December News

November was a very busy month at ThembaCare. We started our month on a sad note, with one of our babies passing away on the first. He had been admitted to us with chronic birth defects for palliative care, to be kept comfortable in his final phase of life. Apart from his sad goodbye, we also said goodbye to five other children in November. One was sent to a place of safety to ensure she was not separated from her sibling and the other four were all discharged safely to their respective caregivers. All five of the children are happy to be home, although we were sad to see them leave.

We also welcomed four happy faces to our unit. Of these children, two are currently awaiting placement and the other two’s parents are visiting regularly. All four children have settled in nicely with the other children. One of the little boys admitted is old enough to attend crèche and we have managed to find a sponsor for his crèche fee. He is more than happy to go every day and play with children his age.

At the beginning of the month we were spoilt with a staff party for the Thembalitsha foundation. Each project was allocated a different theme, ours being “London”. We put on our dancing shoes and enjoyed being taken care of for the evening.

November was also a month of great generosity. We were thoroughly spoilt with food, clothing, toys, equipment and even a much needed generator! We are extremely grateful to Tafelberg School, Mary Harding School and Eros School for including us in their World Aids Day celebrations. Not only did they collect donations and money for us, but they invited us to share in their special day. All of the presentations were lovely to be a part of and it was humbling to see such great work being done in celebration of World Aids day.

We were also spoilt by Silverstream Tabernacle Church who raised money for us and spread our wish list around their members. They decided to adopt ThembaCare for future events and fundraising which is great news for us.

Nursing students of the University of Connecticut have been visiting us annually for many years to volunteer over weekends and during the week at the end of the year. They spent November with us and in addition to their generosity, invited us to a dinner function marking the end of their time in South Africa. December promises to be just as busy, and we intend on spoiling our children with TWO Christmas parties!

It is wonderful to see the community coming together in assisting with our needs. We are extremely grateful for every item donated to us.

October News

The beginning of October was buzzing with stories from the evening of the 29th September. On this evening we celebrated our 10th Anniversary, with a ball at the Cape Sun Hotel.   Much fun was had by both staff and funders alike.

On a sad note, ThembaCare bids farewell to our Occupational Therapist, Clio, as she explores new horizons. Our new OT, Candice, took over from her at the beginning of the month.

All in all it has been a very busy month and we are almost full, with a total of 17 children, keeping us on our toes! Of these children, most of them have parents or family visiting regularly. The mothers come to stay over when they can and the co-operation from their side has been wonderful. Many improvements in this regard have been made, which makes our work easier and our children a great deal happier.

November is on its way which means we will soon be preparing for Christmas. We begin these celebrations with a Christmas Staff Party on the 1st, which we anticipate to be as enjoyable as our anniversary ball.

September News

This month Themba Care Athlone looks forward to celebrating its 10 year anniversary. We are holding a Spring Ball at the Cape Sun Hotel to celebrate alongside funders, staff and others who are supporting us through attending the ball. Preparations have been underway for months and now it is almost time for our staff to swap their aprons for dresses and celebrate the wonderful work they are a part of. We look forward to a night of celebrating the past 10 years and of encouragement for the years to come!

A few months ago we mentioned that we could no longer send our crèche and preschool aged children to school due to budgeting constraints. This was manageable when we had a number of toddlers who could play together, however recently all but one of our toddlers was discharged. As a result he has become increasingly bored (the rest of the children are all under 2 years). Fortunately our doctor was able to secure a donation for him to attend the local crèche for the duration of his stay with us. He has loved the crèche from day one, no tears, and every morning heads off with his backpack and happily waving goodbye. In fact he loves it so much that if the driver is running late (or if he has to wait too long in the morning) he is soon in tears because he wants to go to school! We are so grateful that he is now able to leave the premises daily to play with other children his age and are certain it is going to benefit him greatly. Thank you again to those who support us in the different ways you do!

August News

ThembaCare was fortunate to host two Irish volunteers for the last 8 weeks. The volunteers were part of a Global Awareness Programme which aims to increase awareness around HIV and AIDS globally. The volunteers spent their time learning about HIV and AIDS in the community by getting to know how an organisation like ThembaCare operates. They spent time with the children (playing, feeding, changing nappies), joined the social workers on home visits, participated in ward rounds, visited the children who were in hospital and interviewed staff members in order to get information from different perspectives. When they return to Ireland they will be making presentations at schools and universities, as well as writing articles for their local newspapers, in order to raise awareness around HIV and AIDS. It has been such a pleasure hosting these volunteers who have helped in every possible way with the everyday activities at ThembaCare and we will miss their willing hands.

