The past year or two has seen the introduction of new and improved policies and laws which will improve young children’s enjoyment of the multiple rights relevant to integrated early childhood development. Some of these changes include:

 The possibility of birth registration becoming easier for orphans

 (1) The Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill 18-2010, which was introduced to parliament in July 2010 (Government Gazette 33356), allows for social workers to register the births of orphans.

(2) Children without birth certificates and/or whose caregivers do not have identity documents can access the Child Support Grant. In addition, the CSG has been extended to include children between the ages of 15 and 18. The Regulations to the Social Assistance Act governing the eligibility criteria for the CSG were amended on 1 January 2010 (Regulation No 32853, 31 December 2009). Prior to this date the CSG was only available for children younger than 15. In practice this resulted in younger children’s CSGs being split to support older siblings as well; anecdotal evidence indicates that often the older children’s needs were seen as more pressing and immediate and a greater share of the grant income was spent on their needs as opposed to the needs of their younger brothers and sisters.

(3) The Children’s Act, No 38 of 2005 as amended by Act No 41 of 2007 is finally in place. This means that:

• More ECD centres will be registered and more rigorously monitored in terms of norms and standards. The provincial departments of social development must provide and fund prevention and early intervention services. These services are very important to integrated early childhood development, as can be seen from the direction given by the Act.
• Section 144 requires that prevention and early intervention programmes focus on, inter alia, developing appropriate parenting skills and engaging young people in sports, arts and recreational activities; the identification of individuals, families and communities at risk; providing families and communities with information to enable them to access resources and professional help; involving and promoting the participation of children, youth, parents and families in identifying and seeking solutions; promoting appropriate interpersonal relations within families; promoting the well-being of the service user and the realisation of his or her full potential.
• Protection services have been strengthened through the creation of an obligation to screen all people who will work with children. They have been similarly strengthened by expanding the group of children who qualify for protection services to include all children in need of care and protection.
• Children in child-headed households will now receive greater protection, care and support.

(4) Home and Community Based care and support programmes will be governed by a national policy framework which will integrate and improve the quality of services around crucial issues such as breastfeeding support. Strengthened PMTCT and Children’s Treatment guidelines target pregnant women, infants and children.

(6) A new and improved road to health card has been developed and will be implemented in 2011.

 New and improved policies and laws

 The past year or two has seen the introduction of new and improved policies and laws which will improve young children’s enjoyment of the multiple rights relevant to integrated early childhood development. Some of these changes include:

(1) The possibility of birth registration becoming easier for orphans. The Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill 18-2010, which was introduced to parliament in July 2010 (Government Gazette 33356), allows for social workers to register the births of orphans.

(2) Children without birth certificates and/or whose caregivers do not have identity documents can access the Child Support Grant. In addition, the CSG has been extended to include children between the ages of 15 and 18. The Regulations to the Social Assistance Act governing the eligibility criteria for the CSG were amended on 1 January 2010 (Regulation No 32853, 31 December 2009). Prior to this date the CSG was only available for children younger than 15. In practice this resulted in younger children’s CSGs being split to support older siblings as well; anecdotal evidence indicates that often the older children’s needs were seen as more pressing and immediate and a greater share of the grant income was spent on their needs as opposed to the needs of their younger brothers and sisters.

(3) The Children’s Act, No 38 of 2005 as amended by Act No 41 of 2007 is finally in place. This means that:

• More ECD centres will be registered and more rigorously monitored in terms of norms and standards.
• The provincial departments of social development must provide and fund prevention and early intervention services. These services are very important to integrated early childhood development, as can be seen from the direction given by the Act. Section 144 requires that prevention and early intervention programmes focus on, inter alia, developing appropriate parenting skills and engaging young people in sports, arts and recreational activities; the identification of individuals, families and communities at risk; providing families and communities with information to enable them to access resources and professional help; involving and promoting the participation of children, youth, parents and families in identifying and seeking solutions; promoting appropriate interpersonal relations within families; promoting the well-being of the service user and the realisation of his or her full potential.
• Protection services have been strengthened through the creation of an obligation to screen all people who will work with children. They have been similarly strengthened by expanding the group of children who qualify for protection services to include all children in need of care and protection.
• Children in child-headed households will now receive greater protection, care and support.

(4) Home and Community Based care and support programmes will be governed by a national policy framework which will integrate and improve the quality of services around crucial issues such as breastfeeding support.

(5) Strengthened PMTCT and Children’s Treatment guidelines target pregnant women, infants and children.

(6) A new and improved road to health card has been developed and will be implemented in 2011.

 Ongoing gaps

 (1) The Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill will make it more difficult for vulnerable families to register births within the first year of life. This is critical, given the fundamental link between a birth certificate and early access to integrated early childhood development services; and given the developmental importance of accessing these services as early as possible within the first year of life. The new Bill only permits a non-parent to register the birth of a child if the parent is deceased. The current Births and Deaths Registration Act allows a duly authorised other to register the birth of a child where a parent is unable to do so. In addition to disallowing registration by non-parents, the Bill makes registration after 30 days after birth more expensive and onerous than is currently the case, without addressing the factors which make registration within 30 days difficult, such as cultural naming practices and the absence of migrant and other biological fathers.

(2) Despite protracted advocacy over the last few years, there is still no statutory obligation in terms of the Children’s Act or elsewhere on government to provide and fund home and community-based integrated ECD services. Funding has been limited up until now to supporting ECD centres; there is nothing compelling a change in this trend.

(4) Poverty continues to exclude many young children from early childhood centres as most continue to charge fees.

(5) Prevention and early intervention and protection services are inadequately funded and resourced, despite the obligation created by the Children’s Act.

(6) There are 55,000 too few social workers.

(7) There is no adequate nutrition policy for pregnant women and young children to prevent rather than treat protein energy malnutrition.

(8) There is no adequate housing/shelter policy that prioritises families with young children.

(9) There is no enforceable sanitation policy or law in South Africa.

10) There is a failure to address the systemic delivery blockages that prevent the youngest children, especially those in rural areas being reached. Despite the progress that has been made, we are not reaching rural children early enough in terms of basic developmental support services. The average birth registration rate is 85%; young children 0-1 in rural areas the rate can be as low as 40 % (Peters. K and Williams L (2009) Barriers to accessing comprehensive social security in vulnerable rural areas in SA, Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security). The national average takeup rate of the CSG is 88%; as few as 20% of young children (0-1) in rural areas receive the CSG (Noble, M., Wright, G., Barnes, H., Noble, S., Ntshongwana, P., Gutierrez-Romero, R. and Avenell, D. (2005) The Child Support Grant: A Sub-Provincial Analysis of Eligibility and Take Up in January 2005, Pretoria: National Department of Social Development, Republic of South Africa). Given the link between the CSG, food security, and the development of children in the first two years of life, this failure is having a profound impact on the optimal early development of children in rural areas in South Africa.

 Advocacy – moving forward

 NIP for ECD comes to an end now (2005-2010). A revised NIP must be developed. Civil society must advocate for participation in the development of the revised plan and emphasise the need for real integration and targeting of rural young children by calling for appropriate policies and programmes. The NIP for ECD must be designed to ensure that rural development strategies and local strategies know and action their commitments to young children. There are strong grounds for calling for the signing of performance agreements between national, provincial and local government agents to honour their agreed commitments to young children so that there may be real consequences where there is a failure to perform.

WEBLINKS FOR THIS ARTICLE

For the Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill 18-2010, click here.

For Regulation No 32853, 31 December 2009, click here.

For the Children’s Act, No 38 of 2005 as amended by Act No 41, click here.

For PMTCT, click here.

For the road to health card, click here.