Partnering with 59 schools across Cape Town and the Cape Winelands, we take a whole-school approach using our C.A.R.E.S. model:

We start with Stakeholder engagement in listening to the schools unique and changing needs.  With school buy-in we collectively shape the Ecosystem through destigmatisation of help-seeking and awareness campaigns.  Our Anchoring life-skill workshops are themed to address specific needs of a grade, class or smaller group. The most intense form of support is professional Counselling and crisis intervention.  R services see us walking a journey with learners or families to ensure that they are linked to specialist services through referrals and channelling of resources.

At the heart of our scaling strategy and sustainability plan, is an innovative task-sharing philosophy, a public mental health strategy to address South Africa’s critical shortage of clinical professionals. We train and recruit young adults from the local community and provide them with rigorous, competency-based training. These individuals graduate as Care Facilitators, as frontline mental health first aiders inside the school grounds. They manage intake, monitoring and evaluation, host group workshops, and flag critical behavioural shifts for clinical review. This frees up the counsellors (Care Practitioners) focus on case work. By combining structural framework clarity with an inclusive workforce model, we are able to expand our service reach, carefully manage cost, and build a sustainable layer of lifelong wellbeing within communities.

At a primary school in Brooklyn, Cape Town, teachers reported 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 the principal. “We had to deal with issues of drugs, abandonment, violence and sometimes rape. We were lucky if we started teaching by 10, we were so busy calling social workers and the police.”

So what changed? The school experienced a paradigm shift with the introduction of Community Keepers, freeing up educators to focus on teaching while we focus on psycho-social support so that learning and development can prosper.