Towards Redrafting the Child Care Act
During 1995, a draft Child Care Amendment Bill, aimed at amending critical and problematic areas of current child care and protection legislation, was circulated by the Department of Welfare and Population Development. This Bill was criticized from various sectors for its piece-meal approach to law reform.
A clear need existed to "Africanize" child care and protection mechanisms and to achieve both uniformity of vision and compliance with international norms and standards, not to mention ensuring that existing legislation complied with the provisions in the South African Constitution. The Amendment became law in 1996, just prior to which a conference was organised to ensure that the process of reform did not stagnate and to increase awareness of the need for coherent and comprehensive change in child care and protection laws. This publication is an account of the speeches, proceedings, and extensive recommendations that emerged out of the conference.