Foster care grant exit plans

Most social assistance programmes have exit strategies in place which require beneficiaries to end their participation in the programme either on an involuntary or voluntary basis. This can occur when the socioeconomic circumstances of the recipients have improved so they accomplish programme objectives and no longer need programme benefits (World Bank, 2000). Despite this ideal of being able to exit the grant system it seems that the withdrawal of the foster care grant can erode quality of life, particularly in circumstances where the foster parents do not have exit plans put in place. The aim of the study was to explore the exit plans of the recipients of the foster care grant in Soweto and the challenges they face in coming up with these plans. The study adopted a qualitative approach and it was exploratory in nature. The findings of this study found that participants had very little knowledge of what an exit strategy was and they did not have set exit plans to exit the grant. Other findings indicated that there was no support for participants from their social workers in terms of the sharing of information and the development of exit plans.