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The Caring Network Community Based Services Annual Report of CN 04/07 to 03/08
The Caring Network Community Based Services Annual Report of CN 04/07 to 03/08 | Annual Report of CN 04/07 to 03/08 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Wednesday, 01 October 2008 | |
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Message from the Chairperson. What is Caring Network? It is an organisation made up of woman
with a genuine spirit of helping, healing and caring influenced by Christian
values. It cares for those in need, through the HBC services and other initiatives,
but CN also cares for its fellow Caring Networkers, by encouraging the furthering
of the education and skills. CN changes of lives of those who belong to the
organisation and who they touch. The past year has been a time of consolidation. The garden is growing, the Khayelitsha Centre is well managed by Nozipho and her team. Projects have stabilised. EPWP HBC contracts with DoH are getting better. Sr Konzapi has come back and settled in Wallacedene, and Isabel Coettee at Bishop Lavis. Funding has been secured, a big thanks to Rosemary for sourcing it and to Mrs Parker to looking after it. In the latter part of last year Rose shifted positions to a 2 days a week as financial manager/gardener whilst Nozipho has taken on most of CN operational management responsibilities. After many years of loyal service Sis Thandi and Lorraine Holloway have retired. CN is seen in the HBC sector as one of the best practice organisations. Over the years you have perfected the art of caring, keep up the good work. Thank you . Cheryl Dean Management report on past year –Community Based Services and Training Our location at the Caring Network Trust Centre in the heart of the community in Khayelitsha has allowed us to continue to provide good quality home care and training to unemployed people. We are well established on our beautiful property, even though it costs us a lot to keep up the security at nights and weekends, and we are known in the areas we serve both here and at the other three projects. These decentralised offices keep in touch with head office by means of email, Skype, telephone, fax and all management staff meet formally at the end of each month. The management structure remains in place, with Rose moving into a part-time position responsible for fund raising and financial management. Nozipho heads the organization as operational manager and head of training. We continue to retain suitably qualified professional personnel, active and supportive Board members with necessary skills (especially financial); skilled and well-supervised community carers, all on fixed-term contracts, with clearly defined job descriptions governed by a code of conduct based on an HR management framework. CN is fully conversant and compliant with the Primary Health Care Plan 2010 of WCPG DOH. The community based services have systems in place at the three projects in Metro and one in Westcoast /Winelands for collecting, analyzing and collating data. Statistics for approximately 750 patients and 6000 house visits per month are provided in monthly and quarterly reports to DOH. Financial management is a principal strength. All payments are made electronically into staff accounts and all expenditure follows laid down financial policies and procedures. Income and expenditure is subject to Board scrutiny each month. A complete set of records is kept in financial management systems and asset registers for equipment purchased with EU-DOH funds are held at each project. The partnership with DOH is now well established and has come a long way since the early days of 2001 with volunteers on a stipend of R100 per month! Service delivery is now clearly mapped in all areas and carers provide integrated home based care, IMCI and treatment support services in four health sub-districts. The partnership contracts for financial year 2007-08 provided for 110 half-day care workers, four nursing supervisor posts and a program manager. Equipment is obtained from TAs at local CHC’s on a regular basis and all carers have uniforms (summer and winter), name badges and equipment bags. The organization raises funds to provide psycho-social support for our carers by offering all a sponsored weekend away during the reporting period. There are established channels of communication between all levels of the organization and regular interaction with other local stakeholders. Quality assurance is provided by motivated, mature nursing professionals under the management of the highly regarded Program Manager, ensuring that quality management standards are met through oral and written reports, on-site monitoring of projects and statistical evidence. The HW SETA accredited training in HBC for six weeks at the Khayelitsha Centre had 80 learners in the reporting period. Learners receive theoretical tuition in their home language and English and practical training at local DOH facilities. Mrs Thandi Mbo retired in September 2007 as the trainer, after 10 years with the organization and Nozipho Matyeni is presently training learners. Many are being taken up into our organization as relief carers and then go on to enter the EPWP learnership program. There is now a clear career pathing in health services with 30 employees involved in EPWP Ancillary Health Care certification at two levels. An increasing number of learners are enrolling in studies for the nursing profession. Currently CN is supporting three ex-employees on nursing bursaries that cover 50% of tuition fees and a monthly transport allowance. We know of 8 others who have successfully entered the nursing profession over the past 7 years. The Caring Network stands out for having virtually no staff turn-over. Loyalty to the organization and commitment to serving the local community remain high. Our sincere thanks to all staff members and carers who continue to maintain the high professional standards that have allowed us to remain