Johannesburg - It's important that the right processes are followed and are done in the correct order when it comes to adopting children.
This was one of the messages delivered by attorney Karabo Ozah from the Centre for Child Law, who was speaking at the Adoption Seminar in Boksburg on Wednesday.
Ozah, who was discussing children’s rights, said that although South Africa had sound and adequate legal provisions to ensure adoptions took place in the best interest of the child, the implementation wasn't always perfect.
That, she said, was due to the misinterpretation of the law, failure of a child-centred approach and systematic delays in the adoption process.
Despite that, the processes were important.
“They are necessary but they must not frustrate adoptions; they must facilitate them. Imagine if there were no process, no record (of the adoptions). Who would answer (to the children) when they come with questions?” she asked, adding that it was essential that the steps were done in the correct order.
“Finding extended family to adopt a child before finding someone else must be done at the beginning so that you don’t face a magistrate who says ‘I hear there’s a grandmother’.”
Ozah said throughout the process, the best interests of the child had to be considered.
“We need to see what’s working, what’s not and what needs to be amended. We need to find solutions that will really help the children.”
She felt strongly that magistrates and judges working in children’s courts needed training in order to make the process smoother and safeguard the interests of the child without being unduly rigid.
Ozah said more needed to be done to educate the public on adoption.
She criticised the Department of Home Affairs' decision to consider all children and babies found abandoned as foreign, saying it led to a number of problems in a child’s life. Without an ID number, the child remained stateless and could neither benefit from government child grants nor access other benefits gained through citizenship.
It also became difficult for those children to be adopted.
“Nowhere in law is there a distinction in nationality. Nowhere in Home Affairs' legislation is there a provision for this, as well as in the Children’s Act. We need to think about that. All abandoned children will be treated as international, which means all children are treated the same (even though) they may have one South African parent. We need to think about these nuances.”
Ozah said it was vital that the system provided a safe way for mothers to hand over their unwanted children, else there'd be a spike in abandonment.
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