This month we have had great success in placing some of our children in long term care facilities. Although most of the time this is not necessary, we do have cases where the child cannot be sent back to the family for a variety of reasons. This process is often a long and frustrating one; however we were fortunate to place two of our children in good children’s homes with relative ease within one month. The first of our children, a 2-year-old boy with severe cerebral palsy needed to be placed in a long term care facility that could cater to his high care needs as his mother was not coping and his health was suffering. We couldn’t be happier with this placement as we now know that he is getting the special care that he needs. The second of our children, another 2-year-old boy, was placed in a beautiful group home. After months of investigating all options his mother realised that she was unable to care for him currently. She visits him at the home and hopes one day she will be able to care for him again, as do we.

Unfortunately we have not had as much success with two of our other children who we have been struggling to find suitable long term care facilities for due to lack of availability. Please would you keep this in your prayers as we look for new homes for these two little treasures.

July News

In July South Africa celebrates Madiba Day to honour this remarkable Nelson Mandela’s 67 years of struggle for human rights. The aim of this day: get involved and make a change in whatever capacity you can, for 67 minutes (or more of you want). This year we were so blessed that Woolworths decided to celebrate Madiba Day with us! The staff of Woolworths at Vangate Mall came ready to serve and bless both the staff and children at ThembaCare, and as they began unpacking the car we realised we were in for a real spoil! After everything was unpacked some staff put on their clown costumes, blew up the balloons and set to painting faces and entertaining the kids. Meanwhile the others got to work in our kitchen preparing food for the staff, and the food just kept coming! (Eventually the nurse cancelled the children’s lunch as their tummies were so full of Woolies delicacies!). The atmosphere in the playroom, where we ate, drank, dressed up and painted faces, was one of celebration and community, which we think is a more than appropriate way to celebrate this day; after all isn’t getting involved simply an act of celebrating community and the part we get to play in it?

Earlier this month one of our long-term volunteers made a generous donation to be used for outings, so last week we were able to take our four toddlers to Monkey Town. We saw monkeys and apes of all sizes and shapes and were there during feeding time, which was a very entertaining (and noisy) experience. The chance to get out of the ThembaCare premises and experience something new is always so refreshing and beneficial, so thank you to those who make it possible!

This month we have also two new admissions with severe malnutrition. The first, let’s call her Sandile, is 19 months, weighs 5.6kg (13 lbs) and on admission was only able to lie and sit (if put in that position). She was easily upset and did not like to be handled too much, but cried when she was left alone. One week later and Sandile giggles and smiles, she gets into crawling position and moves from lying to sitting all alone, as well as interacting with the other children. The second child, let’s call him Lethu, is 3 years old and weighed 8.5kg (19 lbs) on admission. He was very irritable on admission and was slow to interact positively with other children and adults. Two weeks later however and he is weighing 10kg (23 lbs), singing, dancing, playing with the children and carers, and has a belly laugh that would put Father Christmas to shame. Both these children are still severely underweight, have muscle wasting and are underdeveloped in terms of play, language and social skills, amongst other things associated with malnutrition. However such rapid improvement encourages us greatly in the work we are doing and we are sure to see great gains in both of theirs health and quality of life.

June News

Cuts in global budgets have resulted in increasingly stringent expectations and boundaries being placed on hospices and care facilities in order to meet funding requirements. It is leaving many facilities, such as ThembaCare, in an overwhelmed and frustrated state. As a result ThembaCare Athlone organised and facilitated a workshop between a number of hospices in the Western Cape to create a space in which these projects could voice their concerns, strategise, network, and continue to be effective. It became clear that most organisations were experiencing the same difficulties as us and that there was a need to streamline and coordinate our services between each other in order to reach maximum efficiency. Those who participated in the workshop returned feeling encouraged and energised to tackle these obstacles in a collaborative manner rather than each organisation doing it alone. We plan to run the workshops regularly in order to facilitate the process that has been started and we are very excited to see how it develops.

One of the limitations arising from the stricter requirements now placed on organisations in order to meet funding criteria is that we are no longer allowed to send our children to play school if they are well enough. At Themba Care we see rapid improvement in our children once they are receiving regular medication and nutrition, however there are usually underlying issues that still need to be resolved even once their health has improved. In order to prevent them from missing out on vital early education and peer relationships, we would send them to the local crèche where they could learn, play and have a change of scenery. Although a relatively small obstacle, it is one of the restrictions we have had to accept and adapt to.

This month we were once again blessed by Clicks in Vangate Mall who arrived with a car packed to the brim with nappies. Donations like these are so valuable to us, as they are not only expensive but essential and quickly used up! These donations enable us to allocate money to other needs within the organisation and we are very grateful for their generosity.

