Social Development

The Provincial Department facilitated inputs from stakeholders on Provincial Children and Families Forum level, the ECD, as well as Child and Youth Care sectors. For further collaboration, a focused group with experts from NGOs, Adoption specialists, Researchers and Departments was called together on 04 September 2018. Comprehensive inputs were submitted to the NDSD on 10 October 2018, February 2019 and June 2019. The Department is also aware of submissions that NGOs, based on their areas of interest, submitted directly to the NDSD.

Other areas of concern raised included:

1. Many concerns were raised about process flaws. The way changes were made led experts to believe that their inputs were not taken into account..
2. The wording of the bill extends the definition of an orphan to legally include all children who have lost one or both parents. The expected impact of this is that the already overburdened foster care system could now become even bigger than it already is.
3. The wording of section 150(1)(a) was not amended as was extensively debated to free children in kinship care from being included in the foster care system. There was general consensus that families in need of cash should not follow the court process as it is very labour-intensive and needs ongoing supervision services.
4. The Social Assistance Amendment Bill was tabled in Parliament in April 2018 and contains provisions which give the Minister of Social Development the authority to increase the grant amounts for certain categories of grant beneficiaries, based on need. These provisions were to facilitate the creation of the top-up child support grant for relatives caring for orphans. This top-up was seen as part of the solution to the foster care crisis.
5. The Children’s Third Amendment Bill repealed the common law defence of reasonable chastisement that allows parents and carers to lawfully subject children to corporal punishment. This was much debated on several platforms. In a Constitutional Court Ruling on 29 November 2018, the common-law defence of reasonable or moderate chastisement was declared unconstitutional.
6. The Regulations published on ECDs made it even more difficult to register centres on a community-based level and access funding. The bill is also silent on the migration of ECDs to the Department of Basic Education.
7. The overall conclusion was that the amendments did not offer a comprehensive legal solution to the foster care situation, as required by the North Gauteng High Court Order issued in 2012. Social workers were over-burdened with the high increase in the statutory workload.
8. No mechanisms were in place for the registration of private hostels.
9. The changes to Chapter 15, on Adoptions, were not as were discussed and agreed upon during consultations; the effect being that accredited child protection organisations, adoption social workers, lawyers, psychologists and other associated professionals rendering adoption services will no longer be able to charge fees for their expertise, and excluding specialists, such as psychologists and attorneys from rendering adoption services, which would shift the burden onto the DSD. Social workers in the DSD were also not registered at that time by the SACSSP, nor could the NDSD accredit them, which would bring adoption services to a standstill in the country. Feedback from the sector was that delaying adoption as an option for vulnerable children would deprive many vulnerable children of their constitutional right “to family care or parental care”.

Awareness grew that there was no oversight for how Departments would implement provisions of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005, and how that would impact on inter-sectoral collaboration.