Prenashen Pillay, the new director of Child Welfare Chatsworth (CWC), is passionate about changing the community by addressing social ills.
The 38-year-old will work closely with long-standing president of the CWC, Logan Naidu, to provide support to the Chatsworth and surrounding communities.
Pillay started working at the CWC as a social worker, providing statutory services for the Welbedacht East area, in 2017. He was promoted to a social worker supervisor in 2021, and director this month.
“Despite declining support from the Department of Social Development, the CWC remains committed to addressing the gaps created by bureaucratic challenges to meet the immediate, day-to-day needs of the communities we serve.
“Our focus is on addressing the specific and complex problems faced by individuals, rather than applying a broad, generalised approach. Currently, we are encountering unprecedented trends, including incidents of sexual abuse and child neglect, and severe cases of gender-based violence, where women and girls are still the primary victims.
“We are also dealing with cases of incest as well as frequent issues related to marital conflicts and child access disputes. Our mission is to continue answering the call of every vulnerable individual in need, and we are determined to uphold this commitment,” Pillay said.
His love for social work began in his childhood in the '80s.
“I grew up in Westcliff in a Hindu household with a family of social workers. I was influenced by the value of education as a path out of poverty like many others living in Chatsworth at the time with the odds stacked against us.
"I questioned going into a humanitarian field due to my desire to help. But my experiences with bullying throughout my schooling career and witnessing the negative impacts of societal issues like substance abuse, and the introduction of the drug ‘sugars’ further motivated me to pursue a career in social work.
“As I watched the morals of society continue to degrade and traditional family values get lost, I wanted to advocate and bring awareness to the changes happening in my own community. Welfare services have historically been offered to the community. However, this was more impactful in the past when communities were significantly smaller and more demographically uniform."
Pillay structures and directs welfare service interventions in the organisation.
“We run a broad spectrum of prevention and early intervention programs aimed at identifying children at risk and rendering various services that will prevent or protect from social ills. These include education and awareness programs in primary schools, stakeholders, where we educate on current issues children face like bullying, safety, online child sexual exploitation and abuse, teenage pregnancy, goals and discipline.
"We also provide statutory services where we investigate abuse and remove children where necessary. We facilitate the statutory aspects via the children's courts and provide psychosocial services. We also have a sandwich distribution program. In addition, we teach parents how to screen these men before allowing them to transport a child.
"Schools also send us their transport drivers for us to screen them in respect of the child protection register. Our aim is to now target temples, churches and mosques to share information of employees for us to screen, as we found that places of worship are also places that offer opportunity for abuse,” Pillay said.