'We urgently need more foster-care and adoptive parents to provide safe and loving homes'
SOCIAL Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has urged responsible South Africans to become foster and adoptive parents.
Speaking at the launch of Child Protection Week in Johannesburg yesterday, Dlamini encouraged people to go to their local social development departments to find out how they could adopt children.
"This call to action includes the fact that we urgently need more foster-care and adoptive parents to provide safe and loving homes for the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children, some of whom are unable to live with their own parents," Dlamini said.
There are 244 adoptable children and 260 prospective adoptive parents at the moment.
A total of 512,763 children are in foster care and their primary caregivers receive foster-care grants.
"We encourage individuals and families to think about the great reward that fostering or adopting a child can bring," Dlamini said.
She said child murder and attempted murder also affected the children.
"Children between the ages of 15 and 17 are mostly affected by these crimes as well as those aged up to 10 years," Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, said.
According to police statistics attempted murder by children had increased from 782 to 1,113 between 2008 and 2011.
And murders had gone up from 843 to 965 during the same period.
Xingwana said the department was looking into the issue of supporting child-headed households.
During the launch children were given a platform to raise issues affecting them.
An 18-year-old living in foster care said she wanted to know if there were any plans in place for children that were exiting the education system.