Residential Programmes
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St. Joseph’s and St. Nicolas Homes
The aim of the residential centres is to provide therapy and care for the children placed in our care via children’s court. Coach provides a home and family environment for the children, as well as food, education, clothing and all necessities. Coach provides a family for the children and by doing so ensures that there are fewer children that go to bed hungry and cold and abused and living on the streets.
The residential treatment programme provides intensive short term interventions aimed at reuniting children back into family care, either with their own or host families. Support is extended to include the families and community structures (e.g. schools) that directly influence the children’s daily lives.While children are in care, our social work team works closely with their families to help stabilise them and to build their capacity to parent effectively.
This home is situated in the Westbury and Sophiatown regions. At present there are 15 children accommodated at the home. The children have been admitted to the home due to neglect and abuse. These children are counselled by professional councillors to help them overcome this dark phase of their life. They are given hope for a brighter future. The qualified child and youth care workers ensure that the children attend school on a daily basis. Besides schooling activities, there is a set of daily activities that the children have. Every day when they come home from school, they have lunch, and are then assisted with their homework. Once their home work is completed, they participate in extra curricular activities varying from aerobics and soccer to beadwork and painting. This home is not an orphanage but a two to three year programme. During this programme, Coach ensures that the children turn their lives around and make life giving and not life destroying choices for themselves. The aim is to ensure that the children are not permanently institutionalised. Morris house provides 24 hour care for the children by having house mothers that work shifts. Millar Street House The children have been admitted to the programme due to neglect and abuse. Margaret and Millar house provide these children with a home, family and a sanctuary of peace and safety. The children are admitted to schools in the area, and their progress at school is monitored. The qualified child and youth care workers provide 24 hour care to the children after school, and once their home work is completed, the children participate in extra curricular activities. The children in our care are provided with counselling and are given life skills. Margaret and Millar house is the only ray of light for the children. By living at the houses, and developing essential life skills, the children will be healed and stabilised. This will prevent them from being permanently institutionalised. Millar House will give the children a sense of belonging. If upon completion of the two year programme, a child cannot be reunited with his/her family (i.e. potential threat to the child is detected), Coach secures a host family for the child) Life Campus The aim of Life Campus is to give youth (aged 16 to 18 years) a chance in life where they have not been able to grow in a stable and caring environment. In addition to intensive therapies, the programme gives them the opportunity and means to develop a range of life and educational skills needed for them to develop independence and a promising future. This is particularly important in South Africa, where thousands of young people are entering the criminal justice system each year. Many of those have not had the opportunity to pursue a path of functioning as productive and responsible citizens. Our programme meets just a small part of that need, but does so with ongoing success. The Life Campus is a residential youth life skills programme located in Kempton Park. It fills a critical gap in child and youth care services and caters for young people who are unable to cope in mainstream schooling systems. An intensive 18 month programme aims to equip young people with many of the skills needed for full integration into society. These include the ability to live independently and generate an income through employment in the formal sector or alternatively, through self-employment. The young people also need to be functionally literate and numerate in order progress into young adulthood and to this end, attend IT-based Adult Basic Education and Training classes that are facilitated on site. In addition to the skills programme, therapeutic and life space interventions are provided by qualified staff. The Life Campus is currently registered to assist 23 youth in care and 10 day students at any given time. Individual assessments are done prior to admission to establish whether the young people will benefit from the programme. The programme is implemented in three phases: Whilst the youth are in our care, they receive intensive counselling services and participate in group therapies based on needs identified. Focus is place on making informed decisions and life changing choices as opposed to life destroying choices. Support work is done with families so that they will be able to provide appropriate care and good parenting to the youth. If the youth cannot be returned to their parents or family alternate foster care is found. 24 hour adult supervision is provided by a team qualified in child and youth care. Once the young people return to their communities, follow up services are provided to ensure that their reintegration is successful and sustained. The majority of the young people in the Life Campus programme have had disrupted, often traumatic lives. To help overcome the severe deficiency in their education, the Life Campus offers an IT-based Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) Programme. This enables the learners to acquire functional levels of Literacy and Numeracy within a very short space of time. A full time facilitator is employed to assist the learners through the programme. When each ABET level has been completed, learner portfolios are assessed by UNISA. Vocational Training The purpose of the vocational training is to equip our Youth with the accredited skills in order for them to gain employment. These young people are constantly being engaged in interventions with a view to helping them to plan for their future and their eventual exit from the programme. Interventions include focussing on empowering them with budgeting skills, decision making skills, problem solving skills and assertiveness skills.St Nicolas Home
St Nicolas Home –Morris House
St Joseph's Home
St Joseph’s Home
Margaret and Millar house are also situated in the Westbury and Sophiatown areas. At present there are 15 children accommodated at Millar House. The programmes of Millar House are the same as Morris House.St George's Home
St George’s Home
The Life Campus serves young people between the ages of 16 and 18 years, and where necessary continues with service provision until their 21st birthday. They are mainly referred to the residential component of the programme by external agency social workers. Others attend as day students by arrangement from various nearby shelters for street children.The Abet Centre
THE ABET CENTRE
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