Johannesburg - On the back of South Africa commemorating Child Protection Week from Sunday, the UCT-based Children’s Institute has slammed government’s inability to “protect children during Covid-19 and beyond” and urged it to reconsider the below inflation increase for child grants.
Researchers said the past year, which has been characterised by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns - including a prolonged closure of schools, had been especially challenging for parents and caregivers who need to keep children safe and stimulated in unusually difficult circumstances, including long periods when schools were closed.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly promised to tackle violence against women and children, and recently emphasised that childhood nutrition is central to national plans to rebuild the economy.
“After a year in which millions of households were thrust into desperate poverty and children suffered the effects of food insecurity, came a shock decision to limit the Child Support Grant (CSG) increase to just R10.
“However, government has targeted social grants for budget cuts and allowed them to fall behind food price inflation.
“Early childhood development services have also fallen victim to budget cuts, alongside impossibly stringent registration requirements, and many have been forced to close altogether. These critical support systems to help struggling families and vulnerable children have been eroded,” the Children’s Institute said..
The pandemic had caused a loss of employment for thousands, leading to less household incoming and food insecurity in the country.
“Apart from the risk of the virus itself, lockdown has entrapped many households in overcrowded and cramped conditions, further compromising physical and mental health and putting children and their caregivers at risk.
“Also, reducing the value of the Child Support Grant in relation to the food poverty line increases the strain and anxiety caregivers feel and is likely to result in more physical and emotional violence and mental health problems.
“Reducing access to early childhood development services increases the burden of care on women and deprives parents of access to violence prevention programs—a key component in breaking the ongoing cycle of violence in the home,” said the Children’s Institute.
Citing the Birth to Twenty Plus (Bt20+) study, which provided insight into the violence in the lives of children over a course of more than 20 years, researchers found that 99% of children in this birth cohort had experienced or witnessed some form of violence, and that nearly half of preschool-aged children were reported to have experienced physical punishment by parents or caregivers, and that physical punishment is often used as a method of discipline.
One of the authors, Professor Shanaaz Mathews, said this was concerning: “Infanticide (the killing of a newborn infant) is emerging as a hidden problem through data collected from the Child Death Review project and pointing to the urgent need to support pregnant women as part of our violence prevention response.”
Researchers also found that 45% of child killings were associated with neglect, while three quarters of the child abuse deaths were in the under-five age group and occured at home.
Lizette Berry, a senior researcher at the Children’s Institute said: “Exposure to ongoing violence is especially damaging during the first thousand days of life,” she said.
“The impact of excessive physical and psychological stress or trauma, also known as toxic stress, can disrupt the development of the brain architecture, which may result in lifelong consequences.”
The researchers also said parental intervention had the potential to disrupt cycles of violence, thus, minimising the risk for young children and their caregivers.
Another senior researcher at the Children’s Institute, Dr Katharine Hall, told Scopa in Parliament last week about the impact of the below inflation increase for child support grants.
“The child support grant was already below the food poverty line – it couldn’t provide a child with adequate nutrition.
“Yet in nominal terms, this is the smallest increase that the child support grant has received in the past six years (since 2015).
“In relative terms, this is the first time since its introduction that the value of the child support grant will fall relative to food price inflation.” The grant buys even less food this year than it did last year”.
The Children’s Institute and the Centre for Child Law called on Parliament to review the grant allocation and reminded the Appropriations Committee of the High Court’s ruling that “even in times of economic crisis, regressive measures may only be considered after assessing all other options and ensuring that children are the last to be affected, especially those in vulnerable situations.”
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