An app to fast-track the reporting of sexual offences and crimes against children was presented by a team from the Garden Route at the culmination of the 100-day Challenge to end Gender-Based Violence and Femicide.
The challenge was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The team to present the new app was one of six teams involved in the pilot project.
For this round of the 100-Day Challenge, there were teams working in Frances Baard, Tshwane, Tzaneen, Bloemfontein, Matjhabeng and the Garden Route.
The Garden Route team, which included various municipal offices, handled the research with an aim to improve interdepartment data flow to provide better service delivery to victims, survivors and their families.
On Tuesday morning, they presented their findings to the various stakeholders.
Doing the presentation, Herman Nieuwoudt, from the Bitou municipality, said getting roleplayers involved had been difficult.
Those involved included officials from the department of education, the National Prosecuting Authority, department of health, social development, the Thuthuzela Care Centres and the SA Police Service.
However, he said the working team quickly found the gaps in the system.
The app would solve the delays in manually filling out a form when reporting child abuse, known as Form 22.
Form 22 is used to report abuse to child protection services like doctors, teachers and police officials, who then send it on to the department of social development to allocate a social worker.
Nieuwoudt said cases were often lost before even going to court, creating a mistrust for victims.
“There is a big need for a tech solution where we can streamline the process and it can assist to overcome the gaps in the [existing] system.”
He said the app had been built to allocate cases to people, and not departments.
It also ensured that social workers were allocated the cases of children.
Knysna activist Candice Ludick said the app would be tried out only once they had permission to use people’s personal data.
“It can take up to three to four months for that to happen,” she said.
“But we are continuing with the work.”
Ludick said the justice system was already working on its own app which it hoped would integrate the process further, allowing for victims to track their cases online through the courts as well.
Enabling a digital process could also hold not only the workers involved to account, but also assist departments to fill critical vacancies.
She said the Ford Foundation had also agreed to fund more projects which would make a difference in the fight against gender-based violence.
HeraldLIVE
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