Social Worker’s Report for May 2024

May is a child protection month and with most of our programs focusing on children and their well-being we have tried to enforce child protection focused play and teachings throughout. The last week being the focus which was the child protection week. We are grateful to have the opportunity to instil all these values because we know that when these children are older, they will remember this for the rest of their lives as the bible mentions it in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in a way in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

SafePlaces

SafePlace has seen two baby deliveries this month, this is exciting yet scary as this is a very difficult yet rewarding process. Knowing that you have helped bring a healthy baby in the world is rewarding however we cannot ignore the fact that there could be complications, and we are grateful to God that so far there has been non.

Two people have passed due to the delay in ambulance call outs. The reason being the shortage in ambulances and because this was during the flood crisis in Margate and most emergency vehicles were assisting there. Thank you to MI7 for stepping in and assisting us with such cases and Wolf for their quick response.

This month we saw a rise in Gender Based Violence cases which is a good sign because it means that people are not keeping quite anymore, they are reporting these cases to the police and hopefully we will see a change in the communities going forward.

Cases of mental disability have been on the rise in the past couple of months and because this is the department of health issue we always try and refer to them, but the clients always come with frustrations as the department of health does not have enough facilities to keep them and the families do not have the capacity to care for them even with the medication as most are violent and the saddest part  is that the female patients are getting raped by the men knowing they will not be able to identify them.

SafePlay

It is exciting to announce that we can have at least once a week a big enough space for the children to play, on Wednesdays we collaborate with Mahlubi creche and hold our SafePlay there. It is better for the children as they can get to play freely especially with the schools closed.

We have had a hard time working with the parents in registering the children that are supposed to go to school.

We grateful for the resources to be able to have these programs running smoothly.

Statistics

• Police                         18                                          

• Ambulance              29                   

• Social Workers         14

TOTAL                                     61

(GBV= 20)