Crisis in the child protection system
South Africa has no prospect of having sufficient social workers or children’s courts in the foreseeable future to manage the massive numbers of orphans and vulnerable children who are in permanent kinship care via court-ordered foster care. Attempts to do so are causing a collapse of the child protection system as well as serious gaps in the broader service network.

This pattern is set to intensify rapidly, as the number of children in this form of care continues to grow at more than 50 000 per year, while the number of social workers is static or perhaps even shrinking.

Orphan’s rights denied
Resulting delays in the payment and processing of Child Support Grants are interfering with these children’s right to access and enjoy their constitutional rights. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic burden is reducing social workers to administrative clerks.

Towards a new approach
In response to this crisis, The Forum is advocating a developmental approach to foster care, whereby families offering long-term kinship care may access social security and other forms of support which do not specifically require the use of the courts or social workers.

The Forum has commissioned a discussion paper dealing with these issues in more depth: ”The Use of the Statutory Foster Care System to Support Long-term kinship care – impact on the welfare system and the social work profession”. 

We require your comments on this discussion paper so that we may add your voice to the call on government to change its approach in favour of a collaboration with the NPO sector that meets the needs of these marginalised children, allows them to access and enjoy their constitutional rights and caters for the other urgent responsibilities of the social development sector.

Kindly send your comments to  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  or by fax to 011 403 1879.  If you require a hard copy version of the document, please call Ms. Thato Modise on 011 403 1915 to arrange postage or courier delivery.

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