Residential Care Program

 

These children need special intervention and the dedicated staff and therapeutic team are committed to providing for their psychological, social, emotional, spiritual and cognitive needs. Leliebloem House now has to accommodate children with disabilities and those in need of special care.

There are five cottages, an administration block, and the Jean McGregor Centre for Adolescent and Youth Development. There is a hall and swimming pool on the premises – both donated. Each cottage accommodates 11-14 children who are enrolled at schools in the local community, and they are encouraged to participate in well-structured community projects and activities. The healthy, professional relationship that develops between agency, staff and children we have three monthly Therapeutic team meetings where all of the roles players discuss the plans, interventions and referrals of the children. It is here where joint decisions have played a major role in the success of the programme and eventually reunification of the children with the community.

We utilize the services of volunteers – high school children are encouraged to do their community projects at Leliebloem House. Our Volunteer Program has been in place for a few years and has proved to be very successful as we have had volunteers from Holland, Denmark, Sweden, US, Italy, Switzerland and England. We have embarked on Experiential Youth Leadership Camps for learners, which proved to be a huge success and the Family Re-unification Program which has shown its successes year after year.

 The Types of Services the Project provides and Those Who Will Benefit
 
Besides the physical nurturing, love and security so important to these children, it is the intervention by means of counseling that is required to help them reach their full potential and break the cycle of abuse and poverty from where they come. This counseling would be either individual or in group sessions i.e. life and social skills, conflict resolution and capacity building. Outside of our own resources of in-house social and child and youth care workers, we utilize the services of volunteers, NGO’s and CBO’s. These would include Rape Crisis, Safeline, Child and Family Unit, Adolescent Unit and SANCA, hospitals and clinics. This project is fully committed to the concept and practice of Individual Treatment & Development Program.
 
An important facet of our services is the Child and Family Reunification Programme. With this program we have succeeded in reunifying more than 800 children with their families since 1997. Its aim is to have full re-entry of the child into the family system, which affirms the child’s membership in the family. Leliebloem was the first children’s home to initiate this program with limited funding from the Department of Social Development, and with no funding form the DSD. This program has grown tremendously as many children’s homes have requested assistance from Leliebloem in implementing their family reunification program. This has allowed Leliebloem House to build capacity within other organizations for this vital program. This program is not only valuable for the children but also for the families and communities.