WHAT WE DO

Parenting 4 Life (P4L)

Problem Statement

Target Group

Protective Behaviours (PB)

Problem Statement

The protection of children has to be prioritised in the execution of the promotion of children’s rights. Young children are at high risk of abuse and neglect, including physical and mental abuse, often from within their own families.

Research has shown that children who participate in PB programmes at school and whose parents participate in information sessions and continue to teach the concepts at home are most likely to give consistently correct answers to questions about keeping safe (Briggs 1991).  

Target Group  

The programme is delivered by a multi-disciplinary team of professionals including social workers, psychologists, educators, teachers, and emotional intelligence specialists and is provided to adults, children, teenagers and organisations

Justice4Children (J4C)

Problem Statement

Children’s rights are often misinterpreted and therefore not conformed to in families, schools, organisations and churches.

Rights remain unrealised for many of the most vulnerable children, locking them into negative cycles of poverty, poor development and inter-generational exclusion.  

Target Group  

It is aimed at all partners who work to create safer environments for children, allowing for the attitude towards Child Protection to be changed among key persons.

The World Needs a Father (TWNAF)

Problem Statement

The biggest problem in the world is fatherlessness! 

Research in 21 countries of the world has shown that dysfunctional family life is the biggest problem in our societies, with fatherlessness at the centre of this problem. 

Target Group  

Men of all ages and generations.

Temporary Safety Parents (TSP)

Problem Statement

The lives of many children in South Africa are precarious. The country’s substantial resources are not being used efficiently and effectively to realise that their rights are key to their survival, protection and critically their equal and optimal development. This leads to negative cycles of poverty, poor development and inter-generational exclusion.

Children experience high levels of violence, including physical and sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, safety risks and more.

Avoiding family breakdowns is GCF’s first priority. However, the reality in Ugu District is that there are children who will need urgent placement.

Enabling parents to take on the emergency care of children who require special care, as they have been displaced from, their families of origin prevent the child from entering institutional care, as from there they will either return to the biological family, family of origin or be given a new family via foster care.

“Children Belong in Secure Families”

Target Group

GCF seeks to create a database of assessed, screened and trained Temporary Safe Care Parents (TSP) who can be utilised by case managers in emergency care situations within the UGU district to ensure that children are placed in a secure family-based setting as an option of first choice wherever possible.

Churches, women’s groups, schools and clinics are areas that are targeted for recruitment of TSP.

Foster CareProgramme (FC)

Problem Statement

Long-term institutional care is shown to be harmful for children in many ways, which not only include that they may experience a lack of life skills and family relations, but also the lack of social and emotional skills, awareness of the rights and opportunities that children growing up in a family would normally have. 

In well-screened, trained and supported foster families, children would be given a chance to experience stable, caring and loving family environments leading to a better future for them. 

Target Group

Any person over the age of 18 years can apply to be a foster parent. 

The training aims, for example, to prepare them for a long-term commitment with lasting and good relationships with their foster children, to give them special skills and knowledge related to foster care and to understand their role, as well as that of other role players and professionals’ in the lives of foster children.  

How do I become a Foster Parent?

Give a Child a Family Africa (GCF) is actively seeking compassionate people who are willing to open their hearts and homes to children from challenging and traumatic backgrounds. If you are an adult with a stable life situation and a sincere desire to contribute to the well-being of children, this might be for you. Currently, we focus on foster care in the UGU District, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. If you reside elsewhere, we encourage you to reach out to your local social work office to explore foster parenting opportunities.

At GCF, we firmly believe that every child deserves to grow up in a healthy family environment. When the biological family is unsuitable for now, our approved foster parents step in to provide nurturing care. Most of the foster children we work with have experienced a period in a Child and Youth Care Centre (children’s home) or in one of the organisation’s Temporary Safe Care families.

Becoming a foster parent is a significant commitment that not only transforms the life of a child from another family but also impacts yours and your family members. You will be responsible for the child’s care and development, often for a minimum period of 2 years or longer, under the supervision of a social worker.

