The social work role in the care for children in Botswana |
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The volume of children who need care has not only increased in Botswana but the country is - like in other African countries - going through a process of rapid social, economic and cultural change. One of the characteristics of this change is the disintegration of the extended family. The Botswana Human Development Report (BHDR 2000) concludes, that "the extended family can no longer cope with both the quality and the quantity of care, that children in need of care require".
The majority of these children in Botswana are orphans due to HIV and AIDS which has killed and continues to kill many parents. According to a 2004 report by UNAIDS/UNICEF/USAID 20% of children in Botswana are orphans. In the country kinship care was the customary foster care as well as in the traditional Tswana Society. Despite the positive role that kin play in the lives of many orphans, for some children, kin are also sources of stress since they are rarely consulted about where they prefer to stay after the death of the mother or father, which is contrary to the Convention on the Rights of the Child saying in Article 12 that "children not only have the right to articulate their opinions with regard to issues that affect them, but they also have a right to have their opinions heard." If for example the parents haven't been married, the fathers are denied the right to educate the child.
However, the kinship care system is highly depending on the support by social workers. The new Children's Act 2009 confers statutory mandate on all social workers to ensure that children are placed in safe hands whether the placements were effected through customary approach or through statutory approaches. Social workers have been given the mandate to make applications to courts of justice for appropriate order to be granted in case a child is found to be in a vulnerable and disabling situation. What I sense as a challenge here is the fact that social workers are few and this inevitably compromises the quality of their interventions and services. As at 2007 there were 420 social workers employed by the local authorities in Botswana, the Government needs to recruit more social workers and even put in place retaining incentives as some have already crossed borders in search for greener pastures.
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 Read more: The Botswana Gazette
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page last updated on 30.10.2009
