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Summary of all projects for 2009 – 2010
CHILDLINE
Childline – Limpopo
We will continue to fund the stipends of 4 volunteers and 2 cooks working in a crèche for 108 children living in very poor rural surroundings. Read more.
We are funding half the costs of a Jungle Gym for the children outside the crèche in an area free for play but currently with no toys of equipment - the rest of the money is being raised locally
Childline Mpumalanga
We have started to fund the training of over 200 Early Childhood Development centre [ECD] workers –usually volunteers - taking them through the 8 day Caring 4 Crèches programme developed by Childline NW and the infant trust. An ECD in South Africa is what most of us would understand to be either a nursery or a crèche or a playgroup or a pre-school centre [could be anyone of those].The feedback from the training to date is really positive.
Childline NW
They have just finished training a further 24 people from 12 ECDs in rural areas in the middle of the province. We are about to agree to train a further 96 people in northern rural NW province taking them through the same 8 day Caring 4 Crèches programme. The feedback from these courses is extremely positive and all the crèches where ‘teachers’ and helpers have been trained have made significant changes to how they run their places, and how they identify and report suspicions of children in trouble. Read more.
CHILD WELFARE, LIMPOPO - project Asibavikele
We are funding the training of 98 rural volunteers already working for Child Welfare and already trained through PEPFAR monies to act as community health workers – they and Child Welfare identified the need for the volunteers to have a much greater understanding of child health, child protection, and child development. The training is for 5 days per person in groups of approx. 25 and is underway; the first report is due back to us in May 2009.
THE TEDDY BEAR CLINIC
We continue to fund, over the year, the travel of 25 seriously damaged children to a safe place for therapy and help through the prosecution/witness process. These are only some of the many abused children helped by the Teddy Bear Clinic but are those who would otherwise not be able to get the essential therapeutic input so crucial for their healing as they have literally no money for bus or taxi let alone access to a car. This is the third year we have supported the Teddy Bear Clinic and I am sure we will do more in 2010 if we can.
OPEN UNIVERSITY – JOINT PHD PROGRAMME
‘Our’ student [Kgauhelo] is now undertaking her field work in Limpopo ably assisted by the Childline offices in Potchefstroom. In the autumn K returns to the UK to complete her thesis, and hopefully finish by September 2010. Read more.
COMMUNITY AWARENESS RAISING EVENT – MS
Marilyn ran this event last year in west Johannesburg and, because of the xenophobic violence problems at the time gathered in less people than she expected….. never-the-less over 90 people attended. This year we are hoping for up to 250 people.
BIG SHOES
Big Shoes - Training
Big Shoes is a new service to us, but where two of our friends have moved from the Teddy Bear Clinic to be in key positions - so we know them, and know they will focus what matters to us. At Big Shoes they set-out to enable children who are abandoned, abused or orphaned to grow up healthy and balanced – hence to ‘fill big shoes’. Most of their work is done with children homes or communities. We are part-funding the training programme they run for volunteers/workers in children homes [for young children] to understand and help children with their physical, psychological and emotional health issues. Our funds will pay for 200 training manuals, the facilitators’ guides, and the cost of ½ a trainer over the year.
Big Shoes - Research
We have agreed to fund a one-off bursary for Luke Lamprecht [Head of Big Shoes/recently Head of the Teddy Bear Clinic] to undertake some university and clinically guided research into whether the death of small children, due to neglect, leads to a prosecution – i.e., does the state take seriously people who behave in a thoroughly negligent way towards infants and small children thus causing their death? We know that in the UK someone who causes the death of a baby, through negligence will, usually, be prosecuted; in SA we know what the law says, but don’t know what actually happens.
For example: if, as happened recently, a baby sitter takes her small charge in her boyfriends car and then leaves the baby in the car alone whilst she goes shopping, and the baby dies in the heat of the car, is there any criminal prosecution against the babysitter or the boyfriend? In this case there was no prosecution.
From our perspective, if this lack of legal action is shown to be regularly happening we could think about funding training or awareness sessions for the police and magistrates – anecdotally everyone thinks it is happening, but as yet there is no firm evidence. Hence our funds for training get more focussed on things that can have a real future impact. A bursary well spent!
EKUPHOLENI MENTAL HEALTH CENTRE
Old friends and partners of ours; earlier this year we gave them further funds to pay the stipends of 4 new volunteers until the stipends from the government sponsored Auxiliary Social Worker programme kick in during April 2009. Read more.
