What is a child support grant?

• The child support grant is a grant aimed at helping the poor children of South Africa.

• The government gives a grant of R210 a month to children who meet the requirements.

These requirements are:

•The child and primary care giver must be South African citizens.

•The child must be under the age of 14.

•The care giver must either live in a rural area or earn less than R1100 a month.

•…..live in an urban area in an informal settlement and earn less than R1100 a month.

•…Or live in an urban area in a house or flat and be earning less than R800 a month.

•The caregiver applying for the grant does not need to be a biological parent of the child, if the child has been put into a foster care by the government as they are considered at risk, the care giver does not need to meet the requirements.

•The child support grant is given to you under the condition that the child remains in the care of foster parents, is living in adequate housing, is fed and given clothing, must receive medical and dental care and must attend school regularly.

•A person of any gender can apply for a child support grant and it wont affect the outcome of the grant.

• Although in South Africa, more women are applying for the grants than men making the statistics look bias towards women.

•Today, South African grants are found to be paid to 45% of children, a dramatic increase to the 0,5% receiving them in 1999.

How to apply for a child support grant:

• There is no cost involved in making an application for a child support grant.• There are though, a number of documents that need to be handed in when

making an application, like your ID document, the child's birth certificate, proof of immunization , proof of care givers earnings and assets, employer or social workers written statement as to why you should get the grant, a marriage or divorce certificate if applicable.

• If your application is denied you will get a letter from the department of social development explaining why your application was rejected.

• If your application is approved there is a supposed waiting time of only 3 months but it has been reported that many applicants have waited over a year for the grant to come through.

• The first payment of the grant should include all the money from the months you have waited for the grant too.

• Payments can be made in any way that suits you, collected from the post office, directly into your bank account, collected from the department of social development, collected from a welfare officer to a pay point.

Studies show that women are overwhelmingly the largest recipient of the grants. When the grant was initialized the majority of men in the government were against it thinking that giving grants to women would lead to more unemployment and pregnancies although now that the grant has been introduced for a few years it doesn’t appear to have done so.

We found many statistics about African women which explains why women are the largest recipients of the grant.

•80% of female headed households have no wage earners.

•2 out of 5 African households are headed by women.

•3 out of 5 female headed households are poor.

•Women make up for 57% of unemployed individuals.

• There have been many thoughts and opinions that the child support grant has influenced the number of teen pregnancies in the country but research said that there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

• Only one in 5 teen mothers receive the grant, the rise in teen pregnancies has occurred everywhere even with people who did not qualify for the grant.

• Grants are more likely to be paid to women over 35.

• Records show that the number of teen mothers receiving the grant last year was 28 327 a small fraction of the 2 million children benefitting from the grant.

•At the moment, the idea is being discussed of extending the child support grant to children up to the age of 18.

•The argument is that there is a huge gap from the age 14 up to 65 when people aren't receiving anything at all.

•The general consensus among the ANC is that the grant should be extended. There has been some opposition in the government as it cannot yet be argued what the benefits are for older children.

•The child support grant has helped many poor children but there are also other South African laws protecting children, such as the maintenance law where any parent (usually the mother) can apply to the government for the other parent (usually the father) to pay maintenance for a child they had together.

•Once there is a court order instructing the parent to pay, it is a criminal offence not to.

•Occasionally but not too often a non custodial mother is forced to pay child support to the father who is the primary care giver of the child.

•If a child is not living with its parents the care givers can apply for maintenance from the parents.

•Applying for the maintenance is a long and complicated process that can take some time.

• When it comes to the custody of a child the custody is usually granted to the mother unless she is seen as unfit by the court.

• There are movements such as the father’s rights movement that fight against this saying that the opportunity for the custody should be completely equal no matter if you are the mother or father.

• Under the common law, married men had absolute right to their children, while married women had absolutely no right to their children, even when the husband was dead.

• Unmarried women had absolute right to their children even if the mother later married the child's father, and unmarried men had a natural right to their children, which was secondary only to the unmarried mother’s natural rights.

• It has now been decided that custody laws would no longer fall under common law and fall into a court of equity.

• The government is working extremely hard to create equality with gender in all the areas under their control.

• We are not yet at complete equality but with the topic of government grants we have come pretty close.

Done by:

Donna Kruger and Gina Garcin

Grade 10A

L.O

Mr. Brown