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, the Legal Resources Centre said on Tuesday.

"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 in a statement.

The minister and MEC had failed to decide whether or not a foster grant order should be renewed.

As a result, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), which had been paying grants to the children's foster parents, stopped doing so in July 2009.

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

"In this matter, the foster care orders were not extended and due to the lack of valid foster care orders, there was no legal basis for Sassa to continue paying the foster care grant.

"The majority of these children had lost their mothers to HIV and Aids, others have been abandoned by their parents, and some have even lost their foster parents."

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 directly 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.

In addition, the court is requested to order that Sassa pay grants to the foster parents, including the arrears from the date the payment was stopped in July 2009.

The department was not immediately available for comment.