|
On 11 July 2007 certain sections of the Children's Act 38 of 2005 came into effect. It was anticipated that the rest of the Act would come into effect in 2008. People may wonder why portions of the Act are still coming into effect in 2010. The answer is that regulations were needed because much of the Act dealt with matters that needed to be implemented on a practical level. These regulations took time to finalise and only came into effect on 1 April 2010. This article deals with ‘Partial care facilities’ which is in chapter 4 of the regulations.
Partial care facilities are facilities which children attend such as after-care or a crèche. All partial care facilities have to be registered. Activities provided by religious, cultural or social organisations are exempted from being registered as well as sporting and camping activities
Applications must be accompanied by a business plan, a constitution, building plans, an emergency plan, clearance certificates and a health certificate. Clearance certificates are to ensure that employees are not registered on the National Child Protection Register or the National Register for Sex Offenders.
Employees at partial care facilities must have skills that include, apart from literacy and numeracy, basic knowledge about child development in order to assess age related developmental milestones and to identify irregular and dysfunctional behaviour in a child and. They must have proof of these skills and must be able to communicate with the child in a language the child understands (which may include sign language).
Whereas the Act required inspection only on reasonable suspicion that a place was being used as an unregistered partial care facility, the regulations require inspection at least every five years or at shorter intervals if necessary. After all inspections a report must be submitted to the head of social development and to the management of the facility.
All-in-all the partial care regulations pose many practical problems to people who operate such facilities. These regulations apply to women running one of the humblest activities imaginable, a day-care home for children, often in areas where desperate parents would otherwise leave children alone for hours on end. Now the Gogo must produce business plans, building plans, a constitution, proof of her skills and a certificate that she is not a known sex offender -- ??? This regulation is perfectly structured for a first world country but in a developing country such as South Africa one wonders how this system will actually work.
|
