Just last week, I wrote about the virtual impossibility of adopting internationally from South Africa in the context of one family who has been relentlessly pursuing the process for a little girl, now two-years-old, abandoned at birth and left head-first in a bucket under a tree.

Linking to the US State Department's intercountry adoption page that details the South African process, it became unfortunately clear that families outside the country are not a likely option for the ever-growing legions of kids who sure could use one.

Today, this story hammers home the reality, depth and scope of the problem in just one area in South Africa.

In Roodepoort, a suburb of Johannesburg north of Soweto, social workers are being swamped in a sea of orphans that grows deeper and more dangerous every day.

Caseloads of between 60 to 80 children a year have grown to well over 1,000 ... all of them children who have lost their parents to AIDS ... and resources and options are drying up.

A report commissioned by South Africa's Ministry of Social Development in 2005 found that the country has half the number of social workers needed to meet the minimum services to children. The shortage is particularly acute in Gauteng Province, which includes Johannesburg and the capital city of Tshwane (formerly known as Pretoria), with an average of 5,395 children per social worker, according to the study. And while the government has won praise for its commitment to children's protection programs in its current five-year plan, there are neither the resources nor the personnel in the country to implement these plans. In 2005, there was a demand for 154,000 beds in children's homes around the country, more than 10 times the number of beds available.

Before going any further, I have to scratch my head in wonder that a government can "win praise" for a plan that will never be implemented. Moving right along, however ...

South Africa's government is now working to "create a strategic action plan for AIDS and a Children's Bill to make it easier for children orphaned by AIDS to find stable homes." But ... and this is a big but ... how well this could ever work will depend on the availability of, you guessed it, social workers.

Would you like to wonder along with me what the difference may be between a "plan" and a "strategic plan"?

The director of child and family benefits for the Tshwane Department of Social Development thinks she has an answer, though ... the government's steps started now to reduce the paperwork family members have to suffer through to gain custody of orphaned relatives.

There's a start, I suppose, if there are relatives, and if those relatives aren't already caring for ten or twelve orphans and still have room and resources.

Oh! and the resources? Here's more from the same director:

Once a family gets custody, they can start receiving foster care grants of 590 rand (or $84) per child per month. "Because the value of a foster care grant is so high, it addresses poverty, so people don't need to work," she says.

For $84 a month? South Africa is not one of those countries where a dollar goes a long, long way, and 84 of them will vanish in a hurry when kids need food and school fees and uniforms and on and on.

Once again, I'll spend some time dwelling on a question that plagues me: How can anyone figure that all kids are better off in birth countries than adopted internationally when the facts so clearly prove otherwise?

I am not saying adoption would be the answer for the millions of the world's AIDS orphans, but it most certainly would be for those who did move from forlorn to family, and every child removed from the desperate equation reduces the strain slightly.

Of course, dead kids reduce the strain, too, and they don't require much paperwork at all.

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