We have also part-funded a drama teacher to work throughout 2009 with the damaged young girls who are not responding to talking therapies
JOHANNESBURG CHILD WELFARE SOCIETY
AGANANG - Auxiliary Social Work Programme
In August we are beginning the funding of 10 student bursaries on this 56 week professional and accredited course for workers/volunteers to train to become Auxiliary Social Workers. Our bursaries will be targeted at folk who work in community-based or children services.
Child Abuse Treatment and Training Service - CATTS
In March the first of the courses for traditional healers start – it is based on the Level One and Level Two courses we have developed with CATTS. There is planned to be one of these courses a year for three years for 15 people each time. This is a real breakthrough as some of the traditional healers have been [often still are] a stumbling block to any change in attitude or community development work to help prevent child abuse.
CATTS
Level One training and Level Two training – one course of each to be run in-year. As before these are for volunteer community workers and very highly evaluated. 15 people to be trained at each level.
CATTS
Support and mentoring groups for those who have completed Level One and Level Two training: we find that very often those workers who have been through the Levels One and Two CATTS courses are then expected to be experts. They meet with families who contact the various centres reporting abuse, evaluate the situation, and determine the next steps necessary for the damaged child. Very often they do this with no supervision or mentoring or even help to guide them. It seems in the children’s best interests to help these workers through the early steps with case studies and discussion. The first group have just started and the situations they sometimes find themselves in are hair-raising. This year we will fund 2 groups of 12 for a session a month for 6 months then review for next year.
CATTS
A new piece of work for us this year. As a statutory agency Johannesburg Child Welfare can remove children from home and place them with foster parents. Very often the placement breaks down because the foster parents have had little training and many times don’t understand what has happened to the child, or what behaviours to expect or how to cope – this often results in broken-down placements and so the already damaged child ends up being shuffled around. We are funding the development and production of a training programme for potential foster parents to attend before they take in any damaged children.
IMISEBEYELANGA
This is our single most extensive project/partnership. At Imisebeyelanga they provide training, recently accredited through the health and social welfare training association, for home based carers, Early Childhood Development centre [ECD] workers, centre leaders and, this year, those community volunteer workers who speak no English. The accreditation is extremely important as it gives the learners a valid and accepted vocational qualification – the first steps out of poverty in an area where there is simply no employment and at least half the local folks are HIV+. The death rate in these communities, of AIDs, is horrific.
Because of the accreditation and depth of the courses it means the training is considerably longer than many of the training programmes we support. Each course is for 15 people for five or six weeks fulltime and the learners immerse themselves; the courses cover many aspect of health, social welfare, recognition of abuse and problems, fighting myths and ‘old wives tales’ and counselling.
The women who run Imisebeyelanga are amazing and incredibly motivated, very highly regarded locally, and are trying to help some really deprived and dysfunctional communities where abuse of all sorts is endemic - many women on their courses disclose personal abuse. If you read the story of Martha [not her name] here on our website, that story tells you the kinds of childhood some of these folk have suffered.
These are the growing green T-shirt brigade. Read some of their feedback comments in the section on Imisebeyelanga. This year and next we have contracted for 90 people to go through the full course of 6 weeks and a further 25 centre leaders to attend a short course – so they know what their volunteers have learned.
KHANYISILE
This is the ECD we have been supporting for three years through stipend costs for their nursery and outreach volunteers, with training through CATTS for all their volunteers and occasional small grants. The centre recently moved over to a new management board and I haven’t heard anything for 4 months, but as this partner organisation is doing an amazing job under difficult circumstances and they have picked up some very serious instances of abuse I am hopeful we can support them again in the future.
COPES-SA
A community service working with orphans, vulnerable children, and families in need. We fund the stipends and training of 6 volunteers including their supervision and the cost of training the supervisor at one of the advanced courses at CATTS. This is the service where an underspend of £600 went towards the equipment for the play park. Read more.
FOOTBALL
The second stage of the Ghetto Boyz project at Ekupholeni is just getting going and, as yet, we have no requests for funding. Read more. No further kit has been sent there.
With the extraordinary help of Karen Richardson, football manager, we have, at no cost to the infant trust, recently gathered up and sent [thanks to DHL and all the contributing parents] a large parcel of second hand football kit to Imisebeyelanga as they have several centres trying to get football practice and teams going, and where they have been inspired by the stories of Happy and the Ghetto Boyz – see his story. During my visit to northern Tshwane in April 2009 I presented the box crammed full of football kit and the four footballs I had taken in my suitcase. They were ecstatic, and there was almost a queue of other community leaders, also working with young boys on the edges of crime, wanting to know if it is possible for them to receive such amazing largesse.
Karen and I will see what we can do to collect more kit, and see if we can persuade DHL to send more parcels free for us. Thanks to everyone who contributed.