As Ian mentioned in his recent newsletter, we have been working hard to address the issues we have experienced lately with increasing numbers of street children in the area, as well as continuing our efforts to reduce the numbers of adult vagrants in Camps Bay and Clifton through our ongoing community initiative with the Haven Night Shelter set up and run by the Camps Bay Business Forum.
Whilst the recent problems with street children have been of particular concern, I must firstly say that we should not lose sight of the ongoing successes of our Haven initiative, with over 130 adult vagrants to date having been assisted off the streets of Camps Bay and Clifton since the project was set up in 2012. Over this past season Ricardo Beukes our dedicated Auxiliary Social Worker from the Haven formally placed 26 more people into a shelter home in the City, dealt with a further 50 child related matters (including mothers with babies) and Ricardo had an estimated 180 interventions with vagrants, as well as assisting several vagrants urgently into hospital or psychiatric care.
What I can now say, which I think we should be very proud of as a community, is that anyone living rough on our streets really does not need to do so anymore, and those willing to move off the streets are generally helped into a Haven Shelter by Ricardo the same day and rarely return to Camps Bay again. This works particularly well with new arrivals, for instance, every one of the 14 new vagrants who appeared in Camps Bay in December moved into a Haven Shelter the same month. So one can only imagine how much bigger our vagrancy problem would have been by now without our initiative, thinking of the 130+ vagrants we have already helped move off the streets!
So why then with such a great community initiative DO we still have a significant vagrancy issue in Camps Bay and Clifton, and why we have we had an increasing issue with street children?
There are I believe 3 main reasons –
1. We need to stop supporting vagrancy in our community!
All of the many social workers, NGO’s and others I work with on a daily basis on this initiative repeatedly tell me that by far and away the biggest single reason both adult vagrants and children are so attracted to Camps Bay and Clifton is simply because we as a wider community – by which I mean as residents, businesses and our many summer visitors – continue to support their lifestyle and existence here by tipping them as car guards, giving them hand outs of food or payment for odd jobs, and in some cases even by allowing them to sleep on private property.
I hear time and time again from Ricardo and the many specialist child care social workers in our area right now who are actively trying to remove the adults and street children into care that they choose to stay and beg here, rather than anywhere else, because of the ‘generosity’ of people with hand outs, compared even to other areas of Cape Town. This makes it almost impossible for social workers to stop the kids from running back to Camps Bay constantly every time they are moved off the streets again or to encourage adults to move into shelters and helped to find proper work.
We will as a Business Forum be organising another “awareness” campaign for next season to encourage tourists especially to support our community vagrancy initiative and the Haven instead of literally fuelling this problem further as they are with handouts. But for now I must again urge everyone in Camps Bay and Clifton please to do the same and also to politely ask anyone you see giving handouts not to do so. If anyone would like to volunteer to help me specifically with this awareness campaign – distributing flyers etc – or to donate to the cost of this, please let me know.
2. The criminal element – and those that don’t want our help
Whilst as I have said, help is now there for every vagrant in Camps Bay who wants to move off the streets there are still many who refuse to help and want to stay, in many cases because as a community we make this a sustainable option for them (see 1 above) but in others because they choose to be here to pursue criminal activities, breaking into cars, theft, dealing drugs, and the like.
Obviously the criminal element must be dealt with as such by SAPS and Law Enforcement, rather than through a social initiative like ours. I know as a fact that SAPS are constantly arresting and taking such people to the Courts, not only for specific crimes but also for sleeping on the beachfront or in public spaces, or even car guarding, all of which are in themselves unlawful. The reality is that the Courts often release these people back into the community with little or no punishment, only for them to return immediately to Camps Bay to rely on our handouts, and so the cycle continues.
Even on this issue though, our social initiative is of increasing value in that we now work closely with both SAPS and the Community Court, so that evidence is regularly provided to the Court that the Haven has repeatedly offered a vagrant the chance to move off the streets, but refuses, which the Court takes account of when deciding on effective action and sentencing for any social crime.
3. Specific legal issues with Street Children – and our new Forum to address these
There are also some very specific legal and practical reasons why it has proved particularly difficult to address the issues with the group of around 15-20 children who have been living rough in the area, mostly by Glen Beach. These children come from 2-3 very poor, small communities where the parents believe in sending their children out to areas like Camps Bay, the City Centre and the Biscuit Mill specifically to beg (and sometimes steal) to earn money which the kids are then expected to take back, often to pay for drugs for their parents or other adults. So the money that the well meaning person in Camps Bay gives to one of these poor children may well not even be helping that child to buy food, but rather going to help their parent or another adult buy tik!
It is not however a simple case, as some seem to think, of either SAPS or the Haven “taking away” or arresting children like these or putting them into care. There are very strict laws governing the procedures by which children can be detained and for appropriate, effective action to be taken it is legally necessary to obtain the intervention of dedicated Child Care Social Workers from the Provincial Social Development Department (DSD). A DSD Social Worker needs to be appointed specifically from the community where each child comes from, who is then tasked with finding solutions for that child, whether through reuniting the child with his or her family, a care order, or by working with the Courts on an appropriate remedial sentence where criminal activity is involved.
Given the number of children who have suddenly come into Camps Bay this season and the fact they come from various communities, and often roam back and forth between our suburb and others, it has taken us some time to get the necessary procedures and intervention from numerous DSD Social Workers in place and help SAPS and the Haven take necessary action, especially after hours and at weekends when their help is often needed. But the good news is that we have now recently established a new working group known as the Camps Bay Street Children’s Forum to bring all the role players together which has finally been making good progress on this issue.
This new Forum includes all of the necessary DSD social workers who have now been allocated to each street kid in our area, as well as Camps Bay SAPS and several other child care organisations who have offered to assist us going forward including the Western Cape Street Children’s Forum who Chair our Forum, as well as the Homestead and the ACVV. The Forum is also working closely with the City Improvement District who are also regularly visited by this same group of hardened street kids and are also struggling to find a solution. The Homestead has also kindly provided a specialist child care Fieldworker who is working now in Camps Bay alongside Ricardo while the issue is addressed.
Since the Forum started its work, four of the children have moved into the Homestead and I understand there have also been a number of arrests including of adults believed to be linked to the children’s activities in our area. Home visits have been paid to the families of most of our remaining street children, and the Education Department is also now involved with their schools, so I am hopeful that we should see most if not all of the remaining children moved out of Camps Bay soon.
In closing I hope you found this lengthy update helpful. As always, I would appeal to anyone wishing to donate funds to support our community vagrancy initiative further to let me know. This week is National Child Protection week across the country so you may feel that this is a fitting time to make a donation as we try through our initiative to find ways to address the issues with vulnerable street children in our own community.
Having discussed this with Ian, you are welcome to make your donation into the community Trust account which will therefore be fully tax deductible - Ian and I as Trustees will ensure that your donation is applied specifically towards supporting this initiative (if you do wish to donate please let me know first and kindly mark your payment with your name and “vagrancy” so we can recognise the donation).
Thank you very much in advance for any support.
Best wishes
Simon Kneel
Camps Bay Business Forum
Email - simon@campsbaybusinessforum.co.za
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