Transitional children's home

Orphaned and vulnerable children are provided with the opportunity to experience a childhood within a nurturing and safe environment

Hearts of Hope is registered as a Child and Youth Care Centre (CYCC) by The Department of Social Development. The children that are referred by social workers to Hearts of Hope, are either abandoned, neglected or abused and removed from their families, or orphaned; and all are traumatised.

The children are placed in a home environment with a loving house mother where they are protected and cared for. The priority of Hearts of Hope is to be able to place the children in ‘forever families’, either adopted into new families or reunited with their extended biological family.

Since 2003, over 260 children have been re-united with biological family or adopted into their new ‘forever homes’.

OF THE CHILDREN FOUND FAMILIES IN ONE YEAR

0 %

Programme overview

In 2018, there were 2.7 million orphans in South Africa. This includes children without a living biological mother, father or both parents, and is equivalent to 14% of all children in South Africa. The majority (63%) of all orphans in South Africa are paternal orphans (with living mothers)
Ref: Demography of South Africa’s children,
Katharine Hall (Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town in South African Child Gauge 2019)

Compliance

Department of Social Development (DSD):
Hearts of Hope is registered at a Child and Youth Care Centre (CYCC) with the Department of Social Development. This is essential, as it authorises us to have children placed with us by the Children’s Courts. There are 2 monitoring inspections every 3 months – one on financial systems and one on social work systems. These inspections are undertaken by DSD Compliance Officials.

Health:
As a registered CYCC, we must comply with health regulations and food and cooking regulations. To get a health certificate from the Department of Social Development, there are several other compliance certificates needed, such as gas, fire, glazing, and structural engineering, Every quarter, there are surprise inspections by the Department of Health.

Auditing:
External auditors audit the organisation on an annual basis. Our accounting services are outsourced and they assess our organisational compliance on a monthly basis.

What we do

01

Care and protection

Hearts of Hope provides ‘family-style’ homes where orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) are placed in safe, protected, supportive homes, cared for by a house mother and provided with the necessary nutrition, education, therapeutic, psycho-social, and medical interventions.

02

Forever families: Each child is placed at Hearts of Hope, initially in a transitional capacity. The statutory social workers work to find the extended biological family. If there is no extended family willing to provide a home for the child, they focus on foster care or adoption to find new ‘forever homes’. Any child that remains at Hearts of Hope will be provided with the care, love, protection, education and skills that they need to thrive

03

Our children have been adopted all over the world – Denmark, Luxembourg, Austria, Netherlands, US, Belgium and South Africa.

Reasons for arrival

DONOR

Where in the world have our children been adopted to?

Denmark: 31

Luxembourg: 2

Austria: 3

USA: 9

Netherlands: 2

Belgium: 2

SA: 21

Anything is possible - Baby "B"

Baby ‘B” was only the second baby for Hearts of Hope to receive in 2008.

‘We have a hospice case – given up at hospital for adoption, very small will you take him?’. A ‘hospice case’ is a child with limited prospects of survival and in a dire state. Although we weren’t a ‘hospice’ home, hearing his circumstances, we couldn’t say no.

Monitoring and evaluation

Every child that arrives at Hearts of Hope is given a baseline assessment using the Wellbi monitoring and evaluation online tool. Age-appropriate questions are asked of the child, the carer and the programme facilitator within the 8 different domains that we are tracking. The child is also measured and weighed. All this information forms the baseline upon which further regular assessments are compared. If there are any discrepancies, these are flagged and the social worker follows up with the child and the housemother; and interventions are planned if necessary.