The process of becoming a foster parent with GCF:

How do I become a Temporary Safety Parent?

The process of becoming a temporary safety parent with GCF:

1. Interviews: Our temporary safe care team conducts thorough interviews with everyone in your household to understand your family dynamics and ensure that a potential child’s needs will be met.

2. Home visits: We assess your living environment through home visits to ensure it is safe and suitable for a child.

6. Documentation: Various documents are required to ensure the child’s safety, including Name Clearance from your local police station and an outcome of a Form 30 application establishing if your name is on the National Child Protection Register. The mentioned documents are for all members of your household above the age of 18.

3. Approval and database: Once you successfully complete all necessary steps, your family will be considered for inclusion in GCF’s Temporary Safe Care Database.

4. Matching: When a child’s social worker contacts GCF, we carefully consider your family’s profile to find the best match for the specific child. The placement is formalised by a court order.

5. Form 39: The child’s social worker assists you in receiving approval from the Department of Social Development for providing temporary safe care, ensuring the child can legally stay with you.

6. Placement: On short notice, a child may be placed with you based on a court order.

For more information, contact us at fostercare@gcf.org.za or phone 039 317 2761.

South African National Child Rights Coalition (SANCRC)

Problem Statement

Civil society has worked in silos on specific issues and rights – such as education, health, protection, and for specific vulnerable groups, such as children with disabilities.

There is enormous pressure on organisations to fill the large service delivery gaps left in the wake of the weak developmental child care and protection system. This means that organisations must direct most of their resources to service delivery, leaving little available for transformational advocacy.

Target Group  

The members of the coalition are united in their shared vision of a South Africa where the rights of all children are realised and where no child bears the burden of poverty and inequality.

GCF alongside other members:

• Include a broad base of organisations and individual advocates, activists, researchers and development practitioners.
• Are located across the country in all nine provinces, in rural, urban and peri-urban areas.
• Include NGOs, faith-based organisations, community-based organisations, development institutes, policy think tanks, research institutes, as well as individuals who have committed to advancing the rights of children.
• Include children and child-led organisations.

The goal/target is to ensure compliance with child and human rights treaty obligations.

Ensure that children’s rights are recognised as a national, rights-based development imperative.

Ensure coordinated, state-wide action and accountability for realising the rights of every child, especially the most vulnerable and marginalised, to survive, develop to their full potential, be protected and participate in all decisions that affect them.

Organisational Safeguarding

Problem Statement

The risks to children from aid and development activities were brought into sharp focus by some notable scandals involving abuse and exploitation by staff and associates of agencies established to care for and protect children.

Target Group  

More and more, there has been an increased focus placed on organisations themselves, not only in so far as the misconduct of staff is concerned, but also child safeguarding has been the focus on the potentially negative impact of organisational activities, programmes, systems and processes that may cause harm to children.

Help Desk

Problem Statement

GCF has seen an increase in the number of people requiring help to cope. The lack of security, joblessness and current state of financial affairs, Covid-19, looting and floods has become a significant contributing factor in families' increased distressed situations.

Due to the Covid pandemic, vulnerable families have suffered job losses and an increase in mental health issues.

Target Group

The Help Desk services residents of the the Ugu District. It is provided by social workers to the most vulnerable children, youth, and families.

Civil Society Organisational (CSO) Capacity

Problem Statement

The 2017 Civil Society Organisation (CSO) study in Africa by USAID indicates that CSOs in approximately 50% of the countries on the continent are in need of organisational capacity building of one sort or another. Most have challenges around governance and financial management, with even those that have funding struggling with low project management skills at staff level, which translates to the ineffective use of resources.

Target Group  

GCF wants to assist other like-minded organisations to realise their development goals and achieve measurable and sustainable results through enhancing their capacity GCF is active in this area of assistance to organisations to help themselves empower them with what they already know but need strengthening .  

Deinstitutionalisation (DI)

Problem Statement

Research evidence demonstrates harmful effects of institutionalisation on children’s development, health, mental health and social skills.

