By The Homestead
The Homestead’s Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) programme currently supports over 400 children – every week - across the 6 Drop-in Centres in Woodstock, Mitchell’s Plain, Bishop Lavis, Khayelitsha and Manenberg.
The programme focuses on traumatised children from dysfunctional families, children who drop out of school, those who fall into substance abuse and are a high risk behaviour. Eventually, they move permanently out onto the street. The children living, working and begging on the street need consistent family and community-level support if they are to successfully transition back home and to school.
Children with disadvantaged family status, in violent dysfunctional communities and who suffer from chronic neglect, physical and mental abuse and exploitation will end up on the street if they do not get harm-reduction support.
Vulnerable community children continue to fall through the gaps and need to be identified, assessed and referred when necessary to statutory services and support.Community children, who are in need of care and protection, often do not need to be removed from their families if they can get the right support and development.
The purpose of the programme is to create an effective link between statutory services and the most vulnerable community children by completing formal assessments, therapeutic, care plans and referral services to ensure children either get the care and protection they need or the support they need to stay with their families.
The programme also provides daily case management of vulnerable children that reduces the number of children failing out of family and school life, by developing resilience to domestic problems, abuse, community violence, substance abuse, negative behaviour issues and gangsterism. It also provides vulnerable children with access to a safe consistent space and family preservation, school attendance, school aftercare, crisis intervention, nutritional, life-skill, development and therapeutic support services, including holiday programmes.
The programme aims to empower children and their families with the knowledge and skills they need to cope with their issues by offering community awareness programmes, family support and parental development and training programmes, as well as brokering links between the family and the services they need.
Children are formally assessed and each child has an Individual Development Plan ensuring they and their families get the support, intervention and skills needed for them to stay at home and school. It has become noticeable that the children attending these projects are in obvious better health, are more stable, remain at home and are more successful at school.
Parents, who previously had neglected their children, are now more willing to participate in training opportunities, be referred to and supported in rehab and other services and, equipped with the necessary skills and support, engage constructively in the care of their own children.
What a parent had to say about a Homestead Drop-in Centre:
“To me, The Homestead is a place that helps me with my child. Homestead has supported me where I have failed and provided my child with the required security. The parent workshop, offered by the Homestead, has provided me with the necessary tools and helped me to take care of my child. If it was not for the Homestead, I would not have been able to be the best parent I can be. I can clearly see the difference since The Homestead came into my child’s life - it is greatly appreciated! The Homestead gathers our children, making them feel at home and safe.”
The local community and schools are now able to refer children in need of care and protection to the Homestead instead of these children falling out of school and moving onto the street.
Read more about The Homestead on our website: https://homestead.org.za/
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