KIDDIES ACADEMY OUTREACH PROGRAMME

Outreach programme

Programme that reach out to children living and working in the street to empower them to

express their rights and needs and to link them with the necessary resources when required

The phenomenon of children living and working in the streets is worldwide. However, due to

their fluid, evasive and unpredictable lifestyle, the precise number of these children is almost

impossible to know. Nonetheless, in the late 1990s the World Health Organisation and UNICEF

estimated that there were 100 million children living and working in the street worldwide, the

majority of whom were in the developing world. In South Africa national estimates currently

available date from the early 1990s and they indicate that there were then between 9,000 and

10,000 children living and working in the streets nationally. According to the census conducted

by the National Alliance for Children living and working in the street (NASC) in 2004, the total

number of children living and working in the street was found to be 13275 at the time of the

census.

Children living and working in the streets are a manifestation of the problems which children

and families experience in communities as a result of health, social and economic factors which

render homes less effective in providing for the children’s well-being, thus leading to their

marginalization. While some vulnerable children may be protected through social assistance and

child care services provided by government and non-governmental organisations, there are

other children who fail to be detected and some of them become children living and working in

the street. It is against this background that the Department of Social Development deemed it

important to develop a policy framework which will help the department and other

stakeholders to respond adequately to needs of children at the risk of living or working on the

streets as well as those who are already surviving in the streets.

To the extent that services to children living and working in the streets are multi-sectoral in

nature, this framework was drawn up through a consultative process involving different

government departments and non governmental organisations. The framework is largely based

on the development approach of the rights-based framework of the Convention on the Rights of

the Child (CRC)—the most comprehensive international document on the rights of children. This

approach takes a long-term perspective and concentrates on equipping children living and

working in the street with the skills and confidence required to reintegrate to society, fulfilling