POWER TO PROTECT: How young voices are shaping the Western Cape children’s commissioner role

Since becoming the province’s children’s commissioner, Sarah Roberts has drawn on her legal experience to advance child protection.

Before being appointed Western Cape commissioner for children in October 2025, Sarah Roberts had accumulated more than three decades’ experience in the legal field, with 14 years serving as acting magistrate in the family and children’s court in Blue Downs, Cape Town.

Roberts’s time in court brought her into contact with cases involving children, family maintenance and domestic violence. She describes it as a “very emotional type of work”.

“Someone asked me, ‘How do you go home and turn off?’ You don’t turn off, that’s the reality. Someone explained one day that it’s like every day the… case you do is a cloak put on your shoulders, and by the end of the day it’s so heavy, but you have to deal with it. Tomorrow is another day,” she explains.

Now, Roberts has donned a new mantle as children’s commissioner, and she views her time in court as the cornerstone of her approach to her new office.

“I could not see myself doing this job if I didn’t have a legal background on acts, regulations, policy. And it also gives me perspective, because I know what the act is, I know what happens in practice, and I know what can and can’t be done,” she reflects.

The role of the Western Cape commissioner for children is to protect and promote the rights, needs and interests of children in the province by working with the departments of education, health and social development, as well as cultural affairs and sport. It is an independent institution from the government, but provides reports to the provincial legislature on activities and functions.

The Western Cape is the first and only province to have introduced this position, and the first commissioner took office in 2020 for a five-year term.

Reflecting on her priorities when taking up the role of children’s commissioner, Roberts says: “Obviously, because of my background in law and the judiciary, for me, the child protection and alternative care system was always a priority. We remove and safeguard children, and what then…?”

Roberts has been making unannounced visits to level 2 child and youth care centres, which are residential care facilities for children run by nonprofit organisations but funded by the provincial Department of Social Development. Her aim is to visit every centre in this category in the Western Cape, and she has seen more than 20 so far.

Among the matters her office monitors are the centres’ registration, the presence of birth certificates for the children and acce