POLOKWANE – It is for this reason that the Department of Social Development is urging residents to visit children at different centers in the city and perhaps even invite a few to spend the holidays at home with them.
Community members are also encouraged to uphold one of the fundamental rights underpinning child care and protection services which is the right to family life by becoming holiday parents.
“Interested families and individuals are given an opportunity to host children over weekends and school holidays, or even for few hours a day. It means a lot to a child who does not have contact with their families,” Departmental Spokesperson Adelé Van der Linde said.
Visit the following centres to find out how you can get involved:
1. Polokwane Welfare Complex (Plot 303 Steerkloop, Polokwane) caters for boys and girls u/18.
2. Ngwana House (30 Springbok Street Fauna Park, Polokwane) houses babies up to the age of two, both boys and girls.
3. Samaritan Centre (60 Gazelle Street Fauna Park Polokwane) caters for boys and girls u/18.
These centres admit children who are in need of care and protection by social workers as a safety intervention, to ensure their immediate safety. Without safety placement, the children are likely to be in danger of immediate or serious harm.
Priority is given to local children in order to enhance contact between the child and significant figures in the child’s life.
Other than the residential programmes available, the following programmes are offered to the children to enhance their developmental milestone (need):
• Therapeutic
• Developmental
• Individual developmental plans
• Permanency plan
• Assessment
• After care
• Family reunification and integration
• Provision of adequate health
• Access to schooling, education and early childhood development.
Residents welcome to donate food, clothing and/ or funds.
