The Centre for Child Law will take Social Development Minister Edna Molewa and an Eastern Cape MEC to court for failing to extend foster grant orders made by the Children's Court.

"On behalf of 93 children from Molteno in the Eastern Cape, the Centre for Child Law is taking the minister of social development and the MEC for social development in the Eastern Cape to court," the Legal Resources Centre said yesterday.

The minister and MEC had failed to decide whether a foster grant order should be renewed. As a result, the SA Social Security Agency, which had been paying grants to the children's foster parents, stopped doing so in July.

Most of the children had lost their mothers to HIV and Aids, others have been abandoned by their parents, and some had lost foster parents.

Foster care orders lapse after two years unless extended by the minister or the social development MEC.

The Centre for Child Law wants the Eastern Cape High Court in Grahamstown to order that foster care orders be reinstated retrospectively.

Alternatively, it wants the court to grant an order to the minister to consider whether to extend the foster care orders made by the Children's Court, or to order the Commissioner of Child Welfare to consider each child's case afresh. - Sapa