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Budget allocations for implementing the Children's Act
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Budlender, Debbie Proudlock, Paula Monson, Jo |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | Constitution places an obligation on the State to give effect to all the rights in the Bill of Rights. This includes children's rights to family care or alternative care, social services, and protection from abuse and neglect. To meet its obligation the State must allocate adequate budgets so that the required conditions and services to fulfil these rights are available. The Children's Act (No 38 of 2005) as amended by the Children's Amendment Bill [B19F-2006] sets out what services the State must provide to give effect to the rights listed above. The services include partial care, early childhood development, prevention and early intervention, protection, child and youth care centres, drop-in centres, foster care and adoption. Monitoring the budget allocations and expenditure for these services is a good way of measuring whether the State is fulfilling its constitutional obligations. A costing exercise to estimate the costs of implementing the Children's Act showed that the State needs to spend a lot more on social services for children than it is currently spending. The total amount allocated in the provincial social development budgets for children's social services needs in 2009/10 is R1.7 billion. The costing showed however that, for the lowest cost scenario, an amount of R5 billion is needed in the first year of implementing the Children's Act, growing to R12.5 billion in the sixth year. Comparing actual budget with the costing calculations shows that major budget growth is needed to implement the Act. This budget growth is unlikely to happen unless changes are made to the way budget decisions are made and unless the human resources capacity needed to spend the budget is improved. This essay: • discusses how the budget for social services is currently determined; • points to what the Children's Act says about budget allocation; • summarises what the costing exercise in respect of the Act revealed; and • analyses the provincial and national departments of social development's proposed budgets for implementing the Act. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/4016/CI_chapters_sachildgauge07-08_budget_2008.pdf?sequence=1 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
