Welcome to the home of Janine Botha and her five foster children in Modimolle. There is an urgent need for more foster homes and Botha is an avid advocate of foster care.
Fostering is a solution to help take care of children who are vulnerable when their own families cannot take care of them, whether it is due to poverty, neglect, abuse, death, or other reasons.
This single 35-year-old balances being a foster mom with a full-time job as the personal assistant of the ANC mayor of the Modimolle-Mookgophong Municipality, Sechele Sebolai. “I came to Modimolle fourteen years ago as a radiographer at the FH Odendaal Hospital. I love this community although they suffer through such hardships and poverty.”She met the late DA Mayor
Marlene van Staden, which led to her appointment as her assistant – a year before Van Staden’s diagnosis with breast cancer that ultimately cost her life. “It was a tumultuous time with much heartbreak. I continued to work with the new mayor and though things are different, the object remains the same: to serve the community continues and focus on teamwork,” she said.
Not without faith
Botha’s faith runs like a golden thread through her story. She believes without it this chapter would not have been possible. She has dreamt of improving the lives of children since her early twenties. In 2018 a social worker told her about two sisters, 15 and 8 years old, who were split after being taken into care. One was in Abraham Kriel Children’s Home and the other in Mantadi
Child and Youth Centre in Mookgophong. With a supportive family of her own, she believed that siblings should be kept together.
“During the process, we realised that the sisters had a seven-year-old brother too, who was in House Tekna in Bela-Bela and then placed in foster care.”
She got another request from a matric girl who desperately needed a home for a few months. Her house was filling up. She was then asked to foster a 16-month-old boy, whose development was at the level of a six-month-old baby. “In the same month a worried social worker phoned me again with an emergency – an hour later I had another baby in my home,” she laughed.
Botha, whose calm disposition is an asset as a foster parent, suddenly parented a house with teenagers and two toddlers… who weren’t yet sleeping through the night.
While she gives some insight on life as a foster parent, life ebbs and flows about her: a toddler scribbling on a piece of paper, a teenager getting ready to attend a church youth group, a little boy asking to look at the pictures on her cell phone, kids giggling on the trampoline outside, school books strewn across the kitchen table.
Thousands in need
According to statistics, there are approximately 400 000 children in South Africa’s foster care system. A child is placed in foster care for up to two years after a court order is obtained. A safety
placement will be for up to three months. Foster parents receive a basic grant from the government to assist in caring for the children.
“Not everyone can foster children. Those who wish to help can support foster parents by offering time or resources,” she said. She says her support team has been invaluable.
She encourages those interested in fostering, to reach out to the Department of Social Services or contact her on 083 225 2858.
The doors at A Hope Filled Home are wide open. It is a house where many languages are spoken. Afrikaans, English, Sepedi, baby gibberish. Most of all, the language of love and care.