May News

Early in May one of our girls left us to join her aunt, uncle and siblings in the Eastern Cape. She had been with us for a prolonged period due to complicated family and social circumstances and, although we were sad to say goodbye to this delightful child, we were so excited that she would at last be reunited with her siblings. This is, after all, why we do what we do! This little girl was in many ways a big sister to the younger children, always interacting with them in a gentle and caring way, and helping where she could. We miss her very much but are thankful for her story’s happy ending.

Who's a pretty boy then?!

This month we were fortunate to take four of our little ones to Butterfly World. When they first entered the forest it seemed they didn’t know what they were there for or what to do, but they soon became active explorers (sometimes a bit too explorative!). It was a wonderful morning of new experiences, with butterflies landing on their heads and birds swooping between the branches. They were able to look at the butterflies close up, as well as tropical birds, iguanas, tortoises, monkeys, meerkats and duikers. We all had a laugh when the scorpion and spider display had the boys in tears but not our little girl, who found them very amusing. At ThembaCare we consider outings like these essential as they are so important for early child hood development, so thank you to Butterfly World for making this day possible.

April News

Sunny autumn day

In November last year a little 3 month old boy with reflux disease was referred to us. Reflux disease is when the opening between the oesophagus and stomach doesn’t close properly resulting in food and milk shooting back up the oesophagus and often into the trachea, which is very dangerous. As a result he needed to be fed thickened foods through a tube that ran directly from his nose to his stomach. During his time with us he was slowly introduced to food through the mouth with the hope that the reflux problem would resolve. This week the ThembaCare staff were all smiles when at last the tube was removed completely and he was able to take all feeds through his mouth. The even better part of this success is that he will be able to go for home visits for the first time since his admission, and very soon home for good. This little boy has wriggled his way deep into the hearts of the staff here as they’ve watched and helped him grow from an apprehensive and quiet child into a playful and very vocal boy who cruises around the playroom.

This last month we have also admitted a child with a very challenging case. A little girl whose oesophagus is so small she cannot swallow. She is fed through a tube that inserts directing into her stomach and has to have weekly operations in an attempt to gradually widen her oesophagus. This is a painful procedure and requires weekly hospital admissions. Aside from this she also developed a very dangerous condition when she was a few months old called Steven Johnson’s Syndrome (http://www.skinassn.org/what-is-stevens-johnson-syndrome.html), which most children do not survive. She did survive it but it has left her blind in one eye and she is very underdeveloped. This little one has already experienced such huge obstacles before even reaching two years of age. We ask you to remember her in your prayers as she receives her weekly operations, and also for her overall health and recovery.

March News

This month TCA was greatly encouraged when we said goodbye to one of our older boys who was reunited with his grandmother and relocated back to the Eastern Cape. When he arrived he was in the care of his step father who wasn’t coping, and no contacts for other family members were known. The social work team worked hard to find a family member and were eventually successful in finding his grandmother through the use of a radio station in the Eastern Cape. The next problem was getting granny here and the three of them (little brother too!) back to the Eastern Cape. However this turned out to be less of a problem than first thought, as the money was very quickly raised amongst supporters of TCA. So granny came and received her training on the medications and we waved good bye to a happy, but anxious, boy who was off to a new start. Well done to the TCA team for your persevering hard work and thank you to those who support us for making such success stories possible

February News

At ThembaCare, much like many households, things are slowly getting back to normal after a busy Christmas season! Anyone who has visited TCA knows that it is more of a home than a hospice, and we strive to create a normal routine for our children (they’ve spent enough time in hospitals!). This includes sending the children who are old enough to school and crèche, where they can learn and interact with similar aged peers. Two of our children are now attending primary school and another is attending crèche, it is great to see them engaging in these normal everyday tasks we too often take for granted in our own lives. Outings, like a trip to the beach or Mac Donalds, are another part of life that our children miss out on, so we try to arrange regular outings. This month we were fortunate enough to take five of our children on an outing to the Two Oceans Aquarium. Some were enthralled and others quite wary, but overall it was a fun afternoon and a great opportunity for the children to be exposed to something new and educational. Thank you Two Oceans Aquarium for making this possible!

January News

Our staff at the World AIDS Day Event

December and January have been busy months for ThembaCare. World Aids Day and Christmas saw us blessed with many donations and the new year has brought us a number of new children.
ThembaCare celebrated World Aids Day with current and past mothers of ThembaCare, as well as Pastor John Miller. Members of staff shared their personal stories, mothers and staff were honoured for their commitment, and those we’ve lost were remembered. It was a day of remembrance but also of encouragement and renewed dedication.

One of our long term volunteers generously put on a Christmas party for the children. Presents, music, ice cream and face painting resulted in lots of colourful and happy children at the end of the day! On Christmas day ThembaCare was also visited by Father Christmas and a special lunch was prepared by our staff.

ThembaCare would like to extend a big thank you to all those individuals and organisations whose kind donations over the festive season made these celebrations possible.