Address given by Bishop Peter Lee at the Annual General Meeting of St Mary's Children's Home in Rosettenville 19th September 2001 Embargoed until delivery at 18:00 that day.

Friends, I need to make a very serious statement this evening and I can only ask that you receive it with great care and actively support whatever parts of it you believe to be correct.

I need to say clearly and loudly that the South African government is presently breaching the constitutional rights of abandoned, abused and orphaned children. It is doing so in such a serious way that the Department of Social Services and Population Development, generally known as the Department of Welfare, is bordering on becoming an accomplice in the very child abuse it is mandated to prevent.

This is a serious allegation and one which I need to justify at some length in this paper. It is not a statement one would make lightly in the public arena and I only do so because we have been trying to communicate these matters urgently to government through the Department of Welfare for a number of years. Their response has been at best uncooperative and at worst hostile. It is time that someone stood up in public not on behalf of St Mary's Children's Home, nor even on behalf of all the similar institutions in this country which bend heart and soul from day to day to the care of abandoned, abused and orphaned children. I do so on behalf of those children themselves, in the name of a Christian institution, knowing that our Lord Jesus Christ always prioritised the care of children and firmly challenged those who would abuse them.

Let me begin by quoting from Section 28 of the Bill of Rights entrenched as Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. Under the heading "children" Section 28 reads

"(1) Every child has the right - (a) to a name and a nationality from birth; (b) to family care or parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removed from the family environment; (c) to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services; (d) to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation"

I now pass over some less relevant sections to section (2) which reads, "A child's best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child".

In our recent dealings with government, work such as ours has come under the heading of providing appropriate alternative care for "abandoned, abused or orphaned children". It is these who are referred to in Section (b) about those who are removed from the family environment, and it is this tag phrase from government's own documentation which I will use in this statement.

It is further provided in the Bill of Rights (7) (2) that "the state must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights".

The charge which I am laying tonight is that the Department of Welfare, whether through lack of capacity, incompetence, or unconcern, is systematically failing in its obligation to provide appropriate alternative care to abandoned, abused or orphaned children when they are removed from the family environment. It is clear in many of our dealings with the Department that the child's best interests are not of paramount importance in the formation or implementation of their policy, and it is that which we must now protest in the strongest terms.

I am addressing this plea to the Minister of Social Welfare Mr. Zola Skweyiya. The Minister was recently described to me by a senior figure in the ruling party as "the only member of the cabinet who comes across in public as caring about the people he is trying to govern". We take great confidence from that description and we address the Minister with an urgent request to listen and engage in dialogue with those who are trying to provide appropriate alternative care for children in need.

I was recently privileged to be given a copy of the report of the ministerial committee on the Abuse, Neglect, and Ill-treatment of Older Persons which was set up by, and reported to Minister Skweyiya. This is a deeply disturbing and moving document which would make anyone indignant at the shocking treatment of the aged in this country. It speaks of the neglect of elderly people, the abuse of our fathers and mothers in their homes and in residential institutions, in pension queues and by bureaucracy. Perhaps the most shocking fact recorded in that report is that when the committee visited the pension queue at Uitenhage, the line of moneylenders was longer than the line of pensioners.

In the apartheid era, the parish which I was serving at Orchards in northern Johannesburg joined hands with the parish of Tladi in Soweto to provide a cup of soup and some bread to pensioners waiting in the queues outdoors in the cold at Jabulani stadium for their pensions during the 1980s. It was very shocking to see people waiting most of the night in the cold because the funds would run out before everyone had received, the pensioners would be abused by the officials, and we would regularly see frail elderly people being brought to the pay point in wheelbarrows to prove that they were still alive. We longed for the day when all this would cease in the new dispensation and it is deeply disappointing to read that in many parts of the country, despite all the hullabaloo of our new democracy, nothing has changed. It is deeply disappointing, that the high moral ground and the outstanding theoretical policies with which this government came to power have been so little implemented on the ground, with such little compassion, and often with cynical unconcern by those who have been able to lay greedy hands upon the benefits of our new society and long abandoned the rhetoric of compassion which they used to get there.

