Private schools that enroll children below age four have been asked to register with the Department of Social Welfare to conform with the operations of daycare centres.
This is because children under age four are classified under daycare pupils (0-3 years) and are supposed to be treated as such with professional attention and care.
Mr. Jonathan Gyau, the Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare, said this when he briefed a consultative meeting held in Cape Coast on the implementation of the Early Care Development Policy and the Department’s achievements and challenges.
He said some private schools were enrolling children below four years which is against the Department’s rules and regulations and that such children were supposed to be in daycare centres.
He appealed to private schools that wished to enroll such children to register with the Department of Social Welfare.
Mr. Gyau said day care centres were not supposed to close down at a specific time of the day as some of them were doing because they were required to operate until the last child was picked up by the parents.
He said daycare centres should not go on vacation as regular schools did but rather run all year since some parents of the children also worked throughout the year.
On the issue of orphanages, Mr. Gyau said he was dumbfounded that these homes which were expected to be run on humanitarian grounds were rather being exploited for personal gains, with some children denied healthy food, decent clothing and befitting shelter.
Mr Gyau said orphanages were not to be operated on permanent basis but temporarily and the children returned to the Department to be re-integrated into their families or for adoption.
He wondered why most foreigners, especially whites were interested in adopting black children, and called for a thorough investigations into such dealings on what these children were being used for.
The main challenge facing the Department, according to Mr. Gyau, was resources in the form of finance and logistics which was hindering their operations and called on the government and civil society organizations to turn their attention towards the Department in order to meet the social needs of the vulnerable and the marginalized.
