18th September 2008

The National Department of Social Development has recently established a new national committee called the Child Care and Protection Forum. The Forum met for the first time on 10 and 11 April and is meeting in September (18 and 19th) to do Strategic Planning. The Forum has been established in terms of section 4 and 5 of the Children’s Act. Its purpose is to facilitate the co-operation, co-ordination and integration of all government spheres and departments and civil society organisations in the implementation of the Children’s Act and related matters. The Forum will be an umbrella committee that links with the sectoral committees such as the Child Protection Committee and the National Action Committee for Children and AIDS (NACCA).

There will be between 40 and 50 seats in total on the Forum. Each national government department affected by the Children’s Act and all provincial Departments of Social Development will be represented on the Forum. Civil society will also be represented on the Forum. “Civil Society includes NPOs, FBOs, and Research Institutions”. The number of seats allocated to civil society is likely to be between 15 and 25 seats. There should also be an additional 5 seats for international and national donors/foundations.

The national body will be supported by provincial Child Care and Protection Forums which will also need to have NPO seats allocated. This needs to be considered when deciding which NPOs should sit on the national structure versus the provincial structures.

Please see attached a discussion document for comment. Please circulate to your networks and members and send any comments to Lucy Jamieson on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by 28 September 2008.

 Child Care and Protection Forum: NPO Representation Draft 2 70.50 Kb

Unfortunately the Strategic Planning meeting for the Forum is taking place tomorrow despite the fact that many NGOs cannot attend because the invites from the Department were not sent to everyone and those that did receive an invite were sent them too late to fit the meeting into their diaries. The bad organisation of this strategic planning meeting demonstrate's clearly the need for adequate NPO representation and voice on the Forum. The four WG members who are able to attend tomorrow's meeting will campaign for the following:

1. Better organisation of future meetings. A good principle to win here would be that the Forum has a deputy chairperson who is a civil society representative and that this person helps make sure that the invites are sent to the NPOs timeously. This is the model used by SANAC that has worked quite well. 
2. 50/50 representation for NPOs and Government on the Forum
3. Independence for NPOs to decide as a collective how the NPO seats should be allocated. Ie the Department should not hand-pick the NPO representatives to attend the Forum but should allow the NPOs as a collective to run their own nomination and seat allocation process. 
4. The Department should pay the travel costs for NPOs to attend future Forum meetings. NPOs are struggling for funding and not receiving adequate funding from government for the services that they provide to children. They should not have to use their own budgets to pay for travel costs to Forum meetings.

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