Spotlight on Heartlands Baby Sanctuary, a Child and Youth Care Centre for vulnerable children
Monica Buitendag is the CEO of Heartlands Baby Sanctuary. As part of our series on Social Impact Superheroes, we got to interview her about her journey to help children in need.
As section 28 of the South African Constitution declares: “Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, health care and social services, as well as the right to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation.” However, child maltreatment is very much present in South Africa. Defined by the World Health Organisation, child maltreatment refers to “all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.” According to a study in South Africa published by the Optimus Foundation in 2016, 12,2% of the respondents had experienced some sort of neglect during their childhood. That’s around 375 000 South African children. Regarding sexual abuse, the percentage goes up to 35,4% although the real numbers are probably higher, given that most victims do not talk about what they have or are going through.
Different kinds of facilities exist to help those children. Created in 2015, Heartlands Baby Sanctuary is a centre for children in need of care, protection and specialized medical care. It welcomes children from birth to six years old for a short period until they are placed back with their family or find a new loving home where they belong. In their five-year of existence, the facility has provided care for up to 272 children and, as its CEO proudly says: “Every child that comes through our doors is a success story. Sometimes, some children have been seriously abused. When they leave our institution, you almost can’t believe it is the same child. We uplift them. They develop into a little person.”
The creation of Heartlands was a real journey, as its CEO Monica Buitendag tells us. In 1996, she joined a well-known childcare organisation in Gauteng before relocating to the Western Cape. She opened an office for that organisation in Kuils River in 2000, where they focused on incorporating policies on HIV and AIDS. As requests for placement of children were streaming in, Monica realised that the need for a physical home in the Western Cape was huge. “I found this old building with nothing in it. At that time, it was just three other employees and me. It was dark, and the birds were making nests in the corners. We had no furniture besides four plastic chairs and a table that I borrowed from another organization.” With the help of her husband, who had started his own business in the building industry, they restored the place. Six weeks later, the freshly renovated facility admitted its first child. That’s how a sanctuary under the wing of this organisation was born in the Western Cape, from an old building and the contributions of a few dedicated staff members.
The creation of Heartlands
As the years went on, the focus of the childcare organisation changed from residential to community care. One of the main reasons was that the HIV/AIDS medicine given to ill children was working. Thanks to the antiretrovirals, “children had a second chance in life.” But residential care was still needed and “although the new vision around children’s development and education was critical, I felt that my passion was their health.”
By 2015, she and three of the previous staff members initiated Heartlands Baby Sanctuary at the request of the Department of Social Development to answer the need in the Western Cape for residential facilities catering for children under six suffering from either abuse, neglect, abandonment and/or of some medical condition. This time, their clear ethos of providing children with a sense of belonging rooted the organisation in its purpose.
Sixteen years after opening a childcare centre in Kuils River, this is how Monica Buitendag embarked on a new challenge: the creation of an entirely new organization of her own. “We had to start all over again, recalls Monica. When I started with the first institution, we didn’t have any assets like beds and furniture, but we had the finance.” With this new facility, Monica and her team had nothing but their long experience in the field. “We didn’t have any of the basic things you need to run an organization. Starting everything again, people would think it’s easier, but it wasn’t. A lot of things had changed, like the economy but also the kind of children we admitted. We had to adapt to new and broader programmes. Our focus could not only be on sick children; we had to move to social aspects, train our staff on those issues and get the proper equipment.”
The facility finally opened its doors on the 4th of May 2015. “At that time, we still didn’t have a name. I wanted to find something meaningful for us. The children were always so close to our hearts. That’s how we chose Heartlands. It was a powerful name for all of us.”
A temporary home for children
Heartlands cares for 25 children at once, with a turn over of six to eight children per month. The vision of the sanctuary is that children should not grow up in institutions but in a community with a loving family, whether biological or not. The deep conviction behind this is that “it’s every child’s birthright to belong.” According to the CEO, children’s stay in a residential facility should be as short as possible. “Children are normally placed by us for three months. We are registered for six months of placement, but it depends on the child’s circumstances. Sometimes they stay for ten months, sometimes only for two.”
The process of placing a child in an institution is long. When a child is being abused or neglected by its primary caregivers, it first has to be reported to a social services agency. The social workers then start an investigation and assess the risks for the child. “It’s a lot of work. In some cases when we can see the child has really been abused, for instance during weekends and after hours, the social workers can call for emergency placement and remove him or her immediately.” If the investigation concludes that the child needs to be placed, the social workers contact the Department of Social Developed Centralised Admissions that will provide forms to complete. The facility that will care for the child is then chosen according to several criteria such as the child’s age, where they come from and what their specific needs are. “Finally, the social worker goes to court, and the child can legally be placed by us. However, the period during which the child can stay in the Child and Youth Care Centre is not always enough, explains Monica. “When a child is admitted, we do our own internal assessment of their medical, social, developmental needs. We consider the long term plan of the child. If we find that a child needs to stay longer in care, we will request that he does.”
When it has been assessed that a child will eventually be able to go back to their family, Heartlands involves them in the process. “That is a huge challenge for us because it’s normally the external social workers’ responsibility. When the family comes to visit, we take the opportunity to do counselling, to understand how we can support them, and we train them around their child’s needs. There’s a room where the mother can stay for a night or two, so we can train her. We specifically focus on her child’s needs, not the mother’s needs.” Although it can sometimes be a real challenge, the point of those efforts is to restore the child’s trust in their family and recreate a bond that has been damaged. “Most of the time, we want to place the child back with their parents. When they are not able to look after their child, we turn to foster care with a family member. It’s a gradual process. The family first comes to visit every day for an hour, then two, then they take the child of a weekend. We make sure that there is a connection between them.”
During the child’s stay at Heartlands, a dedicated team of nurses and caregivers make sure that the child’s needs are met and that they will continue to be met once they leave the institution. “Sometimes, the child’s immunization is behind. Sometimes TB medication was not given correctly. We still have HIV/AIDS positive children coming. We help the parents to give medication correctly.”
In their five-years of existence, Heartlands has been dedicated to finding a home to every child they cared for, as soon as possible. “You cannot believe how those children change once they finally get the love and attention they deserve” concludes Monica Buitendag. To give those children a second chance at living a good life certainly gives us a right to say that Heartland’s team is made of superheroes.
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