2. Contextualisation
2.2 Current state of adoption in South Africa
Adoption in South Africa is highly complex and technical and is strictly regulated by the department and other state institutions to protect the best interests of the child (Wolfson Vorster, 2019a). Some experts are of the opinion that adoptions in South Africa are being overregulated by the department (Blackie, 2019).
The process entails a thorough interview with prospective parents by an accredited social worker during which full medical records are drawn, marriage and psychological evaluations are performed and house calls are made, as well as verification of the prospective parents’
situation by the police.
Prospective parents are then placed on a waiting list until there is a child that fits the parents’
situation. Following an extensive legal process that is facilitated by the children’s court, the child is temporarily placed with the designated adoptive parents. If the social worker finds that the placement is in the best interests of the child, the adoption is finalised.
According to the organisation Add-option (2019), social workers are fully accountable for making decisions regarding the child’s path of life, which means that they are extremely exposed, and the world of adoption is a specialist field.
Furthermore, South African social workers have extremely high case loads. Fritz (2019a) says the average accredited adoption specialist has about 100 cases at any given time, whereas international standards suggest a maximum of 60 cases.
Children in South Africa Children receiving state grants Orphans in South Africa Children receiving foster care grants Children in child and youth care
centres
Child protection statistics in South Africa
9 2.2.1 Decrease in adoptions
In spite of the urgent need for adoption (see 2.1 Child protection statistics) and high case loads confronting adoption specialists every day, adoptions per year have decreased drastically:
from 2 840 registered adoptions in 2004 to only 1 1867 in 2017, a decrease of 58%.
Figure 2: Registered adoptions in South Africa from 2004 to 2018
Blackie (2019) ascribes the decrease in registered adoptions to the department’s inability to effectively deal with the cases. While private accredited social workers and non-profit organisations largely facilitate the process at present, the department is involved in several stages of the adoption process, and according to Blackie (2019) it is precisely the stages where the department is involved that frustrate social workers. The stages where the department is involved are the following:
• Accreditation of social workers doing adoptions.
• Managing the national adoption register.
• Formal letters of reference required from provincial representatives of the department.
• Finalisation of an adoption when a formal court procedure has been completed.
From this it is clear that the department can intervene at various stages should any irregularities occur in an adoption (Blackie, 2019; Day, 2019).
Wolfson Vorster (2018) agrees with Blackie (2019), arguing that further delays occur in obtaining Form 308 from the department. In addition, the processes for declaring a child as abandoned and for withdrawing parental rights for the adoption of a child are highly cumbersome. Wolfson Vorster (2018) further says public servants take a very long time dealing with matters such as registration of births and finalising court dates. Even when an abandoned child finally is entered in the register for adoptable children and prospective parents, the time these children have to stay on the list has been increasing exponentially: in
7 1 033 of these adoptions were national adoptions and 153 were international adoptions (becomingamom.co.za, 2019).
8 An application form submitted to the department by prospective adoptive parents to declare that they do not abuse children or that their names are not listed on the national child protection register.
2840 2436
March 2004 1 April 2010 - 31
March 2011 1 April 2013 - 31
March 2014 1 April 2015 - 31
March 2016 1 April 2017 - 31 March 2018
REGISTERED ADOPTIONS IN SOUTH
AFRICA
10
2010 there were only three children who had to wait for more than 60 days on this list, but in 2017 there were 240 children who had to remain on the list for more than 60 days.
These delays with regard to the department’s involvement in the process of adoption could also be ascribed to the enormous number of cases of child protection services the department has to deal with (Van Loggerenberg, Ramapuputla, Hattingh, 2019). According to Wolfson Vorster (2019b), departmental social workers have 100 to 300 cases to attend to at any given time (these cases do not include adoptions), while the department also is experiencing an enormous staff shortage crisis. According to Nkosi (2018), 8 600 social workers graduated in 2018. The studies of these graduates were funded by the department, but because of budget limitations only 566 of these graduates could be employed by the department, thanks to an amount of R181 million made available by the National Treasury.
In a recent radio interview the department’s spokesperson said the department was providing training for 889 social workers to facilitate adoptions, but the department itself has not yet made regulations specifically regarding the qualifications social workers in the employ of the state should have to facilitate adoptions. Furthermore, social workers working for the state have been authorised to facilitate adoptions since the coming into operation of the Children’s Second Amendment Act of 2016 (Wolfson Vorster, 2019a en 2019b). Public servants therefore have had two years to facilitate adoptions, but according to indications the department has only finalised a few adoptions since 20179. This is ascribed to the department’s ignorance in the specialist field of adoptions (Van Loggerenberg, Ramapuputla, Hattingh, 2019).
In addition, the latest quarterly labour force survey (QLFS Q4: 2018) indicated that there was about 51 000 job losses in the field of social services during the last quarter of 2018.
2.2.2 Adoption fees
Adoption fees may vary from R0 to R15 000, according to a sliding scale that is used to determine what prospective adoptive parents can afford, so as to make adoptions as accessible as possible to all. According to Blackie (2019), Day (2019) and Van Loggerenberg, Ramapuputla and Hattingh (2019) this amount includes the following:
• Assessing the child.
• Searching for the child’s biological parents if the child has been abandoned.
• Medical examinations (not performed free of charge by the state).
• Assessing possible suitable parents.
• Lots of administrative work and fees.
• Supporting the family once the adoption has been finalised.
The fees per adoption usually do not cover all the expenses, and therefore non-profit organisations raise funds so as to make adoption more affordable.
It is important to state that adoption fees are regulated by the department itself; in other words, the department’s argument that there have been individuals charging exorbitant amounts for an adoption (see 2. Contextualisation), is invalid (Van Loggerenberg, Ramapuputla, Hattingh, 2019).
The department’s second argument is that the new legislation regarding fees would afford even women in rural areas an oppurtunity to adopt children, but Blackie (2019) argues that women in these areas are already caring for the children of their own blood relatives and that they are not really interested in legally adopting these children. Should they legally adopt these
9 New information came to light after the original publication of this report that the department has successfully facilitated a few adoptions since 2017.
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children, they would forfeit a foster care grant of R1 000 per month, qualifying only for a child support grant of R410 per month. The department furthermore has not been able to produce any evidence of research conducted in black rural areas to determine whether the fees clause will be of any relevance (Van Loggerenberg, Ramapuputla, Hattingh, 2019).