the leading HBC service deliverer in the Cape Province. Nozipho Matyeni and Rose Smuts Reflecting on another financial year-end of The Caring Network. The finances continued to operate unchanged as the previous year. Strict controls remain in place, securing the interests of The Caring Network and all associated. The success can be attributed to effective financial management from Mrs R Smuts and the commitment of the staff - procedures stipulated in the policy & procedure manual are adhered to. Increased expenditure for security and safety and increased insurance premiums remain a challenge. Khairunnisa Parker Garden Project Year 2007 The last two days of the training in home based care by sisThandi would take learners to the garden to teach them about how to plant vegetables and show them different herbs what they are used for, to do remedies. They also help us to take the weeds out of the garden. During this year 2007 we have build up a Dam that we call Isiguqo surrounded by trees and flowers, inside the Dam we have small fishes that swims around the Dam. We prepped vegetable plots and now the garden is growing so well. We were also visited by three members of Kirstenboch Gardens Outreach to the community, to view our garden and also give advice on 29 May 2007.There were Luyanda Majuleni, Benjamin Festus, Phakamani Xaba, and Liles Mbambezi who we spoke with. They are specialists in horticulture, indigenous useful and medicinal plants. Together with them we have had an idea to hold training workshop that would run by them here on our garden creating relationship with other organisation that are also gardening in Khayelitsha and to make a new Herb garden at the back of the training room. The workshop started on 9, 10, 11 October and it was a successful work shop and the 10 participants were given certificate afterwards. They donated the plants from the garden show at Lourensford and Nutech built the four big beds, bringing in topsoil, gravel for paths, and small sticks to outline the beds. During winter time we have had problem of damming water in the yard. We dig up a trench from the back of the training room till the Nursery so the water must not lie in a flood dam on the ground. We discuss a plan with Rose how to get rid of this damming water in the yard. We come out with a plan that Neil’s people (from Nutech housing, the builders who always help us) must come up with a plan how to drain water out the garden yard .They come back with a plan to put pipes inside the trench that we have dug so that the water will be drained out of the garden yard into the green belt and stream next to our property. After 4 days the work was done and whole garden yard was dry. In our Nursery we have had a problem of not having shelves, Nutech builders build them for us and now we can lay our trays on top of the shelves, and we had left-over stones that we used for our nursery floor. Year 2008 Coming back after long holidays the garden needed a lot of attention and support. The whole garden was very dry we have to remove the dead plants and weeds. We had to start from the scratch to rebuild the plots, making a new plan for the garden for 2008.We had been visited by a funder, Shauna Westcott, and Gisela Stoloff, a volunteer gardener from Garden Development; and also by Sophie who has her own vegetable garden at Bulumko High School nearby. We have discussed the problems we sometimes come across within the garden. Sophie helped us a lot to rebuild our vegetable garden, we prepared the soil, planting seeds of cabbage, spinach, onion, squash, butternut and beans. Our seedlings geminated and then we planted them, 4 plots. Gisela come with Peter to look at irrigation developments but we have not changed from hand watering. She brought us Marigolds and tomatoes which we also planted - 6 plots and we designed a new plot for kitchen herbs. Gisela brought us five buckets of donated seaweed gel from Kelpak (Dave Smith,) and two liquid fertilizers that we used at the garden and the vegetables grew very well. She also brought us Agapanthus africanus (Isicakathi) to plant. Our Kirstenboch indigenous useful, traditional herbs garden is growing so well since we have planted it last year. This year we have labelled the Herbs with their names so that it can be easy to know them by names, even for visitors. We also have two visitors from City Council who were interested at our garden. They invited us to their office and then we discussed about our garden’s needs- we still have to come out at something with them. We also received a donation of more plants from Bloemendal Nursery in March and we plant them with Gisela’s gardeners. Hugo (NuTech) come one morning from town to bring big stones to put around the pond and mulch that Rose has collected for the garden for free at Claremont Arderne Gardens.We sell the veggies to our staff and community we receive R450 and we deposited it to the bank and we kept the records. This winter we don’t have floods in the heavy rain at the garden in June-July compared to last year’s winter because we have those underground pipes that drain water out of the garden yard, and our plants and trees are safe this winter they won’t drown again. We have received compost for the plants and we used it. Thembelani Mtyaphi Website Notice It was decided by the Board to produce a hardcopy Annual Report bi-annually. Instead we are moving in this reporting year to on-line reporting for funders and others. A newly revised website is close to ready which will carry annual reports, annual financials and on-going, updated reports from the organization. So look out forwww: caringnetwork.org.za for lots of photos and all relevant documents generated over the past 5 years. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 October 2008 ) |
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Luvuyo Crescent, Eyethu, Town 2
Khayelitsha 7784
PO Box 94, Nonkqubela
Khayelitsha 7793
Tel: 021 361 4343 Fax: 361 4344
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