Think about what it means to grow up without a family. Not without a perfect family — just without a family. Without someone who knows how you like your eggs, who notices when you’ve had a bad day, who cheers the loudest when you walk across a stage. For millions of children right now, that is not hypothetical. It is their daily reality!
Globally, at least 5.4 million children are locked away in orphanages — separated from the people who love them, confined in institutions that science has spent over a century telling us cause harm. And here is the thing that should stop us all in our tracks: 80% of children in orphanages are not orphans. They have parents. They have families. They are separated not because their families don’t exist, but because those families didn’t get the support when they needed it most.
South Africa is not exempt from this reality. Across the country, children are growing up in Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs), placed there — often for preventable reasons — by a system that is underfunded, under-resourced, and still too quick to reach for orphanages or institutions as a first response rather than a last resort.
This is not just a policy failure; it is a constitutional one. Section 28 of the Constitution of South Africa guarantees every child the right to family or appropriate alternative care, a commitment further reinforced in the Children’s Act (Act No. 38 of 2005). These obligations are also grounded in South Africa’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.
That needs to change. And last November, in Johannesburg, something important happened that could be the turning point.
A Summit, a Promise, and a Chance
On the sidelines of the G20, South Africa convened the inaugural National Care Reform Summit in Johannesburg — bringing together government leaders, civil society, child rights advocates, young people with lived experiences and development experts with a single shared ambition: to work on a pathway to end institutional care for children in South Africa by 2030 and move the default of the child care and protection system firmly Back to Family.
It wasn’t a talking shop. It was two days of deliberation that produced a concrete, co-developed outcomes document with real commitments, clear targets, and a roadmap for getting there.
At the summit, cabinet ministers made a commitment to endorse the Global Charter on Care Reform. The summit participants alongside the Department of Social Development (DSD) committed to developing a National Policy on Universal Family Care — with a five-year strategy, measurable targets, and a costed implementation plan; to an immediate moratorium on the institutional placement of children under three years old; and called for a national multi-sectoral coordination structure, co-chaired by the Department of Social Development and civil society. And it set an ambitious but achievable target: by 2030, South Africa should have a clear care reform roadmap that prioritises universal access to nurturing family care, with CYCCs on a clear path to closure.
These are not vague aspirations. They are specific, time-bound commitments — and that matters.
Why Now Is Not a Moment to Wait
The data makes uncomfortable reading. In KwaZulu-Natal, the number of children in CYCCs actually increased — from 3,134 to 3,494 — between 2021 and 2024. In the same period, only 10% of those children were reunified with their families. In the Western Cape, the number of children in foster care rose from 36,000 to 42,000, driven largely by poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and substance abuse — circumstances that are not reasons to remove a child; they are reasons to support a family to keep children safe at home. However, in cases where the safety and well-being is in serious danger due to domestic violence and substance abuse, it is critical that an alternative safe and nurturing home should be found through temporary fostering with a view to eventual place the child in a home, and not confined in long-term institution or CYCC.
Zoom out further and the picture becomes even starker. South African children reach only 43% of their developmental potential by the time they turn 18 — compared to a global average of 56%. That gap has not moved in a decade. In 2024, only 42% of children in early learning programmes were developmentally on track. By 2025, 37% of young people between 15 and 24 were not in employment, education, or training. These are not isolated statistics. They are connected. Institutional care does not just fail children in the short term — it sets in motion a chain of developmental deficits that follows them into adulthood and can echo into the next generation.
Orphanages expose children to abuse and trafficking, and physical and psychological trauma that can last a lifetime. No institution — however well-intentioned, however well-funded — can replace the irreplaceable. Children need families. And the overwhelming evidence tells us that with the right support, families can provide what children need.
The question is whether South Africa will now do what it takes to make that support available.
What Needs to Happen: A Call to Action
The Summit gave us words. What comes next must be action — concrete, resourced, and accountable. Here is what we are calling on each part of the system to do.