As I read this report on the aged in my capacity as Chairman of the Executive Committee of this Home and Bishop of this diocese, I found myself able at many points to substitute "abandoned, abused and orphaned children" for "the aged" in the report because so many of the statements made about neglect of the aged would apply equally to these children. Certainly the recommendations made by that committee could be made and ought to be implemented on very similar lines in regard to children committed to residential care by the courts of this country. I will return to those recommendations later on, but I am asking Minister Skweyiya to cast his eye over the needs of abandoned children in this country with the same urgency as he has already displayed towards the aged.

In explaining the charge that I am laying tonight, I need to touch on the following areas:

1. Present government policy as it relates to children removed from their family environment:

2. The nature and cost of "appropriate alternative care for children when removed from the family environment"

3. The context and comparisons which are often made

4. The attitude and spirit which we have experienced from the Department of Welfare

5. Recommendations

1. Present government policy

As I understand it the legal framework for providing "appropriate alternative care for children who are removed from home" is like a four-legged table and I need to try to describe these four parts to you. The problem at present is that three of these legs are excellent and deserve our support. The fourth leg is unfortunately so wobbly that it is in danger of bringing the whole table crashing to the ground.

Firstly, the law provides that the courts may place children who are at risk into care and they are then committed under a number of different sections of the law, to appropriate institutions which care for them on the state's behalf. St Mary's for example is registered to take 60 such children and presently has 50 - drawn from every background in South African society, by the way -because we cannot afford to fill the remaining 10 places nor do we feel able to make a long term commitment to children who have already been betrayed by the world if we are unable to look after them in the long term. Meanwhile we have a waiting list of over 90 and other similar institutions are in the same position. Even if these waiting lists consist largely of the same individuals waiting for access to any Home anywhere, the fact is that the courts are presently committing more children into care than the system can sustain. Those who are presently caring for these children beg and plead with the Principal of St Mary's on a daily basis to take the children in and we long to do so - but we simply cannot. As I will argue shortly, it is quite unrealistic for society to have a set up in which the courts place children in care but society makes inadequate provision for the children after they are so placed. We either have to change the law so that abused children are left in the homes where they are suffering, or we have to foot the bill as a society for what the Bill of Rights calls "appropriate alternative care". We cannot keep placing children in care and then leave them dangling between the court and the residential institution. They are the state's very own foster children and they are suffering neglect and maltreatment contrary to the Bill of Rights.

However in principle we must surely support the present system whereby the Child Commissioner is empowered to protect children at risk by removing them for as short a period as possible from homes where they are abused, or is enabled to take abandoned or orphaned children and place them into appropriate care provided by society.

Secondly for many years St Mary's Home has operated in partnership with the Provincial Department of Welfare. Our constitution has to be approved by the Department, we have to be registered with them, and we are subject to a whole slew of laws and regulations to ensure that the care provided by this institution and other comparable homes is in line with the law. Again this is absolutely right and should be supported. The horror stories which we have heard recently about child abuse in church run orphanages in Ireland is a useful warning that we need this kind of monitoring by public authority and every institution should be subject to it in the right way. Here we come very close to some of the recommendations regarding the aged in the report of the ministerial committee.

However it is important to add that the job of the Department is primarily to support and assist institutions like St Mary's in a spirit of co-operation and understanding. It is not appropriate for the application of regulations to result in an administrative jungle through which we have to wade when we ought to be dealing with child care issues - nor is it appropriate for the prevailing attitude of departmental officials to be one of suspicion or criticism. We need to remind ourselves tonight that Homes like St Mary's are in the frontline of the struggle against abuse, poverty and deprivation while most departmental officials are spectators. In short we are doing the state's work for it, and it is not appropriate for the prevailing attitude of the civil service to be one of hostility and un-helpfulness. I need to return to that later.

Thirdly there is an area which is not primarily that of the Department of Welfare but falls in the area of Labour Relations. The impact of recent labour legislation has been to boost the cost of institutions caring for children quite dramatically. This may not be wrong and in principle we should support a good deal of it. There is a perception, rightly or wrongly, that homes such as ours have historically tended to exploit their employees with long hours and low wages. What is now happening is that we are being required to employ more staff in order to ensure more time off, longer holidays and shorter shifts especially for those who are directly involved as Child Care Workers. We would be the first to admit that our pay of such workers is low and we would love to increase it. However what is presently happening is that the state is pushing up the cost of running residential institutions like St Mary's, while reducing their financial support - and that creates a yawning gap in which the demands of labour law are in direct conflict with the constitutional need to provide care for the children. It is this circle which has to be squared and cannot be squared by us without some sensible policy decisions being made by the state.

