INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

organizations that take aim at the crisis. However, the government is less apt to recognize
the need for flexibility and individually adaptable approaches to child care. The challenge
of terminology and familial trust, effectively handled by the center by offering a partial
guardianship is one example of the government’s slowness to recognize pragmatic
concerns that result from cultural differences and outdated perceptions about OVC
challenges. The government has shown a slowness to change, and in recent years has
faced a barrage of crises, financial instability, and student-led resistance, all of which
slow its ability to efficiently adapt itself to changing or previously unrecognized realities.
“I think the government is starting to realize that a lot of their rules or definitions don’t
work in the real world when it comes to children,” Sarah Sunker admitted to me. “They
are learning, but slowly.” In the meantime, 5Cees, and other similar organizations must
work around the constraints places by government regulations that may have been
designed to help, but in reality, create more obstacles.
In operating a care center like 5Cees, flexibility is a virtue. Throughout fifteen
years of existence, its longtime staff members had no shortage of stories to tell of major
disruptions to their otherwise highly structured schedules. A young teenager had fallen
off a roof a year ago. They’ve had incidents in the past of teenage pregnancies. It has
been rare, but the center has taken in children in poor and failing health and so, having to
experience the death of a child. The way these surprises affect children emotionally and
socially will vary greatly at an individual level, and there are few indicators that can
make a child's response anywhere near predictable. The center understands its need to be
adaptable. Many staff members hold incredibly fluid positions, allowing their role to
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