The Western Cape Child Commissioner’s (WCCC) annual report for 2020/2021 has revealed that its caseload had increased threefold since its inception in 2020.
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The directorate recently celebrated its third anniversary and confirmed that it had tabled its report to Parliament in March.
It found that 137 complaints and enquiries had been recorded between June 2021 and May 2022, an increase of 174% compared to the 50 cases in the previous financial year.
The report found that 41% of cases were linked to the Department of Social Development (DSD), and 23% were tied to the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
According to IOL, Commissioner Christine Nomdo said that in terms of the DSD’s cases, 49 were children- and family-related cases, while another was a development and research-related case. There was also one case linked to the administration of the department and another five were linked to social welfare services.
‘When zooming into the cases linked to children and families, cases include child protection matters, child and youth care centre (CYCC) resourcing constraints, appealing the decision of a social worker or the department, information or advice regarding someone else’s child, custody issues, and matters of adoption or foster care, whereas social welfare cases are linked to social grants,’ Nomdo noted.
In total, 23% of enquiries and complaints to the office were linked to the WCED, with 24 cases related to public schools, three others related to independent schools. A single case was related to public special school education.
‘We are currently building an information management system to be more strategic about our case tracking and analysis,’ WCCC spokesperson Mthuthuzeli Ntseku told the publication. ‘We also learnt many lessons from the African pioneer Children’s Ombud in Mauritius.’
‘The WCCC conducted a study visit to the Mauritian Ombudsperson to learn about their investigations policy and practices.’
‘This visit consequently yielded many lessons for the institution building of the WCCC.
‘The WCCC will continue to build diplomatic and strategic links with other Ombudspersons for Children across the world. If we want to be world-class, we need to know what is happening in the rest of the world,’ said Ntseku.
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