It is of course true that Homes like St Mary's have historically operated with Christian staff who were often willing to make sacrifices for their compassionate ministry, working long and inconvenient hours for low benefits because of their care for the children. While we should support every effort from the world of organised labour to improve the conditions of such staff, it would be very sad if the spirit of care and compassion which has characterised especially church run homes should be dissolved into the legalistic, confrontational and often selfish arrangements which prevail in industry. We need to look after our staff without losing the spirit of compassion and going the second mile which has always characterised our work.

Fourthly - and this is the wobbly leg of the table - the state is required by law to provide adequate support grants to make possible the care of children in a home like St Mary's. In common with other homes like ours, we have always been involved in fund raising to contribute towards the cost of running the Home and caring for the children but our partnership with government has meant a significant and realistic monthly grant for each child in the Home as the basis on which we could add donation funding to make ends meet. However the per capita grant in Gauteng did not increase at all between 1992 and 1999. For all that period it stood at R 850 per child per month. I will address the question of actual costs and the realism of them in a moment. For now I just need to point out that this grant covered over half the cost of keeping a child in this Home in 1992 and because of inflation gradually shrank to around a third of the cost or about half of its original purchasing power over that 7 year period. Last year the grant was increased by R 50 to R900 and we were given a once-off grant of R 50 000. That amount sounds handsome until you realise that with 50 children in the Home, it costs over R 150 000 a month to run and therefore that grant merely lifted the Department's contribution from ¯ to ° of the cost for a period of four weeks only. It is our estimate (and our budget for the present year is based on this) that it costs over R 3, 000 per child per month to keep someone at St Mary's. This is in part because of the point I have made a moment ago, that the law now effectively requires us to employ one member of staff for every two children which is quite expensive when you reckon that most children are brought up by parents who do the job free of charge. This is the figure which needs to be debated and taken seriously by the Department if residential care such as the constitution envisages, is to continue.

In fairness I should add that we receive bursaries for the children's schooling, we use state hospitals free of charge and we utilise the state's assessment centre, TMI.

Let me at this point describe what St Mary's has been doing to address this problem and share with you something of the difficult relationship which we have had with the Department of Welfare.

The problem which I have been describing has grown upon us over a number of years until we realised that the gap between state provision and actual cost of providing the very services which the state requires was growing wider and wider. We have taken three steps to address this matter.

Firstly on the strictly financial front, we have kept our budgeting and control of expenditure extremely tight with the most ambitious fund raising of which we are capable.

Secondly we received a bequest from a Mr Wiseman about 12 years ago which has grown over the years to an amount of about R 4 million three years ago. At that point, when we were running out of money, we either had to take the traditional view that we should spend only the income of this money (which would have resulted in the closure of the Home) or we had to spend the capital in order to remain open. As a committee we solemnly took that route because we are essentially in critical solidarity with the new government in this country and we wanted to give them time to sort out the policy framework and address the issues about which I am speaking this evening. You have already heard the qualified report of our auditors which questions whether St Mary's is still a going concern because of the loss of R 1,5 million during last year. This is a direct result of the failure of the state to fund this institution and similar institutions at a realistic level and the loss in question was funded from the Wiseman bequest. We had the funds and we believed it was right to use them in the interests of the children, but such expedients cannot last indefinitely. The only answer is proper funding from the very public authorities who commit children into our care.

Thirdly we have tried repeatedly and continuously to engage the Gauteng Department of Social Welfare in serious discussions about this problem. I have to say that this has been extremely frustrating and we have not had any adequate response.

It will be helpful at this point to describe our efforts in this regard. I should perhaps begin (although it was not our first representation) with a long and serious letter which I wrote to the MEC on 14th December 1999. We had no reply to that letter but we made repeated contact with the Department thereafter. This resulted a year later in a meeting with a delegation from the Department here at the Home in November 2000. Three matters from that meeting should be reported.

