Abstract
Healthcare service provision for young people in South Africa is a complex landscape—balancing youth and human rights, numerous laws, legally and professionally mandated obligations, and a tenuous and resource-strained implementation context, all set against the backdrop of a highly charged and morally contested area of state-based service provision. Sexual and reproductive health services (SRH) are therefore a far-from-settled arena—either for the healthcare workers who provide services, or for the young people who need to access them. In straddling the divide between official policies and client claims, front-line service providers, so-called street-level bureaucrats, often become disdainful of the ‘ungrounded’ directives from lawmakers and politicians who are perceived as out of touch with implementation realities (Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003). These conflicts are compounded in neo-Liberal environments of limited infrastructure and resources, such as the South African public health system.
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Notes
- 1.
Afrikaans is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and is widely spoken in the Province in which the fieldwork was undertaken.
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Legislation and Policy Documents
Children’s Act 38 of 2005.
Criminal Law [Sexual Offences and Related Matters] Amendment Act 32 of 2007.
Criminal Law [Sexual Offences and Related Matters] Amendment Act Amendment Act 5 of 2015.
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Moult, K., Müller, A. (2017). 11 Morality, Austerity and the Complexities of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services for Young People in South Africa. In: Kelly, P., Pike, J. (eds) Neo-Liberalism and Austerity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58266-9_12
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