Rules, kinship, and the grant that needs an order
A working map, not a second Act
Six months after the Children's Courts Rules commenced, the useful question is no longer what they contain. It is whether this court is actually using them. Audio-visual evidence, case-management dates, a review of a removal before it quietly becomes a year. If the social worker still arrives with an informal arrangement and no diary date, the rule has not yet reached the room. The new rules give the children's court a modern map for service, audio-visual evidence, judicial case management and hearings. Chapter 5 deals with the child in need of care and protection — including review of a removal to temporary safe care, and extension of an alternative-care order. Chapter 6 still holds adoption, consent and the freeing order. The point of a rule is not to decorate the Act. It is to stop a child being moved on an informal arrangement that the rule cannot later explain.
A child who is not a grant number
The Foster Child Grant is paid because a children's court has placed a child in foster care. It is not a general poverty grant for any relative who is doing their best. Informal kinship care is often the most humane fact in the room. It is still not the same document. SASSA cannot lawfully treat it as one. From April 2026 the Foster Child Grant stood at R1 290 a month; the Child Support Grant at R580; the Care Dependency Grant at R2 400. Those figures will move again when Treasury and SASSA say so. They are not the measure of a child's worth. A maintenance order against a parent still sits beside the grant.
A seat kept for a child who is not yet in the room.
A working method
• See the child if the Act and the facts require it. A file is not a face.
• Ask whether there is already a children's-court order. If there is not, the grant conversation is premature.
• Section 156 and section 159 still govern alternative care and its extension. Diary the review before the order expires.
• If the child was not in court, say so, and say how their views reached you — section 10 still asks for due weight.
• An order that cannot be explained to a twelve-year-old in plain language is probably not yet an order.
A note from Neelan Karikan. Write so that the child can feel understood, not merely processed. Authority stems from that action more than it stems from the stamp.