VIDEO: Tutors needed for Malvern children’s home Grade 12 learners

CHILDREN in the care of Malvern Child and Youth Care Centre (MYCC), who are not returning to school, need help to ensure they are not left behind in their studies, especially in subjects like physics and maths.

According to the MCYCC director, Andile Ncamana, there are too many children in each cottage at the children’s home in Malvern making it impossible for them to safely return to classrooms.

What’s more some of the children at MCYCC also have weakened immune systems.

This resulted in the decision not to send them to school when some grades returned to school in June.

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The home caters for children who are placed in its care by the Department of Social Development and the Children’s Court.

“We have children who take chronic medication and if they were to be exposed to Covid-19 it would be fatal,” said Ncamana.

“Plus the issue of the children staying in cottages with high numbers of 12 or 13 per cottage makes social distancing very difficult.”

Ncamana said in the cottages, up to three children share a bedroom, and the residents in each cottage share bathrooms and a kitchen.

“It would be a disaster if one child would get infected,” said the director who added that there had been help offered to them from both the departments of social development and education.

“Social Development has offered to come and sanitise our premises once a week and the Department of Education helped us with allowing us to fetch homework from schools on a daily basis for our children not to be left behind,” said Ncamana.

However Ncamana said there is a great need for the learners at the home to have extra lessons and tutoring, especially for the subjects that the staff at MCYCC are not proficient at themselves.

“We need people who can donate their time and help tutor the children especially in Maths and Physics,” said Ncamana. “We would really appreciate the help of the community in this regard.”

Some schools have set up digital platforms to help ensure learners stay up to date, however, Ncamana said the facilities at MCYCC are limited.

“We do have some computers, but they are not enough,” said the director.

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“Sometimes the children have to use our computers in the office for help, so we would appreciate assistance in that regard as well even if it’s second-hand working computers.”

Aside from the teaching skills needed, the home realises that even outside help is going to be difficult to manage.

“We will be have to limit the number of children to be attended to per session,” he explained and the children who do receive help will also need to follow the same guidelines that those attending school are expected to follow.

“The children will need to all wear face masks as well and sanitise regularly,” he said.

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At the time of going to press, the contents of this feature mirrored South Africa’s lockdown regulations.

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