¨ We expressed dissatisfaction at having no response to that letter and were first of all told that we should not write to the MEC but to the Director General. In other words it was all our fault and the blame was shifted to us! The delegation did then admit that the letter had been forwarded to them for a reply which they had drafted and returned to be sent to us. They had the grace to express some embarrassment that no one had bothered to send the letter to us and they could understand our frustration.

It has to be said regrettably that this is typical of the level of professional service we receive from the Department of Welfare. We should understand that the law requires the Department to provide certain professional services to institutions like St Mary's which are doing the state's work for it in child care. We have extreme difficulty in securing timeous responses to phone calls and letters, answers to queries, and regular grant payments which by law are due from the Department to the Home. We waste a huge amount of child care time chasing up administrative matters.

At a more serious level there are professional child care services which the Department should provide and which are not currently being supplied on request. For example when a child is committed to the Home and proves to be unsuitable because they have problems which result in disadvantage to other members of the Home, there is a procedure by which the Department should assist the situation and act to move a child when required. We have requested this service in the past couple of years and had the greatest difficulty in accessing it.

I even received early this year an impertinent letter from the Department complaining that the Principal of the Home had placed a child with a family during the school holiday without the appropriate permission. The truth was that our Principal and other staff had been caring for the children throughout the school holiday when they should themselves have been taking time off, and when Department officials were all on leave. The Principal had tried for three days to get the telephone answered in the Department of Welfare and when she eventually managed to make contact, was told that the official who would deal with the matter was not available and no one else could help her. In other words, while we were caring for the children on the Department's behalf, they had no procedure in place for providing the backup which the law requires. Then to turn round and accuse the home of acting illegally because the Department was delinquent seems to me nothing but officious harassment, and I said so.

¨ In our November meeting we explained our financial situation and the difficulty we had with inadequate government grants. The response was - and I quote - " you are an NGO. If you run out of money, don't come crying to us to bail you out". While at one level it is true that St Mary's Home and similar Homes are NGOs operating in the child care area, it is not true that we are merely NGOs in the sense of being independent bodies established to do what we want. We exist in a legal and contractual framework whereby we provide a service to government, for government, under government's regulation. In those circumstances when the children at St Mary's are committed to us by the state, it appears to me grossly irresponsible for the state to abdicate in that way and tell us that it is all our problem. These children are the responsibility of the Department of Welfare and in my view they are acting both negligently and unconstitutionally in shrugging their shoulders and saying that if we run out of funds. They will take no responsibility for the children.

¨ When we discussed the matter of the realistic costs of keeping a child in a Home, we were informed by the delegation that this issue is a matter of debate and the Department at national level has instituted research in some institutions in Cape Town to establish what the appropriate level of funding ought to be and what the cost of keeping a child in residential care really is. We were told that the research was to be complete in March this year and that we would immediately be given a copy. So far this has not happened and we understand that copies have not been made available yet to the provincial department. My own suspicion - and I want to challenge the Department to answer this - is that the research has been completed but the results are not what they wanted. I strongly suspect that the research has shown that a figure in the region of R 2 500 or more per child per month is the actual cost of keeping a child in residential care, and that the Department does not know how to deal with this unwanted information.

In defence of the Provincial Department of Welfare in Gauteng I should tell you that the per capita monthly grant is not in their discretion. It is set by the National Department and provinces have to comply with what is decided at national level.

2. The nature and cost of "appropriate alternative care (for children) when removed from the family environment"

There seems to be a widespread myth in government circles to the effect that Homes like ours are somehow trying to take public resources for their own purposes, and that we are providing a five star service for children at far too high a standard and far too great a price. I need to put this in the wider context of child care in a moment but let me deal with the specifics first.

There are three factors which make residential care for abandoned, abused and orphaned children expensive. The first is that most children are brought up free of charge by their parents whereas we have to supply salaried staff to act in loco parentis. The second is that the labour law provisions which I referred to earlier force us to employ large numbers of staff proportional to the numbers of children in our care. We have no discretion over that either. The third factor is that by definition, children who have to be placed in care will have particular and expensive needs in addition to those of a normal child. Compensatory care for the abuse or neglect which a child has suffered is an extra cost factor. By definition almost all of our children will require the services of a psychologist whom we have to employ in the Home. We need social workers to relate to the child's disrupted families. Some will require speech therapy and many will require extra lessons to bring them up to the educational level of their contemporaries at school. Some require to attend special schools, one of which is in Mondeor. One of our committee recently suggested that all the children from St Mary's should go to the same local school and everyone should walk there so that we could sell the bus. But the fact is that some of our children require special educational provision, and we have no legal option but to ensure that they get to such schools. This is the reason why we have to own a bus and a combi and employ a driver. It is all part of the cost of meeting the constitutional right of "appropriate alternative care for those who have to be removed from their homes".

