Project for youth at risk

Stories	Photos

Khayalethu’s work with homeless children exists to provide alternatives of hope to children, youth and their families through prevention and early intervention (community work) and reunification (street work, residential and after care). The intention is to keep families together and reunite children with their families.
Khayalethu invests its energy in initiatives with children, youth and their families from at-risk communities who struggle unhealthy forms of life, which often lead to children living on the streets.

In the community drop in centers, our staff works with children and families to try and combat problems before they begin or become serious.

The Street Team works on building relationships and trust with the children and youth already on the streets, with the aim of facilitating their move off the streets and back home.

Khayalethu’s Residential Team acts as an intermediary for the reunification process between children and their guardians.

The Aftercare Team takes care of the children once they have been reunified within the family and community, worked through the issues and returned home

In partnership with the Internship program, Khayalethu also helps interns with their development (personally and professionally).By teaching them how to work with children and families, Khayalethu equip them to go out and find a job, but also hopefully how to better relate to their own families, children, friends, neighbours and colleagues.

Community Family Preservation Program

Our community staff encourages family preservation so that children in these high risk communities don’t run to the streets. Children, youth and their families can come to our community centers for help in various areas, ranging from assistance with homework to parenting skills. Activities are organized by centre staff for children and youth to support their personal growth and self esteem. Our staff doesn’t work alone, but rather maintain and develop relationships with community leadership structures so that further services can be provided.

Our staff creates a safe space within the community for children, youth and families to come and receive services. These services include help with homework, parenting workshops, health education (including HIV and AIDS awareness), grief counseling and basic training in home-based care. Because of their constant presence within the communities, families develop trusting relationships with our staff and become more and more comfortable approaching staff when they have problems.

Our staffs’ focus is on keeping families together. Therefore, our staff do home visits to look at families’ strengths and weaknesses. They work on building weaknesses and affirming strengths. They also help families apply for identity documents and government grants. As well as the home visits, staff also visit local schools to see how students are going and what they can do to keep children and youth in school and identify which children are not attending. They help children register for school and access funds to help them pay for uniforms, books etc, and run programs after school to help with homework, deal with issues and also just to give the children and youth something to do after school so they are not tempted to go to the streets.

Food security is a big issue among many of the residents of these communities. The staff from the communities helps by providing sandwiches to the children and youth twice a week. They also identify the residents in immediate need of assistance (especially child-headed households) and provide food parcels.
(back to top)

Street Work

Our Street Team works to provide effective street based interventions to children on the streets to encourage them to return home or into a short-term residential based program. Before any of these interventions can become useful, our team must first gain a high level of trust from these children and youth. The first step in building these safe and trusted relationships is to provide for the basic needs of these children and youth. They are given the opportunity 3 times a week to bath and wash their clothes at one of our shelters. They are provided with sandwiches and referred to the clinic, hospital or Child Welfare/Department of Social Welfare when necessary.

Once this trust has been established, our team works with the children and youth to try to sort through problems at home so that they can return home permanently or, if necessary, to move into temporary residential care. The staff identifies children on the streets who are showing signs of being ready to go home. They work with the children to assist them to make the decision to go home and help them to mediate this with their families. They prepare children on the process and locate the family to assess the situation. The staff agree with the children/youth and their families on the terms of the placement back at home and get agreement from all parties involved on their responsibilities. The staff also provide aftercare to make sure these agree upon terms are being fulfilled.

Creative diversion programs are developed by the staff to encourage development in the children on the streets. These include setting up and training a soccer team, creative arts and drama programs that allow children to express their thoughts and ideas and life skills programs that enable children to develop skills and reflect on their decision making.

The Street Team work in the CBD area, Scottsville, Offramp at Chota Matola Road and Khan Road.
(back to top)

Residential Care

A short-term, residential-based program, Khayalethu residential program provides the basic needs for homeless children, giving opportunity for personal development, education and the framework for reunification with family.

Children are brought to the shelters by our street team. They identify children who are willing to go home, but for whom immediate placement is not possible. It is then the role of the shelter staff to prepare the boys, girls and their families for reunification. The shelter staff start by providing for the children’s basic needs (healthy and culturally appropriate diet, basic medical care, provision of bedding and clothing, a safe and secure environment that is child friendly) and assessing the children and capturing accurate information about them and their situations.

The staff then provide for the holistic development of the children in care. This entails developing the children mentally, physically, socially, spiritually and emotionally, through many different activities including providing homework support, immunization, running life orientation skills program, participation in a local church and providing counseling.

The staff then have the responsibility of family reunification. They locate families, assess their needs and agree on a plan for reunification. They make home visits and get an accurate picture of the real needs within the family. They run quarterly parenting skills workshops to transfer skills and they offer counseling and support to the families. They identify mentors within the community that can support the family. An agreement is made around the reunification plan and aftercare support. Once all this is done and the staff and child feel they are ready, the children are placed back home to be cared for by their families (or foster/temporary families if more appropriate).

Other important aspects of the residential teams responsibilities include helping children acquire documentation (like birth certificates and ID documentation) and facilitating foster care placements (by recruiting and screening and training families for foster placements and introducing children to the families).

(back to top)

After Care

After children have been returned home we believe our responsibility doesn’t ends. Our aftercare team provides emotional support to children and their families once reunification has taken place. Through home visits, careful monitoring of the children is undertaken to ensure the children are still safe and the children and families are still happy. We see this process as a valuable and necessary step in the process to ensure that once the children are placed back at home they stay there and do not return to the streets.

An agreement is made between the family, child and our staff about what their support will look like. The idea is not to keep families dependant on Khayalethu staff, but rather to show them the services and support available to them so they can become self sufficient. Our staff link these families to support structures (eg local clinics, churches, schools and relative government departments) within their communities so these structures can become their avenue for support.

Our staff continue to support these families until a time when they feel they are able to handle their own circumstances. Any developing problems are dealt with jointly between the family and the staff. Teachers in the schools children are attending are recruited to support the children in their educational development. Development of peer support relationships with the community is encouraged.

Support is provided not only for the child who was in our care but also for the other children of the family. As well as this our staff run parenting skills workshops and distribute information about HIV and AIDS and teenage sexuality. This is done to encourage not only the growth of one child but also for the family and community as a whole. The idea is to strengthen the whole support network of these children and youth so there is no reason why they would again leave home for the streets.

Once the staff feel that the families and communities are functioning well on their own they leave the care of these children to their guardians. This does not mean that they will no longer help, but rather that they take a step back and allow the normal structures of family and community to take their place. If any help is ever needed the children and families are always welcome to come back to Khayalethu and get advice and help from our staff.
(back to top)