As government celebrates Women’s Month, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) will focus on female offenders incarcerated with their babies under the theme: “Addressing Inequality and Empowering Women Officials and Offenders in DCS - Together contributing towards the progressive future for women.”
DCS continues to provide care for babies who are incarcerated with their mothers. Policy allows for babies to remain with their mothers until they are two years. They are then placed with family members of the offender, or placed in foster care through the Department of Social Development if a suitable family member cannot be found.
It is our view that children need to, as far as possible, be allowed to bond with their mothers at an early stage. We are, therefore, ensuring that our correctional centres are conducive for the upbringing of such children. We have established mother and baby units where children can interact, touch the soil, see the sky and play in our Early Childhood Development centres. Offenders are also able to feed, bath, clothe and put their own babies to bed.
Correctional Services Minister Sibusiso Ndebele recently called on all organs of society to donate baby products to aid the department’s path towards the rehabilitation of offenders. Donations of baby products will be used for toddlers, younger than two years, who are in correctional centres due to offences committed by their mothers.
Minister Ndebele will officially launch the DCS Women’s Month Programme in the Eastern Cape on Monday, 6 August 2012 and also hand over donations of baby products received so far.
Details of the launch are as follows:
Date: Monday, 6 August 2012
Venue: St. Albans Correctional Centre, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape
Time: 10h30 for 11h00
Journalists attending must confirm attendance with your name, mobile number and email address by no later than 16h00 on Thursday, 2 August 2012, to:
Tshidi Mapole
Cell: 076 478 3620
E-mail: matshidiso.mapole@dcs.gov.za
The Mother and Baby Unit project was first launched at the East London Correctional Centre in the Eastern Cape in 2009, and later in other female correctional centres. The project was embarked upon to protect the wellbeing of babies, and based on the principle that there is no need to punish a child because the mother made a mistake.
Through this project, DCS shows empathy to inmate mothers who in the past had to either live with their babies in sterner conditions of incarceration or be separated from them at an early age to give them a better life outside a prison.
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. The work that we are doing in our centres is about correcting the failures of society.
Enquiries:
Logan Maistry
Cell: 083 644 4050