3. The context and comparisons which are often made

Along with the question of cost and five star treatment there is often an argument which runs that there are so many children far worse off than those at St Mary's and we need to make sure that public funds go to those who are most in need. I suppose the argument is parallel to the one in public health which has discontinued transplant surgery in order to fund primary health clinics. In principle there is nothing wrong with that argument. We are very well aware in the church of brave and compassionate efforts which are made in townships and informal settlements to bring together needy children and orphans in crèches and other very basic facilities. We have absolutely no wish to compete for funds with such caring initiatives. The problem lies in the assumption that there is a competition at all because we believe that it is more helpful to the children of this country if all these initiatives can be properly supported. The very fact that the Department of Welfare could not spend its budget last year indicates that there is no earthly reason why those poor grassroots initiatives and well experienced and highly qualified institutions like St Mary's should not both be properly funded. The answer is surely not to reduce every child to the barest level of survival but to work at raising standards in every response to deprivation to the kind of level of care and compensatory therapy that prevails here. In fact what we need is for all these initiatives to work together. When one thinks of the portions of the Constitution which I read you, including the right to "basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services" and the right "to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation", reducing the provision here to that of mere survival in a backyard shelter is in fact unconstitutional. We may not constitutionally remove social services or therapy from children in one institution to lower them to another level. What is required is to work creatively with the well-established institutions in order to share their resources more widely. Our motive - and the state's - must not be competition or jealousy but co-operation in a drive to upgrade provision for ALL abandoned, abused or orphaned children, in line with their human rights as entrenched in the South African Constitution.

When we say that we have 50 children in this Home, it should not be thought that this is a static number. Public policy with which we entirely agree insists on seeking to reconstruct broken families so that children can return to them. This happens all the time so that there is a continuous throughput of children at St Mary's, meaning that in the course of 12 months the 50 places here are occupied by more than 50 children. Not all remain here on a long-term basis. There is no doubt that far better use could still be made of the St Mary's facilities. We have consistently made this offer to the Department over the past five years and reflected it in business plans which they have requested from us again and again though with very little response from their side. We believe that a big property like St Mary's should be used much more effectively and in a more complex way. We would gladly find a way of filling our 10 spare spaces or for that matter taking everybody off the waiting list if a way could be found which was both legal in the eyes of the Department and financially viable. More than that, we have proposed that St Mary's should provide a counselling centre, a facility for the sex workers of Rosettenville because St Mary's has in fact accommodated the children of such sex workers since the day we opened in 1902, training centres in relation to HIV and AIDS, a One Stop social services centre for the south, a rape counselling centre which is virtually inaccessible to anyone who is assaulted in the south of Johannesburg, etc, etc. We have been very imaginative, very open and very co-operative in proposing ways in which this institution could be used more cost effectively and more extensively. All it needs is some creative and realistic response from the state.

The conclusion has to be that the government has only four options available. It must either change the law so that abused children remain in the homes where they are abused and are not taken into care. Secondly it can find ways of dramatically reducing the cost of residential care such as the Bill of Rights provides for children. There could be creative ways of doing this and we need to be in negotiation about it. Thirdly they could meet their obligations and begin funding all Children's Homes at a level of at least R 2500 per child per month for the present year back dated by a couple of years. Fourthly they can carry on as they are at the moment and find that all institutions like St Mary's have disappeared from the map within three or four years from now. The Child and Family Centre in Edenvale went that way earlier this month. That will not only mean that this country loses incredibly important resources just as the onset of the AIDS orphans crisis hits us but also that the government is in an even weaker position to fulfil its legislated and constitutional obligations to abandoned, abused and orphaned children. They are delinquent now; forcing institutions like these to close would be gross negligence.

