Eastern Cape

 

Cotlands Eastern Cape

 

Cotlands – Eastern Cape:
Contact number: (043) 745 0257
Fax number: (043) 745 0257
Postal address: No. 6 Allison st. Reeston, East London. Physical address: No. 6 Allison st. Reeston, East London.
E-mail address: ecape@cotlands.org

 

 

 

Projects

 

Proposals

 

 

 

Cotlands offers a variety of residential and community-based programmes to vulnerable children. These programmes include paediatric hospices, places of safety, home-based care projects, nutrition and early childhood development centres. Because all these projects offer holistic care to our children, each project has several components, which include health care, psychosocial intervention, and education.

 

As each of these components were added to our spectrum of programmes, we began to realise that for these interventions to be sustainable, training and support also had to be offered to the primary caregivers. Cotlands’ ultimate goal is to equip families to care for their children at home and to achieve this we have to ensure that these families have the right skills and sufficient resources. We have therefore continued to add more components to the services on offer elements like support groups, income-generating projects, food gardens, counselling, material aid, accessing of social grants and orphan care.

 

Statement of Need
The Eastern Cape is one of the most poverty stricken provinces in South Africa. Widespread unemployment and poverty characterise many of the communities in this province and malnutrition in young children is widespread. During the needs assessment phase of this project, Cotlands consulted with various community and local government agencies to establish what was considered to be high priority needs in the Buffalo City municipal area, home to 880 000 people, within the Amatole District of the province.

 

More than 70% of Buffalo City's population earns less than the household subsistence level and the high level of unemployment with resultant poverty was consistently cited as the major problem in most communities, resulting in even the most basic of human needs not being met. Many people lack adequate shelter, appropriate clothing and nutritious food

 

It is estimated that of the 1 118 000 children living in the Eastern Cape, 630 000 frequently experience hunger as a result of living in households with no food security. The Eastern Cape Provincial Government has therefore prioritised malnutrition and food security amongst its main concerns.

 

Background
Cotlands’ nutrition project addresses the needs of malnourished young children living in the Buffalo district of the Eastern Cape. This project evolved out of a needs analysis undertaken in this area to look at establishing a paediatric AIDS hospice back in 2003. We discovered that the extent of poverty in this area meant that many of the children’s basic needs were not being met and it would have been inappropriate to open up a hospice to care for 15 to 20 terminally ill children, when the same resources could be used to help so many more. As a result of this we decided to focus on nutrition – the most critical basic need of young children.

 

Project Goal
To provide quality care and support to at-risk children, particularly with regards their nutrition, as well as their families, through a holistic trans-disciplinary team approach. Services provided include psychosocial intervention, health care, education and sustainability.

 

Project Description
Children who are nutritionally deprived are vulnerable to cognitive and other developmental impairments that include lower intelligence, poor educational outcomes, stunted growth, wasting, and a diminished capacity for work in adulthood. Against this background, the project initially focused on identifying malnourished children and implementing a re-nourishment programme to restore their health and physical development.

 

However, the Cotlands team soon realised that this alone was not enough and began developing the project to become more comprehensive. The first “add on” element was food gardens to help families to become self sufficient. Recently, other income generating projects have been added, namely fabric painting and beadwork.

 

The team also realised that malnourishment was just a symptom of broader socio-economic problems in the communities in which it was rendering services, and responded by establishing support groups. The families receive training in basic life skills, which range from budgeting and how to use their limited resources more effectively, to preparing nutritious meals. The project team also looked at how to address the children’s developmental needs and subsequently introduced ongoing training for caregivers and making resources available to them to implement their learning.

 

One of the main aims of the project is to equip families with the skills they require to care more effectively for their children. Skills acquired through the programme, such as stimulation programmes, food gardens etc, are initiated by families either at home or as a collective effort within their community. Once on a firm footing, these families are discharged from the programme.

 

Staffing
The project employs a professional nurse, an auxiliary nurse, ten field workers and an office assistant. This Cotlands team has demonstrated such enthusiasm for their project and almost all of them offer additional services to the children and the communities over and above their day to day work.

 

When the need for training caregivers was identified, one of the field workers offered to take this on and the same initiative was shown for the support groups. The worker who has taken over responsibility for establishing food gardens is so enthusiastic that he has enrolled for an Agricultural Degree at university. Many of these activities take place outside of normal working hours, but this team of dedicated workers never complains. The project is headed up by a professional nurse, whose passion for improving the lives of children and uplifting communities has earned her recognition with many government departments.

 

Cotlands’ mission — to provide exceptional models of care to children and their families by empowering them to improve their quality of life through specialised interventions and sustainability projects – certainly comes to life through this project.

 


For more information, contact Busi Nkosi – Outreach Manager – Cotlands
011 683-7200 or busi@cotlands.org