Cape Town – The child foster backlog has dropped from 2 351 to 1 455.
The MEC for Social Development, Sharna Fernandez, confirmed that her office had seen a reduction in the backlog of child foster numbers.
A total of 972 cases have been submitted to the children’s court.
Chairperson of the social development standing committee Dan Plato said the offices of the provincial Department of Social Development were working hard to alleviate the backlog.
They said in a statement: “The DA in the Western Cape welcomes the sterling progress made by the provincial Department of Social Development (DSD) in clearing the foster care backlog.
“In a written reply to DA parliamentary questions last week, Minister Sharna Fernandez confirmed that her department has been able to reduce the foster care backlog to 1 455 children, down from 2 351 at the end of May 2022. Of these, 972 were submitted to children’s courts for extension in October 2022, thus placing the department in an excellent position to substantially reduce the backlog of foster care cases in the province by the new year.
“These results prove that the provincial DSD’s Foster Care Management Plan is working. Developed with the goal of eradicating the backlog in mind, the plan brings together multiple stakeholders including child protection organisations, children’s courts, the Western Cape Education Department and national agencies such as Sassa (the SA Social Security Agency).”
They added that in April more than 4 000 cases were looked at.
“The provincial DSD’s specialised model promotes collaboration and co-operation between these groups, all with the end goal of efficiently and quickly providing much-needed foster care placements.
“This service-oriented mindset has allowed the provincial DSD to outstrip other provinces in clearing the backlog, and to extend 4 593 vital foster care orders through the children’s courts since April 2022.”
Plato said foster care was one of the most important services that DSD had to offer: “It is always encouraging to see the Western Cape government’s policies achieve results.
“The provision of foster care is among the most vital services rendered to the citizens of our province by the provincial DSD, and I welcome the progress that has been made, especially given the constant influx of new cases. However, the fact that the demand for foster care remains high is disturbing to me.
“As a society, we must do more to strengthen the family unit, and combat social ills such as drug abuse.”
Two weeks ago, the Weekend Argus reported that the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund revealed that nearly 150 000 children in South Africa had been left orphaned after Covid-19-associated deaths. And that since the global pandemic, nearly 10 000 children had made their way into foster care homes in the Western Cape.
SOS Children’s Villages also said they had seen an uptake, with close to 3 000 children being housed at their homes since 2020.
They explained that in 2019 and 2020, they distributed more than 6 000 emergency hygiene packs and emergency food parcels for SOS beneficiaries (vulnerable children and their families) through the family strengthening programme. The hygiene packs comprised sanitisers, women’s hygiene products, cleaning materials, washing soaps, wipes, etc) and the food packs were made up of basic food staples.
They added that in 2020 there were 688 children in their villages, 690 in 2021 and 708 in 2022, for a total of 2 086.