Community Homes

South Africa today can be a sad place for children. With HIV/AIDS cutting huge swathes through many families, more and more children are either affected themselves, or lose their parents to the disease.  This leaves us with an escalating crisis:  currently 28 500 children are abandoned every year.  Many of these children end up in institutions.

At Home from Home we believe that children thrive and grow in as close to a family environment as possible - and preferably within their own communities.  We aim to provide supported and supervised foster care for orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children in small family homes in their own communities.  Our homes are either purpose-built or are existing houses.  While our first prize is to have children re-united with their own families, or adopted, we also aim to enable institutionalised children to return to their communities by placing them in one of our houses.

Our vision

Our aims are to:

• Have no more than six children in each home, all cared for by a House Mother with a part-time assistant
• Provide fill supervision and back-up for each House Mother and encourage support from the local community
• Monitor each home to ensure that the children are well cared for and that all their needs are being addressed

• Ensure that siblings remain together wherever possible and that children continue in full-time education

• Offer support to each House Mother by means of initial and ongoing training support groups and counselling

• Ensure that each group of children and their House Mother is supported by a small group of committed volunteers

• Actively seek long-term care for children by identifying family members, or possible adoptive parents, and where possible integrate children back into their own families

Lizo Nobanda Day Care Centre

Home from Home took over the running of the Lizo Nobanda Day Care Centre in November 2006 and provides high quality day care for children under the age of six.