Welcome to the Western Cape Street Children’s Forum

The Western Cape Street Children’s Forum  is a network of organisations working with Street Children and Youth in the Western Cape . We are about Advocacy, Capacity building and Networking to ensure Street-affected Children get the help they deserve.  

In Practical terms our work makes a real difference on the street. 

 The WCSCF has been instrumental in reducing the high number of hardened drug addicted street children on the CBD streets, down to only one or two children today.  This is an unprecedented success, also seen in other areas such as Malmesbury where we had 30 children on the street, Muizneburg, etc, and was achieved, with assistance from our members, via a comprehensive set of networking, advocacy and capacity building actions, namely:

• Convincing Private security companies to help "nurture children towards care" and by working within statutory requirements rather than adding to the children's social alienation by just dumping them somewhere else.  Private security companies now play a key role in helping to identify new children and guide them towards care as soon as possible. 
• Encouraging The local police to change their approach so that they concentrate on criminal activity instead of getting rid of street children.
• Helping Street children organisations, through workshops, negotiation and getting to know each other, to break out of their organisational boundaries and to  work together to find the best solution for each child.  This also stopped the children playing one organisation off against the other.
• Including the whole province in our approach by getting out there and linking up, finding out about and developing a relationship with relevant organisations around the whole province.  This had many networking benefits to individual organisations, such as gaining access to experience and expertise, but also meant children could be helped before they had settled onto the street and drifted into the city.
• Reducing the money children made from begging and other schemes which fed their drug habit and kept them away from help. Some chidlren were making over $100 a day.  This was achieved through give responsibly campaigns, getting businesses not to employ or support street children, stopping people ordering items that the children would beg for (eg School Shoes) and so on.
• Targeting Drug lords,  our sector placed a lot of media and direct pressure on the authorities to target previously ignored drug dens. This is unfortunately an ongoing difficulty for a number of reasons.
• Capacity building our sector to enable them to deal with many issues, including substance abuse workshops, management training and exploring all avenues for assistance.