Is our social welfare system failing us?

By Doreen Hammond

It has become a common practice to see mothers and their sick children or sometimes mothers themselves on television soliciting funds to undergo medical treatment. In a tearful tone, a mother narrates how she or her child has contracted some ailment and how they do not have the means to foot the cost of treatment and is therefore appealing to the public to come to their aid.
 Some of them get the desired help  and are able to get the treatment they require. For others, help comes too late. But the question is: Should we, as a society, accept a situation where we always have to parade the sick in the media (to the public) before they get the needed help?
A recent TV news revealed the dehumanising plight of a visually impaired woman who had made the Odawna Bridge home to her family of two equally visually impaired children. According to the story, the children were three but one could not be found. The whole family looked hungry and emaciated. It was after this exposure that the family got help.
One does not need to drive around our cities for long to encounter very pathetic scenes that carry poverty and exclusion to the high heavens. They also point in some way to the lack of fellow-feeling and the questions that come to mind are: Has our social welfare systems failed us? Where is our religious or cultural/traditional ethic of sharing? Does our extended family social protection work anymore? Is our traditional way of life, where people grow up in the family house and children don’t even know who their real mother is because they are taken care of by all the women in the family gone forever?
In Ghana, there are two ministries responsible for social welfare. There is the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare under which the Department of Social welfare is and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs. In summary, their mission statements affirm among others, the social integration of the vulnerable, excluded and the disadvantaged for the development and growth of the economy. NGOs and some philanthropic individuals are also involved. Clearly, women and children, as well as the aged and the unskilled are easy victims of exclusion.

There are abundant stories of how children, once orphaned, become hungry and find themselves pushed onto the streets in search for food; with no homes, no shelter and no clothing, not to talk about education. Those who seem lucky to get to orphanages may not have totally escaped misery, for the hardship continues there, as if losing both parents is not enough trouble. The orphanages still depend on public donations to keeping running.  Some of these orphanages are run by NGOs who use the children as mere numbers to solicit funds but these funds never get used for the purpose for which they are collected.  Exploitation is the game. Stealing is the name! The results? Obvious— Poor nutrition, poor growth and a future with little hope for the children. According to Mr Stephen T. Adongo, Director of The Department of Social welfare,” There are about 5,000 NGOs on our register. Some just register and in less than a year, they fold up. We cannot even determine those who are active and those who are not.”
Most Ghanaians who are born physically challenged or become physically challenged through some incident or accident become  vulnerable.  The lack of physical abilities to do certain jobs exclude them from the mainstream job market and even if they do get jobs, they are poorly paid. By the mere presence of their challenge, they are unable to access most public places because provisions have not been made to facilitate their movement in most of such buildings. They are stigmatised and discriminated against.
On our streets are many people who have become beggars only because they are sick and cannot afford medical care. They are there with the unemployed who cannot maintain their families, and young, able bodied men and boys forcefully clean your windscreen in traffic with the hope of getting some money.
The issue of porters, better known as kayayei, has been overflogged. Most of them have migrated from the northern part of the country in search of jobs in the south. Their hopes are big but they find out too soon on arrival that living in insanitary conditions and a constant struggle for survival on the streets of Accra await them.
 In spite of some interventions by Government and NGOs, the situation is  not  improving. For instance, there is an enforcement of Ghana’s 1998 Children’s Act requiring orphanages to present annual audited accounts. UNICEF  is also assisting in drawing up new guidelines for orphanages.
The Department of Social Welfare has been intervening by taking some of the homeless and  street children off the streets. There are also  vocational training and skills-upgrade for artisans.
The Department of Social welfare also runs a system known as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty(LEAP) Programme where cash is paid out to people under the poverty line. 
Next week, the LEAP will pay 19,159 vulnerable people in 83 districts throughout the country a total of GH¢413,604.00
The amount is in respect of their remittances for the months of March and April this year.
According to Mr William Niyuni, Assistant Director in charge of Monitoring and Evaluation at the Department of Social Welfare, 15,746 people were paid a total of GH¢656,950.00 for November 2009 to February 2010.
The number of beneficiaries under the programme keeps changing because of reasons such as deaths, unavailability and inability of beneficiaries to collect monies as of the time of payment through Ghana Post.
Mr Adongo explains that the LEAP is one of the programmes put in place by Government to provide some relief to vulnerable people in the country.
Among those illegible are orphans, persons with severe disabilities who are untrainable and persons above age 65.
Even though not all such people are receiving help now, the department is to expand the programme to cover 55,000 households by December this year.
The Government has in place a policy to ensure Free Compulsory Basic Education for children, and it provides meals for some pupils in the School Feeding Programme and free school uniforms too.
But to what extent have these programmes been successful?
Mr Adongo was not happy that due to inadequate funds and inadequate staff strength, the department has become a “fire-fighting institution”; we know what to do but are unable to be proactive because of these reasons.”
“People will see a mentally ill person attacking someone on the street and that is when they take a phone and call and we rush to the scene to see what we can do to help, but should this be the situation?”, he asked.
It is an irony that the School of Social Work, run by the department, trains 45 people as social workers every year, but these workers cannot be employed by the department because there is no money to pay them. These social workers trained by the Government and with Government resources therefore find work in the private sector.
From what we see on our streets and in society and the challenges of the Department of Social Welfare, it is obvious that our social welfare system is failing us.
It appears that on paper we have what it takes to take care of the vulnerable in our society. We have the institution and the regulation but the reality of what we see on our streets speaks volumes.
We need a political commitment that will enable us make the care of the vulnerable in our society one of our priorities. Such a priority will culminate in an increase in our budget to provide the needed funds and employ the requisite staff to improve our social welfare system.
It is difficult to see how a society that does not take care of its vulnerable can make meaningful development.
Parading the sick in the public should not be a practice our society should be proud of.