P a g e | 33 6.0 FAMILY ENVIRONMENT AND FOSTER PLACEMENT 6.1 Parental responsibility (Article 20) Legislative The Constitution of Lesotho at Article 11 provides a right to private and family life. Section 10 of the CPW Act protects a child's right to live with parents. This is only enforced where it is in the child's best interest to do so. Section 20 places the responsibility to provide care, guidance and maintenance to the child on the parents. Section 21 provides for a corresponding duty on children to respect their parents and elders. Sections 53 and 56 of the CPW Act outline the effect on parental rights and responsibilities of fostering and adoption respectively. In the case of fostering the parental responsibility of the foster parent is the same as that of the biological parent as long as the child remains in their care. Where a person adopts a child they assume the parental rights and responsibilities of the biological parent and those of the biological parent are severed forevermore. Administration Financial assistance is provided to parents by GoL through cash grants, food packages, school feeding programs and bursaries to support parents who cannot financially care for their children on their own. These measures are designed to enable children to stay living with their immediate family wherever possible. Privately run Residential Care Facilities exist in all but two Districts (Thaba Tseka & Qacha’s Nek), to care for children whose parents are unable to exercise parental responsibility properly. Section 175 of the CPW Act and the Standards of Care Guidelines regulate these facilities. Subventions are paid by MoSD to Residential Care Facilities to assist them in caring for VC. Difficulties Poverty and food insecurity are intrinsic factors in families not being able to exercise parental responsibility. Parents sometimes leave children uncared for in Lesotho in search of employment in the Republic of South Africa. An HIV incidence rate of approximately 23% renders many children orphans, of which several end up residing in child-headed households where children exercise responsibility for themselves and their younger siblings. Where children are taken in by extended family members there are often blurred lines of guardianship. Informal kinship care often leads to children being sent from one well-meaning but impoverished extended family member to the next, providing no security or certainty to the child.