Children's court inquiries in the Western Cape

Abstract

Part I of the research undertaken on Children's Court Inquiries in the four magisterial districts in the Western Cape presents the findings with regard to the prevalence of child neglect and abuse in the areas under study by providing annual statistics of children who were brought before the children's courts in 2006, and the profiles of the children and their caregivers. The report also presents the risk factors for child neglect and abuse as found in the four magisterial district courts; and the forms of maltreatment which resulted in statutory removals. Given the poor level of reporting of information on the home and socio-economic circumstances of removed children in the social workers' reports, this study has not been able to address these. For each theme, we attempted to integrate the quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data obtained from the children's court files is presented in the form of tables and graphs to illustrate comparisons between different categories of each variable or condition. The boxes are used to capture qualitative data from the files while interview information has been used to complement both aspects of the data from the CCs. Part II of the analysis is on two aspects of the statutory intervention services provided to children who were brought to the attention of children's courts: 1. Service delivery processes followed in respect of statutory removals, and 2. Placement options which were available in the five studied children's courts for implementation of statutory care.