Breaking the cycle of trauma is critical for the wellbeing of family and children, and has a relevance to social justice, because trauma diminishes life opportunities across generations and hinders social mobility.
Ysterplaat Primary school is an unassuming institution in Brooklyn, Cape Town, an area that, while not affluent, doesn’t on the surface seem beset with violence and drug problems. But still waters run deep, and teachers at the school report that while classes start at 7.30am, for many years, they spent the first three or so hours of the day managing the personal challenges the students came in with, and trying to contact social services for support.
“Some of the situations were completely out of control,” says principal Nataly Horn. “We had to deal with issues of drugs, abandonment, violence and even – and this particularly hard to deal with – rape. We were lucky if we started teaching at 10, we were so busy calling social workers and the police.”
So what changed? The school experienced a paradigm shift with the introduction of a project called Community Keepers, which involved the placement of a social worker at the school to take care of the children’s social and emotional wellbeing, and to deal directly with any specific problems as they arose, through an established support network of social services in the area.
We partner with 89 primary and high schools across the country, represented in 4 provinces – always eager to collaborate, share and ensure collective impact. Our motivation is the best interests of children and youth from low income communities, and we eagerly support their educators and parents / guardians through a whole school approach.
Teams are built around the Care Facilitator, who is a young person from the local community that we train in Mental Health First Aid, paired with a Care Practitioner (a Social Worker or Registered Counsellor) who focuses on therapeutic counselling case load. This concept of task shifting means that we can reach more people and secure funding support for those who have the least access to services.
We were motivated to start this work when, in 2007, during a research project our founders discovered that there was only one state social worker for 32 000 learners.
We read that by 2021 there was 1:23 000.
Our impact has been removing these barriers to access by being on premises and our availability is 1:990 in partner schools. When we add our mental health first aiders, this ratio of support drops to 1:440.
The objective of this work is a journey to wellbeing where learners as well as educators, parents and our team realise their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully and contribute to their community.