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Community-based foster care |
- The organisation's unique
foster care services, which differ vastly from the
traditional foster care model, have been nationally
and internationally acclaimed.
- For decades children were placed
within a foster family and contact was usually limited
to no more than two social work visits a year involving
individual counselling sessions with foster parents
and foster children, and the submission of reports.
- In terms of the traditional
model, foster children had virtually no contact with
their biological parents and insufficient attempts
were made to re-unite families.
- The new foster care model introduced
by the organisation in 1993 involves members of the
community, foster parents who usually have a great
deal of life experiences and not much formal education,
and social workers working in partnership to mend
the lives of these children.
Unique features of the new
foster care model:
- Groups of foster children and
foster parents meet regularly and receive a range
of ongoing, comprehensive post-placement support services
- All foster parents receive extensive
pre- and post-placements training
- Community volunteers (mostly
foster parents themselves) are actively involved with
social workers in the recruitment, screening and training
of new foster parents
- Life skills and developmental
group sessions, many of which are facilitated by community
volunteers, are provided for foster children as well
as their foster families. A special feature of these
groups is the power of the advice and support that
foster children and foster families are able to give
to one another
- Regular recreational and educational
outings are arranged for children and their foster
parents
- Supervised contact and interaction
with biological parents, where possible, and intervention
aimed at reuniting children in foster care with their
families of origin
- Foster parents assist with the
establishment of training centers where unemployed
foster parents and biological parents acquire and
develop basic skill in order to secure gainful employment
- Foster care social workers,
with the assistance of the community volunteers, develop
capacity within the community to strengthen and support
foster families to care for children affected and
infected by HIV/AIDS.
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Family Community Child Care: |
- Caring and protecting
children effectively can be achieved by working on
a group basis in partnership with the community.
- The focus of this approach will
be on empowering and supporting groups of families
to collectively take care of orphaned children and
child-headed households in a co-operative manner.
- Similarly, child-headed households
will be developed, maintained and supported to care
for other vulnerable and orphaned children, in addition
to their siblings.
- Cape Town Child Welfare
is in the process of developing models for this purpose.
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Community Group Child Care: |
- The organisation has actively
commenced initiating contact with and encouraging
churches and mosques to follow this model of community-based
child care.
- The model involves the
church/mosques purchasing a house, employing a caregiver
to care for small groups of orphan and setting up
a group of dedicated individuals to oversee, monitor
and assist the project, and to ensure that the project
remains financially viable.
- Various stakeholders and
key role players are being lobbied and encouraged
to support these religious institutions and other
community groups to develop accessible and effective
models of child care on a collective basis.
- These include Cape Town
UniCity, the Department of Health and the Department
of Education, among others.
- Once support of this nature
has been secured, overseas funders will be approached
to cover a portion of the costs.
- It is envisaged that community
groups will establish and take responsibility for
child care projects with Cape Town Child Welfare
providing the necessary guidance, moral support and
assistance in monitoring child care activities
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- The organisation's practice
of adoption has changed and evolved in response to
changing societal needs.
- Cape Town Child Welfare
remains actively involved in placing children (who
cannot be raised by their biological families) with
adoptive parents with whom they will benefit from
the love and security of a nurturing, caring family
life.
- Much work is also being done
to assist birth mothers to keep their children.
- In many instances children who
are placed for adoption are the children of women
who have no or extremely limited income, may already
be supporting a number of other children and have
exhausted family resources, do not have a supportive
relationship with the birth father or may be HIV positive.
- Many children who are placed
for adoption have been abandoned for these reasons.
- Mothers wishing to place their
children for adoption are provided with intensive
counseling, the opportunity of acquiring job skills
through which they are able to generate income, linked
with community resources in order to secure essential
emotional and financial support and provided with
basic requirements such as food and clothing.
- Members of the community are
being trained and encouraged to provide crucial support
to these mothers in an effort to keep children in
their family of origin.
- The organisation has also challenged
traditional South African adoption practices, which
have tended to favour middle class white adopters
at the expense of poorer families and families from
other cultures.
- Instead of focusing on the needs
of childless couples, attention has been shifted to
the needs of parentless children, especially those
with special needs.
To this end Cape Town Child
Welfare:
- Vigorously promotes the concept
of adoption in Black communities, enabling and supporting
these families to adopt children
- Involves community volunteers,
usually adoptive parents, extensively to assist in
recruiting suitable prospective adoptive parents and
lobbying around adoption issues, while providing support
for other adoptive parents and prospective adopters
- Carefully screens all prospective
adoptive parents, following which they receive intensive
training to best equip them with child care / child
management skills and to meet the challenges of adoption.
A special feature is that community volunteers are
actively involved in providing both training and additional
support
- Undertakes extensive community
education campaigns around adoption issues
- Recruits and trains emergency
parents to care for parentless children on a temporary
basis
- Focuses on children with
special needs.
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