Family & Health Services

Our Family and Health Services Department was formed in July 2011 as a result of integrating our home based care project with care for orphans and vulnerable children. We realised that it makes more sense to care for the family as a unit with one community worker (who we call "Family Supporters")visiting and supporting the whole family and then calling in professionals for additional support when needed.

All our Family Supporters are trained in home based care & TB support; most in palliative care and some in child & youth care. Within a family, one may find some sick people; elderly people needing help to get a pension; children who are orphaned or abandoned by parents; no one working or growing food; poor family relationships. Thus the family supporters need to be a jack of all trades to identify problems, assist where they can and refer to others when they are out of their depth.

Also within this department, we have staff working on palliative care; both providing care to those referred by the hospital and also involved in maintaining the district palliative care forum and training other community groups in what is palliative care and how to provide it.

Thirdly we have staff working on our TB programme. They liaise with the hospital TB ward to find out which patients have not returned for treatment or for sputum checks. They also liaise with communities through community meetings educating them about how to identify people with TB, how to prevent its spread and how to support those on treatment.

Finally we have a support group coordinator who works with groups of adults and children living with HIV. When groups are new, she spends time teaching them about HIV and how to take care of themselves. As groups become more established, she encourages them to become self-governing with their own committee and constitution. The groups can then meet independently of the coordinator and many have started income generating projects such as food gardens and sewing. The people in the groups can then support each other with our ongoing intervention.