The day began with a visit to Cape Town Child Welfare, a private child welfare agency. We met with a group of managers from this agency. The managers spoke about issues and changes working in child welfare. One of the issues they discussed was staff shortages. One manager discussed having approximately for 8 workers to cover an area populated by about a million people. Needless to say, they have relied on community involvement. Another manager talked about losing workers to the public sector due to an increase income. In South Africa, social workers who work in the public sector make more money. The opposite is true in the states. However, in South Africa social workers must be registered, which is equivalent to our licensure. New legislation has been enacted which is changing child welfare in South Africa. We talked them about the Olivia Y lawsuit, which has changed child welfare in Mississippi. We had an interesting conversation with the managers. They came to the meeting thinking we had all the answers because we are from the states. We came to the conversation looking to them for answers. They were so surprised that we came to them looking for possible solutions to some of our issues.
Later we went to Hout Bay. We talked to two community volunteers. They both run feeding programs for children in their community. They feed about 250 children each when they supply food. One of the ladies stated she tries to let every child she encounters know education is important. After speaking with the volunteers we took a tour of Hout Bay.
The view from the Cape Town Child Welfare Hout Bay office.
A little shout out to you know who... LOL
Then we went a pre-school in Imizamo Yethu.
Later that night we went to “Mamma Africa” restaurant. The food was amazing. The Resturant had live entertainment…. I sampled the springbok, crocodile and prawns.
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