MANAGERS REPORT
February 2024
Imagine with me if you would, a piece of paper, stamped, signed and issued by the children’s court. This piece of paper confirms your placement at Durbanville Children’s Home. A piece of paper that will forever change your life.
Imagine you are 15 years old. Your younger brother is 5 years old. Your mother’s life has derailed in such a way that you are homeless. You are living in a car next to the beach, with your mother, her boyfriend and your brother. Each morning you get dressed in the car to go to school and in the afternoons, you have to look after your 5-year-old brother. You walk up and down the beach, to keep yourself busy. One day he slips away from you, you panic as you have no idea where he went. He is found by a stranger in a bar, who calls the police. Social workers are called in and the necessary intervention happens. You are both removed and placed in safety. A few days later you arrive with “that piece of paper” placing you both at Durbanville Children’s Home. On arrival at the home, your biggest priority is that they must please wash your clothes, because you are better than what you had to endure. Sadly, for these two children and many others in our care they don’t need to imagine this; this is their reality.
According to Children’s Act, 2005 – Child and Youth Care centres, like Durbanville Children’s Home, are required to offer recreational, developmental and therapeutic programmes. These programmes are meant to enhance the well-being of vulnerable children. When the child is reunited with his or her family, he/she would have been empowered to be independent, resilient and ambitious, irrespective of his/her current or past living circumstances.
Over the past two years the demographics of the children placed in our care has changed dramatically. Children who have experienced immense trauma and neglect and therefore have huge challenges emotionally, mentally and scholastically.
I believe that the following factors contribute to this:
It is estimated that South Africa has 150,000 children orphaned due to Covid-19. This number jumps to over 200,000 when we include children who have lost either their primary or secondary caregiver. The South African Welfare system does not have sufficient care facilities and therefore, children are exposed to traumatic experiences over a longer period of time. This trauma negatively impacts their lives. They develop coping mechanisms, in order to survive.
The profile of a child being referred to a Level 2 facility like ours, is becoming increasingly more challenging. This is largely due to limited resources and lack of space in secure care Level 3 facilities. The movement of a child from a level 2 facility to a level 3 facility is difficult for the same reasons. This has resulted in children with more challenging behaviour remaining in a Level 2 Child and Youth Care centre. This impacts on the services being rendered, and staff having to deal with behaviour that is often very difficult to manage.
Schools are not prepared to accommodate some of our children due to their negative behaviour in the classroom. They have neither the resources nor the knowledge to manage it. Some children on admission to our care have never been to school or are too old to go back to the last grade passed.
In line with the above-mentioned challenges, the Home has to shift from being a residential home to a residential therapeutic centre. We have to move away from the traditional care model where children were placed in a home with the view of a long-term placement, with the emphasis on rendering general childcare and therapy, to treating children within an intensive, holistic, therapeutic environment. In this way, we will create a more conducive environment for children to be reintegrated into society.
My vision for 2024, is to focus on our children’s therapeutic needs.
Objective 1: 144 Vulnerable children have access to Developmental, Therapeutic, and Occupational support.
We currently have 3 Social Workers who each have a case load of 50 children. They form the core of the multi- disciplinary team that look after our children’s mental health. In addition, we want to appoint a Clinical Social Worker to render therapeutic services to our children, and continue our Occupational therapy program for early intervention (2 years – 10 years of age). The role of the Occupational Therapist, in this context, will be to assess, provide intervention, re-assess and implement sustainable programs. The Therapist will address the childhood trauma that stems from abandonment, neglect and abuse be it physical, emotional or sexual.
Objective 2: Expand the Animal Assisted Therapy Program
We have a Social Worker that drives this program. The natural interest that children have in animals often helps them to open up quickly and assist them to form healthy attachments. We have chickens, guinea pigs, and rabbits in our programs. We have recently added a therapy dog.
Objective 3: Create more Food gardens.
We have a small vegetable garden on site that produces fresh vegetables which is used in our children’s food. We want to expand the program to cater for all our vegetable needs. The vegetable garden, in addition, also provides us the opportunity to teach our children to follow instructions, develop skills for the future and see the vegetables grow. This gives them a sense of achievement. We would like to create an additional garden area.
Objective 4: Improve the living condition of our children.
The 12 House Units at Durbanville Children’s Home were last upgraded in 1988, and the houses are looking run–down. Research clearly demonstrates that creating a more therapeutic living environment such as appropriate lighting, furnishing textures and patterns, and room organisation can help reduce signs of anxiety and depression. We have completed our bathroom areas and want to roll-out the revamp to include our children’s rooms, living rooms, kitchens and floor spaces.
I believe that If we can through therapeutic interventions reduced the pain our children experiences, assist them to sleep better, improve their communication skills, address their anxiety, and increase their happiness, we would truly be offering them a second chance.
Johanna Strauss
Manager