage, or children living apart from a living mother, is showing an increase that might be an early sign of family adaptation to the loss of income and support of breadwinners and the illness of caregivers. The traditional family system comprised of related kin with mutual obligations and responsibilities has great significance among the main cultural groups in South Africa. Each cultural group has traditions which serve to maintain family life and each group has found itself adapting to changing circumstances. All South African families have been affected by the social, political and economic conditions of colonisation and urbanisation. In general, the separation of livelihood activities from the household, physical distance between home and work, constraints on the size of housing in urban areas, and an increasing sense of psychological individuality have created conditions for loosened family ties and obligations. STATE AND FAMILY MEASURES TO PRESERVE FAMILY LIFE Family resources are those material and social resources that enable families to meet their care and support functions for members. All family resources have been affected by historical, economic, and political factors, which render African, and especially rural families, impoverished with respect to their capacity to meet the care and support needs of family members. Women have lower labour force participation and income, than men, making women-headed households vulnerable to poverty. The deprivation of resources associated with unemployment and reduced livelihood options affect children’s growth, health, well-being and education; the employment and savings of families; and the care of dependent and vulnerable family members. Government provision supports families, for example,
through social assistance grants, facilities for vulnerable groups, and
programmes such as the Primary School Nutrition Programme. Greater
assistance in these domains is required for families in precarious
financial and social situations. South Africa has an active spirit of volunteering, with approximately 1.5 million active volunteers. Much as volunteerism is an important support system to families, they should not be exploited beyond their capacity. INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK It is in the interest of communities and the state to ensure that families have sufficient resources to provide for the basic needs of their members. Family resources include education, employment, income household amenities, financial assets and savings, social grants, government provision and social support. When families are able to take care of their members, it reduces the burden on the state in terms of long-term costs incurred by social problems that may result from the failure of families to perform their normative roles. For example, one of the main causes of family breakdown in poor communities in developing countries is lack of access to employment and services that enable people to maintain family life. Services and resources to families are provided by a wide range of service providers namely Government on national provincial and local level, NGOs, CBOs, FBOs and civil society. Volunteerism plays an important role in supporting families. Integrated service delivery should be promoted to ensure effective and efficient support to families. 3. SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE NATIONAL POLICY FOR FAMILIES 3.1 Introduction to the scope and purpose of the
National Policy for Families Families should provide a suitable environment for the physical, emotional and social development of all their members. Family members have a responsibility to love, care, and support one another. It is within the family that morals and values are portrayed. Secure families provide a conducive environment where family members can develop to their full potential, develop positive identities and form a set of values which serve as a frame of reference throughout later life. The disintegration of family life impacts on the well-being of family members and leads to moral decay in families affecting the fibre of society. Family members have a right to family life. The Government is committed to give the highest priority to the promotion of family life and the strengthening of families. The purpose of this policy for families will be to ensure that families are strengthened and developed to address the needs of their members through effective and efficient service delivery. Families in need should receive comprehensive protection and support from the state and organisations within civil society. Family support programmes should address the fundamental causes of family disintegration. Conditions such as teenage pregnancy, single parent homes, child headed households, abuse of substances and family breakdown render family members vulnerable. The solution therefore, lies in strengthening the family unit. Our family dilemma is not simply one of public policy or economics but it is also one of cultural values and social institutions. The home, the school, the workplace, the church, the media, private sector, public sector, community and most important the family member – must all contribute to a new cultural ethos of strong family life. We need to establish strong family relationships. We need to reiterate the undoubted value of family life, so as to promote strong ties amongst family members. All services to families should promote the preservation of families. We need to go back to our roots to revive African values such as the notion that “Every child is my child.” We need to work towards ensuring that respect for one another and especially older persons is restored. The rainbow nation can only thrive on the basis of strong families with values such as these. The resulted prolonged violence, crime, wide spread poverty and unemployment have further compounded the situation. Consequently the traditional communal support systems have by and large been eroded. This has precipitated a spiraling moral decay that now threatens the very fibre of society and needs to be redressed by all South Africans. The severity of the impact of HIV/AIDS is indisputable. The demographic trends derived from population projections that take HIV/AIDS into account affirmed that, within a decade South African society would be structured significantly different from what we have known thus far. This will have unprecedented social and economic implications. The poor, women, children, and persons with disabilities and older persons represent the most vulnerable sectors of our society and experience the impact of HIV/AIDS most acutely. Families provide benefits to members which are vital to the functioning of the broader society, and they incur costs in doing so. The balance of family resources to provide for and support family members, and the costs in doing so, is critical to the level of functionality of families (Mattessich & Hill, 1987). Families with few resources (for example, insufficient income and a small number of individuals capable of performing needed activities) and high costs (a large number of dependent or needy individuals) may not be able to perform traditional family functions because they cannot provide adequately for the material or social needs of members. For these reasons, poverty and unemployment, as well as high rates of social dependency (such as disability or substance use), place severe strains on the resources of families and are clear areas in which state intervention is required to support families. It is in the interest of communities and the state to ensure that families have sufficient resources to provide for the basic needs of families. When families are able to take care of their members, it reduces the burden on the state in terms of long-term costs incurred by social problems that may emanate from, or be associated with, the failure of families to perform their normative roles. Family support and assistance enable higher levels of individual functionality. In instances where the family cannot meets the needs of its family members the state has to do so. Children with positive family support achieve better at school and are more likely to continue their education, and have expanded career aspirations, than children who have not received such support from their families (Foster, 2002). Familism refers to the bonds of material and emotional support between family members. It has been suggested that one function of family policy should be to expand “public familism”, defined as the aggregate of policies that help people to sustain their families (Dizard & Gadlin, 1990). This does not mean that government programmes should replace responsibilities that rightfully should remain within the family, but that the state should create and protect a social, political and economic environment in which the family is able to carry out its functions. One of the main causes of family breakdown in poor communities in developing countries is lack of access to employment and services that enable people to maintain family life. 3.2 Scope and purpose of the National Policy for Families 3.2.1 The policy aims to facilitate integrated service delivery and adequate resources between stakeholders for families and communities to promote family life. 3.2.2 The policy would emphasis the establishment of preventative measures that address family life at different stages of its life to diminish the family’s vulnerability. 3.2.3 The policy must recognise the needs of different types of families at various stages of the family life cycles. 3.2.4 The family policy should be coherent and integrated to function across administrative boundaries and should coordinate and reconcile the various sectors which affect members of families as citizens such as, social security, education, housing, traffic, mass media and tourism. 4. PRINCIPLES Vulnerable family: Families without support systems and not link to resources, which do not function due to various challenges, is subjected to the least empowering circumstances and expose their family members to circumstances that are detrimental to their development. Extended family: Is a multi-generational family that shares the same household. Community: Are a number of geographically demarcated households, which share common interests and have common needs. |