A bridge between hospital and home, St Joseph’s Home for Children.
November 27, 2015 | By Toni Calliva
The Red Cross Children’s Hospital (RCCH) prides themselves on never having turned a child away and as the only specialist paediatric hospital in Sub Saharan Africa often treating children from areas of extreme poverty – there are sometimes more complex external issues that need to be considered in the treatment process.
Social workers within the RCCH framework are able to identify when children diagnosed with life threatening illnesses are coming from poverty stricken homes and in some cases are being neglected by adults who are responsible for taking care of them. When home circumstances consist of living in a shack or rural village with no running water and electricity these children need a safe place to undergo treatment and heal.
Photo credit: Karin Schermbrucker (SA) The interior of a family home, in a severely impoverished small informal settlement in Grabouw, Western Cape.
In cases when children are not able to return home the RCCH social worker team are able to continue their support by suggesting suitable environments where these children can be cared for.
RCCH works closely with St Joseph’s Home for Chronically Ill Children (SJH) who each year give nearly 300 children a second chance at childhood. http://www.stjosephshome.org.za/
St. Joseph’s was started in 1935 by the Pallottine Missionary Sisters, in response to the Great Depression which forced some families living at the margins of sustainability to abandon their sick children. While the profile of disease has changed since then, the abject poverty that marked their founding remains a reality for many families in South Africa. To this day, the impact of poverty on children is multi-dimensional. It is not only about lack of money, but includes other deprivations such as lack of access to proper health care, schooling and a living environment conducive to health and wellness.
St Josephs is located on the Cape Flats and serves the needs of children from impoverished communities and disadvantaged backgrounds that have been diagnosed with life threatening illnesses such as HIV/Aids, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, heart-lung-kidney failures, neurological impairments and congenital abnormalities. 31% of their children have HIV/Aids, 19% suffer from cancer, and 14% have diabetes. The remainder suffers from renal, cardiac, respiratory and neurological conditions and congenital abnormalities.
Photo credit: Karin Schermbrucker (SA) Establishing shots of the Grabouw informal and severely impoverished community just outside Cape Town in the Western Cape South Africa.
Their mission is to provide holistic healthcare to children from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure survival and wellbeing. They empower children and their families to look after their health so as to prevent readmissions to hospitals and to improve their quality of life. As such they act as a bridge between hospital and home.
Two social workers are an essential part of the SJH model and are responsible for the assessment of the home environment and empowerment of family and caregivers to ensure that each child will be able to live a healthy and balanced life in the long term. The impact of their intervention is to prevent re-admissions to Hospitals such as the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.
