Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) Programme

Reason for the programme

• Traumatised children from dysfunctional families drop out of school, fall into substance abuse and high risk behaviour. Eventually they move permanently out onto the street
• Children living, working and begging on the street need consistent family and community level support if they are to successfully transition back home and to school.
• Children with a disadvantaged family status, in violent dysfunctional communities, and who suffer from chronic neglect, physical and mental abuse, and exploitation will end up on the street if they do not get harm-reduction support.
• Vulnerable community children continue to fall through the gaps and need to be identified, assessed, and referred when necessary to statutory services and support.
• Community Children, who need care and protection, often do not need to be removed from their families if they can get the right support and development

Purpose of Programme

• To create an effective link between statutory services and the most vulnerable community children by completing formal assessment, therapeutic, care plans and referral services to ensure children either get the care and protection they need or the support they need to stay with their families
• To provide daily case management of vulnerable child that reduce the number of children failing out of family and school life, that develops resilience to domestic problems, abuse, community violence, substance abuse, negative behaviour issues and gangsterism.
• To provide vulnerable children with access to a safe consistent space and family preservation, school attendance, school aftercare, crises intervention, nutritional, life-skill, development and therapeutic support services, including holiday programmes
• To empower children and their families with the knowledge and skills they need to cope with their own issues by offering community awareness programmes, family support and parental development and training programmes, as well as brokering links between the family and the services they need.

Impact

• Supporting over 500 children a week in Manenberg, Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain, Bishop Lavis and Woodstock to stay away from street life.
• Children are formally assessed and so as to each have a care plan ensuring they, and their families get the support, intervention and skills they need to stay at home and at school.
• Children attending these projects are in obvious better health, are more stable, remain at home, and are more successful at school.
• Parents, who previously had neglected their children, now more willing to participate in training opportunities, be referred to and supported in rehab and other services, and now, with the necessary skills and support engage constructively in the care of their own children.
• The local community and schools now able to refer children in need of care and protection to the Homestead instead of these children falling out of school and moving onto the street.
• Number of children moving onto the street from these communities has noticeably declined.
• Number of children needing to be removed into alternative care has declined.
• Children in alternative care now, with the support of these projects, are able to return home to their families.