To the National Government
The commitments made in the National Care Reform Summit in Johannesburg are achievable, and must now be translated into a strategic plan, with clear laws, budgets, and policies. That means:
Introduce the moratorium — now. The commitment to halt the placement of children under the age of three in institutions is clear and needs urgent action. By November 2026, this should be in place and enforceable. Every month of delay is a month during which the most vulnerable infants are placed in settings that will harm their development at the most critical window of their lives.
Develop and fund the National Policy on Universal Family Care. The Summit called for an evidence-based national policy with a five-year strategy and a costed implementation plan. The Department of Social Development must prioritise this in the current planning cycle, with ring-fenced budgets that gradually shift resources from institutional care to family support, early intervention, and reunification services.
Establish the national coordination structure. A multi-sectoral coordination body — co-chaired by government and civil society — must be set up without delay to drive, monitor, and report on the care reform agenda. This is not optional infrastructure. Without it, the commitments made in Johannesburg risk becoming another document that gathers dust.
Embed care reform in the National Development Plan. As South Africa shapes its post-2030 development framework, the elimination of institutional care and the universalisation of family-based care must be explicit priorities — not afterthoughts. The Medium-Term Planning Framework and the National Plan of Action for Children are the vehicles for this.
To Provincial Governments
National commitments only become real at the point of delivery — and in South Africa, delivery happens provincially. Every one of the nine provinces must now:
Integrate care reform into provincial strategic and annual performance plans. Gauteng has led the way and we can confidently say, they have the proof of concept that can be adopted in other provinces. Every other province needs to follow with concrete commitments in their own planning and budgeting cycles.
Prioritise early intervention and family support services at scale. The Summit set a target of evidence-based promotive and prevention programmes being implemented across all nine provinces by March 2028. Provinces need to begin the planning, partnerships, and resource mobilisation to make that happen now — not in 2027.
Invest in the workforce. Social workers, child and youth care workers, magistrates, police, and judges all play a role in whether a child ends up in an institution or stays with a family. Training, supervision, and adequate staffing are not luxuries — they are prerequisites for a functioning child protection system.
Track and publish the numbers. The alarming trends in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape came to light because data was collected. Every province should be collecting, analysing, and publicly reporting on the number of children in institutional care, reunification rates, and family support services delivered. Accountability requires visibility.
To Civil Society Organisations
Civil society was present at the Summit as co-architects of the outcomes document. That role does not end with the closing ceremony. CSOs, NGOs, and advocacy organisations across South Africa are now called to:
Hold government to account — specifically and consistently. The commitments made in Johannesburg are public. The targets are time-bound. Civil society’s role is to keep those commitments visible and to call out — clearly and evidentially — when they are not being met.
Champion the shift in public narrative. Too many people still think orphanages are a kindness. That 80% figure — 80% of children in orphanages are not orphans — is still shocking to most people who hear it for the first time. Changing the story is part of changing the system. Every CSO working with children and families has a role to play in shifting the public understanding of what family separation really means and what genuine care reform looks like.
Build the coalition. Care reform is not a single organisation’s agenda. It spans social development, health, education, housing, disability rights, and more. Civil society must build and sustain the cross-sector alliances that give the care reform movement the breadth and staying power to see this through to 2030 and beyond.
The Future South Africa Can Choose
The Johannesburg Care Reform Summit 2025 showed what is possible when government and civil society choose to face a problem together and commit, in writing, to fixing it. The roadmap exists. The targets are set. The evidence is overwhelming.
The commitments made in Johannesburg were clear, public, and backed by national leadership. Yet months later, the lack of visible progress risks turning a moment of leadership into a missed opportunity.
What remains is the harder work: following through, funding it, resisting the pull of inertia, and keeping the faces of real children — children who are separated from their families right now, today — at the centre of every decision.
South Africa has the chance to be a global leader in care reform. Countries like Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, and Rwanda are already on the verge of eradicating orphanages and institutions entirely. South Africa made a bold promise in Johannesburg. The children waiting to come home are depending on all of us to keep it.
It’s time to move the focus of policy, of funding, and of social support away from institutions and Back to Family — where it belongs.
