LHR and Centre for Child Law challenge the random removal of children from informal traders and beggars

On the 16th August the Constitutional Court heard argument from LHR and the Centre for Child Law on why sections of the Children's Act that allows for the removal of children without any judicial oversight or notice to the parents is unconstitutional. This follows the controversial raid in 2010 when Tshwane metro officials and social workers randomly removed the children of informal traders and beggars in Pretoria.

The legal challenge may result in changes to the Children’s Act which would give parents and caregivers more voice before children are removed from their care. The Constitutional Court has heard that the Act infringed on the right of the child to family care or parental care. The High Court had found that the Act did not provide for judicial review of the removal of a child from parental care, which rendered the legislation ‘procedurally deficient, with inadequate protective mechanisms in place to ensure that drastic interference with the child's right to parental care is not arbitrary, unreasonable or unjust’. The High Court held that that constituted an infringement of the right of the child to family care or parental care, the requirement that the best interests of the child be the paramount consideration in all matters concerning the child, and the right of parents to privacy within the family. Ann Skelton, of the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria, said parents and caregivers had to be interviewed first before children were taken away. ‘There is no judicial hearing. These types of children and parents who find themselves in this situation are unlikely to get assistance,’ Skelton said.