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.