Perceived mismanagement of child support grant by stakeholders in the Ngaka Modiri Molema district, North West Province

Abstract

The public of South Africa have observed an increase in the number of vulnerable children in the streets and shopping centres, despite the increasing spending by government in providing support grants for these vulnerable children. As a result, the public mismanagement and maladministration of support grant by stakeholders on behalf of vulnerable children. The current study aims to explore the perceived mismanagement of child support grant by stakeholders in the Ngaka Modiri Molema district of the North West province, South Africa during the period January 2020 to November 2020. The nature and design of this study was exploratory to gain an understanding of human behaviour through observation and reason. The data collected from stakeholders responsible for the management of support grant for vulnerable children was cross-sectional. Both descriptive and Principal Component Analysis was used to analyse the using SPSS to reduce the large data set. The value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was (KMO = 0.610) and results of Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p < 0.001). The results revealed two main factors, which together explain 64.45% variation. The results show that the mismanagement and misuse of child support grant for vulnerable children by stakeholders does exists and the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was (KMO = 0.724) and results of Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p < 0.001). In this instance, four factors were found to jointly explain 74.83% of variation. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient value of 0.70 and above for all constructs were at an acceptable value and meets the minimum reliability criteria. The study has shown that, SASSA has mechanisms and structures to deal with corruption and mismanagement of CSG by stakeholders exist but these strategies are not effective. The study concludes that, if the gaps identified in this study are left unattended, it might prevent the government from realizing its policy objective of ensuring that vulnerable children are looked after by responsible organisations and caregivers in South Africa.