Parenting Problems

Last Sunday Amanda and I invited some of the Mamas who live here to our house for Afternoon Tea. While we do this regularly with the Refilwe mothers, this particular time we were joined by sisters Mama Miriam and Mama Zola who were visiting Refilwe from Cape Town for the weekend. In the above photo, our visitors were the two women on the right. As we sat and chatted, Mama Miriam shared with us some of her experiences as a foster mother of many children. Her stories reminded me of a network meeting myself and a couple of others here went to a few weeks ago to meet with other organizations and agencies that are working with children throughout South Africa. There we heard many stories of carers who are just overwhelmed with either the number of children they care for, the issues and problems the children have and/or the lack of support they receive in order to properly care for their children.

Many children in South Africa are born into a myriad of social problems. HIV/AIDS, alcohol abuse, poverty, rape, violence and crime are prevalent in many areas of South Africa. These issues often directly impact on children: their parents die of AIDS, the child contracts HIV themself, they experience family violence (maybe or maybe not due to alcohol), their bodies show signs of malnutrition and lack of healthcare, one in three of them are raped. The facts go on and on...

With so many orphaned, vulnerable and abused children, there is a great need for their proper care and protection. Unfortunately the system can be quite overwhelmed with these children; with sketchy infrastructure, limited numbers of social workers and quality foster carers, inadequate training and support for carers many children fall through the cracks or receive only basic care. Mama Miriam herself is caring for 27 children in a small house; an enormous task that involves many daily challenges and difficulties just to make sure everyone is fed, clothed and healthy. Parent-child relationships are not able to be maintained on an individual basis because the extra time and energy required just doesn’t exist. There is such an incredible need for children to be holistically taken care of here- a need that Refilwe has been involved with meeting for the past 12 years.

The question arises, then, of what sort of action should be taken to meet the needs. Is it more important to meet the physical needs of many at the expense of true parental relationships, or is there more value in focusing on the lives of a few? Refilwe has chosen to implement an innovative program called God Parents that models a foster care program by creating a family focused environment while maintaining a sense of African culture within a village sort of mentality.

The God Parents program incorporates the idea that children need a stable family that meets not only their physical and material needs, but also their emotional and spiritual needs. While the housing at Refilwe could technically house 140 children in group home environments, there are currently only 35 foster children living in nine family groups. These nine foster families also have a total of 10 biological children living with them as well, making a total of 45 children living on the property. The kids are aged from 9 months to 19 years old; as I have previously mentioned, 16 of them attend the Hands of Hope School here. The rest attend primary school, go to a daycare or stay at home with their mamas.

The program has operated in its current form for about 3 years and has seen some very positive growth and change in the lives of the children here. New children arrive from time to time, but none are expected to leave just because they ‘age out’ of the foster care system. There are naturally many issues that are faced on a daily basis when it comes to dealing with the behaviours of abused children and establishing parent-child relationships- Refilwe is still working on creating a built-in support system for the God Parents to ensure the sustainability of the family groups. Economically, the program also faces issues. While most of the children are in Foster Care and should be eligible for government grants to support their care, many of the children do not have birth certificates (due to various reasons on the part of their biological parents) which means they are not yet ‘official’ in the eyes of the government. Bureaucracy means it could be years before a birth certificate is issued, after which time the child may well be over 18 and no longer eligible for any form of financial support. 

The God Parents program is central to much of Refilwe's work and ministry. We have daily opportunities to interact with the children, as well as encourage and support the foster parents. This has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of our time here so far; we expect it to continue as we try to be intentional about growing relationships and supporting those who have dedicated their lives to parenting within a system filled with problems.