The 1998 Children's Act: Problems of Enforcement in Ghana

Child Welfare in Ghana: The Past, Present and Future

“…Without a clear-cut policy direction after independence, subsequent governments adopted the child welfare provision employed during the colonial period (Laird, 2002). Residential care continued as the main form of social provision for children needing formal alternative care.…”

“…Poverty is the major factor that affects parents and extended families' ability to care for children illustrated by the over 10000 child maintenance cases handled by the DSW yearly (Laird, 2002). Frequent media reports of child abandonment, child labour, neglect, and sale of children indicate the difficulties that some parents go through in providing for the maintenance and care of children (Windborne, 2006).…”

“…Consequently, the GNCC established an advisory committee in 1995 to reform the country's child laws. The end product of the committee's work was the 1998 Children's Act (Act 560), an imitation of the 1989 Children's Act of England and Wales (Laird, 2002). According to Laird (2002), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other multi-lateral donor agencies were also influential in calling for the introduction of a rights based approach to the care and protection of children.…”

“…The end product of the committee's work was the 1998 Children's Act (Act 560), an imitation of the 1989 Children's Act of England and Wales (Laird, 2002). According to Laird (2002), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other multi-lateral donor agencies were also influential in calling for the introduction of a rights based approach to the care and protection of children. Laird suggests that these donor agencies had a lot of influence in setting the child welfare agenda because the funding they provided for child welfare programs often rivaled or exceeded what the government provided.…”

“…The failure to regulate NGOs has resulted in a proliferation of RCFs (Laird, 2002). Galama (2010) and Voelkl (2012) have argued that whilst some RCFs are established with good intentions, the majority are used means to acquire funds from donors and orphanage tourism 6 .…”