Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable - Unicef

Government-funded programmes and services for vulnerable children in SA
Statutory interventions and placement in alternative care
The exaggerated demand for foster placements results in backlogs in finalising foster care
orders. Foster care placements are thus creating an onerous drain on protection services.
The placement of children in foster care has traditionally been linked to the need for
temporary removal of the child from the home to ensure the protection of the child from
a risk at home. However, the foster placement system has become oversubscribed. It has
become a mechanism for formalising the placement of children orphaned by HIV/AIDs
with extended family members. This placement option has become preferable because
the foster placement permits access to the FCG, which is needed by the families to meet
the costs of the additional child. This has resulted in huge backlogs in processing foster
care placements (Briede & Loffell 2005; Meintjies et al. 2003).
This has been compounded by the Children’s Act, which now automatically regards
an orphaned child as a child in need of care and protection, and therefore in need of
court interventions and placement in alternative care. This official sanction of the use
of the foster care system and the FCG for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS is driven by
recognition of their need for the financial support that is available through this route. It is
noteworthy that the DoSD is investigating, and has identified in its 2009–12 Strategic Plan,
the option of a caregiver’s grant for children who are orphaned and/or abandoned and
living with extended family members (DoSD 2009d).
Insufficient residential facilities also make it difficult to place a child in alternative care
when necessary. There has been a long history of both policy and funding neglect of
residential facilities for children in need. This has led to a dire shortage of such facilities.
While keeping the child in a home environment is correct and a desirable goal, the
emphasis on this approach has meant that not enough residential facilities have been set
up or funded. Therefore, it is difficult for Children’s Court commissioners to find facilities
for children who urgently require them due to factors – behavioural, disability, substance
abuse or other – that prevent them from being placed in foster care (Streak 2005). The
residential facilities that do exist are primarily in urban areas, leaving rural areas very
under-resourced in this regard (Mabetoa 2007).
Furthermore, child protection systems lack adequate resources to meet the needs of
children with disabilities (DoSD 2009d). This inadequacy has been recognised by the
Children’s Act, which specifically prioritises the provision of child protection services to
such children. 46
There are not enough secure-care facilities for children in conflict with the law, so children
awaiting trial wait in police cells and correctional facilities (DoSD 2009d) (see Chapter 12
for further information and statistics related to children in conflict with the law).
The child protection system is also not equipped to meet the growth in demand for
alternative care for orphans. The number of children requiring alternative care has grown
due to the increasing numbers of orphaned children in South Africa. An orphan is defined
as ‘a child under the age of 18 whose mother, father, or both biological parents have
died’ (Meintjies & Hall 2010: 102). Statistics South Africa’s 2008 General Household Survey
indicates that there are 3.95 million orphans in South African across all three categories.
46 See, for example, sections 2, 6, 7, 11, 13 and 42, and the clauses directing the development of strategic plans and
frameworks.
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