In the African context, progress has been slow, partly because of a lack of resources, but also because most institutional care is provided privately, with little government oversight. As a result, the system is very decentralised and there are many different actors who need to be sensitised to the damage of institutional care.

Many families struggle in providing food, housing, medicine and access to education for their children. The high levels of domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse that are frequently associated with poverty can also be a threat to a child’s safety and lead to children running away, often to live on the streets. Children’s Homes (orphanages as understood by many) provide a perception of safety and access to basic services for children. Consequently, they are often used as an easy and one-size-fits-all solution to much deeper societal problems.

Target Group

The aim is for a greater number of children at risk and in need of alternative care in the Ugu District to be identified and placed with families rather than in child and youth care centres or other centre-based alternative care facilities.

The process would be to implement community based temporary safe care placements instead of residential temporary safe care placements. This model can be replicated.

Integrated Child Safeguarding Services (ICSS)

Problem Statement

There is currently overwhelming, compelling evidence that children’s development requires the realisation of their collective rights and that the primary responsibility to provide these rights (framed as nurturing care) falls on parents and families who, in turn, require the support of a range of service providers (both community- and government-based)

What must be noted is that while the current narrative tends to revolve around the non-existence of services in our communities, we believe (and this is supported by our own data gathered in the Ugu District of
KwaZulu Natal) that it is the inability to access these services, rather than their lack of existence, that forms the largest barrier faced by caregivers and families. This inability to access services must also take into account the fact that some of the caregivers do not yet know that the services exist or that they should access these services for the benefit of their children and thus the "Lack of Service Delivery" narrative is perpetuated.

Target Group  

A point of concern has been the exclusion of moral duty bearers (faith-based and traditional leadership structures) from this discourse. Both of these structures are extremely relevant in informing change or creating awareness that is needed on the ground through their reach and the power that they have to create an impact. We believe that together with the statutory duty bearers, engaging with the moral duty bearers presents us with the best chance of making real and sustainable change in the communities that we serve and that this change is ultimately what creates the foundation for nurturing care for children.

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Problem Statement

Sexual exploitation and sexual abuse violate universally recognised international legal norms and standards.

To protect the most vulnerable populations, especially women and children, specific standards that reiterate existing general obligations are promulgated. The failure of entities or individuals to take preventive measures against sexual exploitation or sexual abuse, to investigate allegations thereof, or to take corrective action when sexual exploitation or sexual abuse has occurred, shall constitute grounds for termination of any cooperative arrangement with the Unted Nations (UN). This is to be translated and developed for the African Union (AU)

Target Group  

This protocol outlines the requirements of the UN, when working with implementing partners, to ensure adequate safeguards and appropriate action related to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA).

GCF Transformational Care

Problem Statement

GCF believes that the organisation’s CYCC has been an oasis for children in their time of need, but we have also realised that they stay far too long. Despite the quality of care that is provided, the organisation has also seen that this is not the ideal for children who have to be removed from their parents, as we observed the clearly negative effect that institutionalisation had on them.

Worldwide, studies have shown that up to 80% of children in the care of orphanages/children’s homes have at least one living parent. Poverty and lack of access to services in the community are common reasons for admission.

Over 80 years of evidence has shown that institutional care is damaging, unnecessary and a poor investment for children, communities and the African continent.

Target Group  

GCF has launched a pilot project to drive the agenda locally for South Africa as family-based care is proven to save governments money and is to the benefit of children.  Even so, this matter appears  to fall on deaf ears, as these models are identified to be from “other countries.” It is important to prove this process is also more cost effective in South Africa.  

Programme Analysis

Problem Statement

As part of GCF’s organisational strategic planning, it is evident that future research is to be conducted into the GCF philosophy, methodology, programmes, material and services rendered in South Africa and other African countries.

Target Group  

This is targeted at all of the programmes that GCF has run and continues to run and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each of them to guide how GCF will position itself in the future.

The Effective Assessment of Foster Parents (4 days)

Preparing Prospective Foster Parents – Train the Trainer (5 days)