About Ethelbert Children’s Home
Ethelbert Children’s Home is a children’s home and place of safety that cares for 65 children that have been removed from their parents because of sexual and/or physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, and those orphaned because of HIV/ Aids. We have been caring for, and loving the children of South Africa since our inception in 1907.
Ethelbert is not an orphanage: the majority of the children placed with us have parents and our ultimate goal is to see the children happily reunited with their parents who have been rehabilitated. All cases are cleared by the courts first and thus we work in conjunction with the Department of Social Welfare to ensure that these children are placed back with their families, if at all possible.
Ethelbert’s main priority is to break the cycle of abuse, by providing children with a stable and loving environment, counselling and therapeutic support, which helps them overcome the terror and abuse they have suffered, so that they can regain their self-respect and their confidence to achieve their dreams. Our child-orientated programmes, dedicated residential social workers and childcare workers help traumatised children to develop positive life-skills in a secure environment.
At the same time our Social Workers work with the families, providing therapy and counselling to them to ensure that they also receive support to overcome the reasons why their child was removed from their care.
In addition to supporting the families of the children in our care, Ethelbert Children’s Home takes a proactive approach in dealing with the severe breakdown in family and community values and the increasing number of poverty stricken families entering the social welfare system. We work in the nearby impoverished communities of Arundel Gardens and Burlington to build the capacity of women and youth, support parents to overcome abusive habits, find work and apply for social grants. Our aim is to stem the tide of children flowing into the welfare system by addressing the root causes
