Cornerstone Economic Research

The above figure shows that the implementation of the child justice system proposed by the Child Justice Bill could reduce the cost of dealing with children in conflict with the law from R787 million to about R607 million per year. This implies a saving of about R180 million per year on current levels of expenditure or an annual saving of over 20 percent. The rollout scenario indicates that substantial savings would still be realised even if the new child justice system were only fully implemented in metropolitan areas, and to a lesser extent in other urban and rural areas.

This figure appears in:

Barberton, C. with Stuart, J., 2001. ‘Re-Costing the Child Justice Bill: Updating the original costing taking into consideration changes made to the bill.’ Project for the Child Justice Project, UNDP.

The above figure shows the total number of days that children are detained in police cells, places of safety and secure care in Stages 1 and 2 of the child justice system. The dramatic decrease in the number of days children are held in police cells between the baseline and full scenarios is a direct result of the police taking most of the children they arrest directly to assessment in the full scenario.

This figure appears in:

Barberton, C. with Stuart, J., 2001. ‘Re-Costing the Child Justice Bill: Updating the original costing taking into consideration changes made to the bill.’ Project for the Child Justice Project, UNDP.

In South Africa every child has the right

to family care or parental care …
to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services
to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation
to have a legal practitioner assigned to the child by the state and at state expense, in civil proceedings affecting the child, if substantial injustice would otherwise result

Delivering a Maintenance System that works is integral to protecting these rights of children. This picture highlights the importance of child maintenance orders and the systems required to support the management of such orders.

This picture was developed for a presentation associated with:

Barberton, C. and Grieve, A. 2002. ‘A baseline cost study on the appointment of maintenance investigators in terms of the Maintenance Act, 1998 (act no. 99 of 1998)’. Project for the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

The graph shows the changes in expenditure on the treatment of malnutrition. The 5 per cent line estimates the change in expenditure assuming each 5 per cent increase in expenditure on preventative interventions (shown along the horizontal axis) reduces the number of cases of malnutrition by 5 per cent. For example if preventative expenditure increases by 25 per cent, then the number of malnutrition cases decreases by 25 per cent (50 per cent for 10 per cent; 75 per cent for 15 per cent). In the most modest scenario (5 per cent), it is estimated that an increase in preventative expenditure will be offset by even larger savings on clinical expenditure.

This graph appears in:

Jonathan Carter et al. 2015. Performance and Expenditure Review: Nutrition and food security for children under five years old. Unpublished research report produced for the National Treasury.

Ensuring that costing information is presented in an accessible format is a significant challenge. This picture presents a screenshot of one of our more recent attempts to overcome this challenge. When users toggle the up/down arrows in the yellow blocks, the graphs to the right will show the changes in the levels of service coverage. The cost savings/added expenditure and the number of children added or excluded are also be shown.

This tool appears in:

Jonathan Carter et al. 2015. Costing model of the Performance and Expenditure Review of Nutrition and food security for children under five years old.