CHILDREN’S AMENDMENT ACT: MOST SECTIONS NOW IN FORCE

CHILDREN’S AMENDMENT ACT: MOST SECTIONS NOW IN FORCE

• 08 November 2023
• Social Development
• SA Legal Academy

Most sections of the Children’s Amendment Act, 2022, came into force on 8 November 2023 by presidential proclamation in the Government Gazette.

The purpose of the Act is to give effect to a 2017 Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) order requiring the Department of Social Development to find ‘a comprehensive legal solution’ to foster care provision and administration ‘challenges’. This is according to a memorandum on the objects of the Bill concerned, before it was passed and enacted.

Unfortunately, several of the Act’s key sections are not yet in effect. These are:

• section 4, dealing with the development and implementation of a child protection services/organisations quality assurance process
• section 5, empowering the Minister to make regulations on:
  • the powers, duties and responsibilities of the registrar of the national child protection register, and
  • the criteria to be met when establishing and resourcing designated chid care and protection units
• section 11, empowering the Minister to make regulations on the procedure, form and manner to be followed by a social service practitioner when ‘assessing, screening, investigating, referring to the relevant authority and placing a child who is in need of care and protection’, and
• section 12, requiring ‘the organisation operating/managing the cluster foster care scheme to register as a designated child protection organisation’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• presidential proclamation
• amendment Act

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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