Children's Amendment Bill H.B. 12, 2021

This Bill is a substantial rewrite of the Children's Act, aligning it with section 81 of the Constitution and with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

The change most people will feel is mandatory reporting. Teachers, medical practitioners, legal practitioners and ministers of religion — anyone whose professional work brings them into contact with children — would come under a duty to report any case of abuse or suspected abuse to a police officer or a child protection officer.

Several definitions change. A child becomes a person under the age of eighteen, applied consistently throughout the Act. "Child in need of care" becomes "child in need of care or protection or both" and is widened to cover children at risk of being unlawfully married, children who are pregnant, and children who have been sexually abused. The definition of "parent" is amended to remove the discriminatory reference to the illegitimacy of children born out of wedlock.

The Bill creates new offences. It becomes an offence to allow or cause a child to participate in child sexual abuse material, or to engage in child grooming. It becomes an offence for a parent or guardian to deny a child in their care access to medical treatment without reasonable cause. And a parent or guardian commits an offence where they conduce a child's commission of an offence, or fail to take reasonable steps to prevent one they could have prevented.

On care arrangements, institutions receiving children must accommodate them in a family-type environment, with new registration requirements and rules for transfers of ownership or material changes. A new Part provides for early intervention and family preservation programmes run by the State or private organisations, with norms and standards and court orders for participation. A child due to be adopted must be consulted on matters pertinent to the adoption, according to their age and maturity. A new section lets a child protection officer obtain a birth certificate for a child without parental care who is identified as in need of care and protection.

Two structural notes. The Child Welfare Council becomes the Child Welfare and Protection Council, gains representatives from organisations of parents of children with disabilities, and gains a function of receiving complaints directly from children. And section 84, on the detention of juveniles, is repealed outright — the criminal justice system for children is to be dealt with in a separate Act, which was the companion Child Justice Bill.