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The organization was established in September 1917 and from the earliest days concerned itself with issues such as poverty, child neglect, abandonment and poor parenting skills. We have always advocated for the rights of children and families and always been prepared to rise to the occasion to develop and initiate new and progressive programmes to serve the needs of the underprivileged community and those children needing special services.
During the 1980’s, the phenomenon of Child Abuse became more and more prevalent. With assistance, the Child Abuse Treatment Unit was launched. During the early nineties, we introduced a job skills training programme which assisted families, especially where the breadwinner, was unemployed. During 1997, a full scale development programme with family preservation as the focus, was developed. The main thrust of this Family Preservation Programme was to empower families and communities to prevent the removal of children and to reintroduce children into their communities of origin.
This Family Preservation programme proved to be so effective that within a period of 4 years, it has been replicated in Barcelona, Timothy Valley, Greater Gelvandale, Zwide, Veeplaas, Soweto, Salt Lake and Jacsonville.
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