Developing an integrated approach to early intervention services for adolescents living and working on the streets of Gauteng Province, South Africa

Poor coordination of services remains a challenge to the provision of services to adolescents living and working on the streets regardless of the adoption of an integrated approach to effective service delivery. Lack of coordination has adversely affected effective intervention to address the complex needs of these adolescents. The existing Department of Social Development strategy and guidelines of 2010 for children living and working on the streets focuses on statutory, particularly alternative care placement. Therefore, gaps were identified in the provision of developmental and coordinated early intervention services. A qualitative inquiry was utilised following explorative, descriptive, contextual and phenomenological research designs to bring to bear experiences of both adolescents and social service practitioners on the phenomenon. Purposive and snowball sampling were employed to access adolescents and social service practitioners. Data were gathered through face-to-face interviews with 12 adolescents (eight living and working on the streets and four admitted in shelters) and 19 social service practitioners. Tesch’s eight steps were used to analyse data; thereafter Lincoln and Guba’s classic model was employed for data verification. The findings indicate that socio-economic factors such as absence of one or both biological parents, drug abuse by parents, peer pressure, poverty, dysfunctional family, poor parenting, domestic violence and children used by adults to commit crime cause adolescents to live and work on the streets. Furthermore, adolescents are concern with safety and security as they encounter multiple challenges in their lives daily. Social service practitioners expressed a need for a multi-sectoral approach to promote collaboration with relevant government departments such as Health, Basic Education and Home Affairs. As a result, guidelines were developed on how integrated services should be offered.Social WorkD. Phil. (Social Work