Let me interrupt myself here to say that the purpose of this address is precisely to prevent closure, and I need to assure children and staff on that score. We do have a contingency plan in place to care for our present children in the event of a worst-case scenario. But at this time we are still fighting to stay in business.

4. The attitude and spirit which we have experienced from the Department of Welfare

I have already spoken strongly and some may feel too strongly, about the difficulties we have in our relationship with the Department of Welfare at the administrative and professional level. I wish I did not have to speak in this way but our frustration reflects the reality of our experience. I can only add that it seems unreasonable to be penalised, harassed and left unsupported by the very public authorities for whom one is providing a service at great cost in effort and human sacrifice.

Since our experience here reflects what so many others are saying about their relationship with government departments I need to add that it seems to me not only a matter of professionalism and competence but somehow of attitude. I cannot understand this and I have no evidence to go on so that I can only speculate about where it is coming from but I need to name the problem in a couple of areas because sometimes when you name a thing you are half way to being able to sort it out.

Three items follow

1. There seems to be a kind of irritation in government about anything which they do not control directly themselves. I am not sure whether this is just a matter of newness in government or whether it reflects the totalitarian and state centralising ideology which some of our leaders have learnt in Eastern Europe - but it does make co-operation extremely difficult. There seems to be a mind set in some parts of government which says, "if we don't create it, control it and run it ourselves, we don't want it". In consequence for example, government has built one or two new Children's Homes at vast capital expense rather than expanding the capacity of existing institutions, some of which are standing half empty. This cannot make sense when offers of co-operation are on the table and partnership is constantly spoken of for example in the Tirisano programme of the Department of Education. All we can say is that we really want to work in partnership with others on an honest and open basis and we fail to understand why others do not reciprocate.

2. There seems to be a double problem when the institution in question is run by the church. Again I fail to understand the problem when 75,6% of the population in the 1996 census wrote themselves down as Christians. While we respect and work with those of other faiths and none, it remains the case that this is a predominantly Christian country and that the Christian traditions and institutions which have stood (for example in this case for 99 years,) are at the service of the community. Could it again be the fact that some of the returning exiles have spent too long in the ideologically secular world of Eastern Europe and others in the consumerist secular society of western Europe or north America? Have they forgotten what kind of a society it is which they are trying to govern? Where does all this suspicion of the church and of Christian institutions come from and why is it so confoundedly difficult to work together without being treated like something the cat brought in and constantly treated with the spirit of suspicion, criticism and non co-operation by those in government who need all the help they can get. We find this a very painful and distressing experience and we wish that those with whom we are trying to work would hear us rather than sniping at every opportunity.

3. Behind all these there is no doubt in my mind that there are racial issues at work. We all know that we cannot in one generation move out of the hurt which has been inflicted by whites on others in the past, and which constantly surfaces in suspicion and distrust on the part of black South Africans. Any organisation like St Mary's which has been in existence for a long time seems to be reckoned as part of the old South Africa especially if the Chairman of the Executive Committee or the Principal is white. It is of course a matter of record that many institutions like ours had to operate on a segregated basis in previous years. We did so under protest and we protested pretty loudly but the only way we were able to care for children at all in the public arena was on a separate basis. In the case of the Anglican Church we operated homes for every group in society on as equal a basis as we could - this home along with St Joseph's Home and St Nicholas Home and the Orlando Home in Soweto. We were by no means the property of one group to the exclusion of others but our only alternative at that stage was to do nothing for children at all. This Home constantly announced that it wanted to integrate at the earliest opportunity, it changed its constitution before the law changed and it has been caring for children of every background in this country since the earliest opportunity. When are we going to stop bickering about who is on the Executive Committee and start noticing the totally mixed nature of the beneficiaries of this Home? One has to be frank here and say that there is a very fine line between legitimately watching out for covert racism which may well lurk in some institutions and for which we at St Mary's are quite willing to be inspected and monitored by any appropriate authority at any time, and something quite else. We have fine relationships with some outstanding people in government but there are some people out there who find it all too convenient to cover up their own incompetence, corruption or lack of compassion by playing the race card rather than addressing the issue. Our frustration is largely to do with the fact that we cannot get people to focus on the issue because they constantly slip sideways into racially based excuses for not doing what the constitution requires namely The needs of the child are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child

It we could keep our focus there and stop covering up our inadequacies with excuses from somewhere else, we would be able to address the needs of the abandoned, abused and orphaned children of our society.

