Programme Director
Our Host Minister of Social Development
Cabinet Colleagues in the National Executive, and fellow panellists
Premier of Eastern Cape
Members of Parliament
MECs and MPLs
DG of Social Development and HODs
Senior Government Officials
Colleagues, Friends and Comrades
This invitation to participate in this panel is really exhilarating for us, given the integral place occupied by Early Childhood Development (ECD) in the transformation of our society.
For us as Correctional Services, taking a holistic view of our role in our society, the impact of an effective early childhood learning and upbringing, can never be overemphasised. We hold the view and agree with the adage that education, as part of the right of the child, gives our children the best possible start in life.
The manner in which our children are brought up determines the kind of society we shall have in the future, including the individuals living in such a society.
Even before we talk about the specific activities of the department in ECD, our view is that society should take seriously the need to intervene early in the life of the child thereby creating the best possible potential for them to be a better adult. As far as we are concerned, if we were to succeed in this, then we are already halfway in preventing offending behaviour and the commission of crime.
The benefit that accrues for our society and its economy as a result of our investment in ECD should be recognised for what it is, specifically in a country such as ours where many children are not exposed to proper parenting and family life in the first place.
So, we are indeed quite excited that this discussion is taking place here and that we have been invited to participate.
The White Paper on Corrections directs us to view an offender in our care as a whole being, and that we should provide personalised and targeted care for such an individual. This is done with the aim of preparing the offender for reintegration into society, for these offenders to become worthy members of their communities.
As I have already indicated, the work that we are doing in our centres is about correcting the failures of society.
At times I have talked about the fact that our average inmate comes to us as a young, substance abuser, who has dropped out of school before high school, is functionally illiterate, and more often than not, homeless.
Many children start a life of delinquency at a tender age, running away from school and committing petty crimes. Not long they are coming in and out of juvenile centres and finally becoming hardened criminals.
For most of these children, the only family they know is the offender population in our centres and the only parent they know is the system of Corrections.
This lack of direct parental support and supervision, has meant that no one actually cared about ensuring that these children receive education, care and guidance from an early stage.
They were not given the necessary foundation and tools for making choices and decision making.
This picture says to us, many of our offenders, are young people, who have never experienced proper upbringing and family life themselves. It is for this reason that the department has introduced training of offenders in ECD skills so that they can become ECD practitioners.
This work is helping offenders, not just with teaching ECD programs, but also encouraging them to be better parents.
Creating better parents in offenders is important in addressing the vicious cycle, wherein offenders who did not have a stable family environment ended up in a life of crime, and will themselves raise children without parents, and these children will, in turn follow a similar life and end up in our centres. Our program of empowering offenders with parenting skills and ECD training is meant to curb this cycle.
Chairperson,
With the advent of the Children’s Act in April 2010, the Department of Correctional Services does not incarcerate children under the age of sixteen in our facilities. We do, however, continue to provide care for babies that are born of pregnant mothers who are incarcerated until these babies are 24 months old. The children are then placed with the family member of the offender or placed in foster care through the Department of Social Development if a suitable family member cannot be found.
Since last year, we have opened at least three dedicated Mother and Baby Units in Polsmor, Durban Westville and Johannesburg Correctional Facilities. We are currently rolling out a plan for other units in Pretoria and East London facilities where we have a large population of female offenders.
The Mother and Baby Units that are operational have trained ECD practitioners and in the case of Johannesburg, the department has offered bursaries for our officials to be trained in this regard.
There are also other ECD such as Thohoyandou and Kroonstad where ECD practitioners were deployed after training in partnership with the Department of Basic Education.
We are currently in the process of registering all our ECD centres with the assistance of the department of social development.
It is our view that children need to, as far as it is possible, be allowed to bond with their parents at an early stage. We are however also concerned with the fact that our centres do not necessarily provide the best environment for the proper upbringing of children. It is for this reason that we have decided to create these mother and baby units where children can interact, touch the soil, see the sky and play in our ECD centres. Offenders also have a longer period of interacting with their children and are responsible for feeding, bathing, clothing and putting their own babies to bed.
Of course we are concerned about the long term impact of these children growing up in the initial stages within the environment of incarceration. We intend to study and investigate this long term impact and to research whether significant numbers of children who grow up in this manner, do in fact return as adult offenders as a direct consequence of this and similar programs.
Let me reiterate that what we are doing with offenders in our centres is only a reactive intervention when a person is already involved in offending or delinquent behaviour. A sustainable solution however, should be based on the need for society to provide each and every child with the advantage of early education. The state should lead in this regard, but partnerships with communities are the only through which such an endeavour could truly succeed.
We are therefore calling for a better investment in educating our children. We are calling for partnerships with training organisations who can partner with us both in the provision of ECD and in the training of our officials and offenders.|
Most importantly, let’s build better communities where my child is your child and your child is my child. Because homes remain the most natural of environments for the upbringing and development of a child into the adult they will be.
You will agree with me that this work cannot only start at a correctional facility once the child has committed crime.
I am excited by the prospects of this dialogue and look forward to its outcome with anticipation. I am grateful for many of you who have come out to conduct an exercise which in the main is about the protection of our children.
It is not easy to run a system of corrections, but each day we remind ourselves that we have a rare opportunity to do something that can change the lives of these children forever. We so this every day, and when it is hard this is the thought that urges us to go back and try harder.
As Forest Whitchcraft famously said: “A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child."
Enquiries:
Sonwabo Mbananga
Cell: 082 045 3963