Let me speak personally here for a moment. I listened to President Thabo Mbeki's speech at the opening of the National Conference on Racism in August 2000 and I heard him say that whites cannot be judged on what they say about themselves now, but on "whether they were with us in the struggle". I have no problem with that statement and nor should any Christian because our Lord Jesus Christ told us quite clearly that we will be judged on our actions more than our words. I am very well aware because I have been there - both having been an inadequately sensitive person in my time, and as a priest having tried for many years to conscientise other people whom I have judged (rightly or wrongly) to have been insufficiently sensitive to the crisis of apartheid. However something about the President's statement jarred with me and I tried to work out what it was. In the end I realised. When I was burying the victims of the Boipatong massacre, long after the politicians had all gone home and left the church to do the dirty work, as the sun went down on a dangerous evening in the cemetery at Sharpeville and people behind garden walls were shouting "one settler one bullet" - where was Thabo Mbeki with me in the struggle then? I believe he was smoking his pipe in Geneva or in New York far away from the scene of the action. In other words although his theory holds water there is often a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. That is unfortunately still true today. Often people and institutions which can be smeared as part of the old South Africa are doing a good and authentic job in the new - and the beneficiaries of the new can be quite dishonest in covering up their own failure and even their abuse of office or of other people by dismissing others of us and what we are doing on grounds which are nothing but racist.

Let us rather look to the constitution which is in place for all of us and in this context most specifically for the children, and set about securing their rights and their well being rather than squabbling among ourselves.

5. Recommendations

1. The government of this country and the Department of Social Welfare in particular need to recognise the expertise and experience of residential Homes like St Mary's and understand that losing them would be a tragic loss to this country, prejudicing the constitutional rights of children presently in care and those who may be committed to care in the future. Furthermore they would be losing potential nodes of co-ordination for social services of every kind related to the child and essential facilities for responding to the tidal wave of AIDS orphans which is approaching. To drive these homes out of existence by continuing to starve them financially is an act of gross irresponsibility and needs to be avoided by urgent and realistic consultation.

This has to happen at national level because that is where the essential decisions are controlled; Provinces, as we have seen, have limited discretion to make the necessary changes.

2. As with the aged, there needs to be proper and clear monitoring of the standards and conduct of all residential institutions in order to ensure that no racism, exploitation or neglect is being practised. We have no fear of such investigation and will gladly co-operate with it provided that it is conducted in an appropriate spirit and is not used as a smoke screen for avoiding the real issues.

3. The report on the aged says "there is an absence of long-term planning and co-ordination on homes". The same is true of children's homes. Government should immediately raise the per capita monthly support grant to R 2 500 for 2001 for all children properly committed to homes such as this by the courts. That grant should be backdated for 2 years and funded out of the unspent funds in the welfare budget. It should be increased at 10% per annum until proper research and negotiations have taken place to put proper funding into place. Unless emergency action of this kind is taken now, the institutions will not be there by the time the negotiations have happened.

4. Funds from the lottery which have been long promised need to be urgently and generously released for children in need and in care.

5. Discussions should take place urgently and at national and provincial level about the realistic diversification of functions of residential institutions, so that the strong base which is already in place can be broadened to provide other training, emergency counselling, and other related interventions, especially focused on the HIV disaster. It must be recognised that the constant talk in health care circles about home based care is correct but hopelessly insufficient. We are going to need the equivalent of wartime field hospitals in every major centre in the country. When gifts like extensive residential facilities with large land and space for further buildings are in place as a gift from the past, it must be wildly irresponsible to discard them at such a time as this.

6. Professional services which the Department of Welfare is legally required to supply to residential institutions should be restored as a matter of urgency and supplied consistently and efficiently while assistance should be given in minimising the damage caused by the administrative jungle erected by the same departments.

7. Maybe we need an agreed protocol on children in care similar to the proposed protocol on elder abuse, to put some standards and principles into place in the public eye.

To conclude with the Bill of Rights

"A child's best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child. Children have the right to family care or parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removed from the family environment, to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services". These are the constitutional rights of children in care which are presently under threat and which need urgently to be protected.