For 48 years Boys Town has worked to stamp out a reputation for itself as one of the country’s landmark institutions for the residential care for boys.
In February, the Alpha Family Home for Girls opened its doors in Claremont, Cape Town, to its first intake of five girls. The home can now accommodate 10 girls.
‘We have been working with girls for some time in schools and other children’s programmes, and we have for a few years now been wanting to have a residential care facility for girls,” says Lee Loynes, Girls and Boys Town director of youth services.
Loynes says the time was finally ripe for Boys Town to make the shift, not because girls are becoming more problematic or troubled, but because issues around the needs of girls are at long last coming to the fore.
‘With the emancipation of women worldwide and with more high-profile women taking up roles in business and in the community, there has been more focus on the issues that girls face,” she says.
Loynes says social workers and staff have had to check their preconceived ideas about working with girls referred to them by the courts because they ‘fall out of the latitude of tolerance”. The Girls and Boys Town staff have been given specialised training to sensitise them to gender issues.
‘Girls do socialise differently, they are also more vulnerable in their communities and they’re more vulnerable to things such as eating disorders, so treatment planning is different for boys and girls,” says Loynes.
She adds that the new focus that has come from working with girls has also informed the way they work with boys in residential care at the organisation’s many other facilities throughout the country.
‘It reflects on how we have been working with the boys and it also shows up the things that we’ve take for granted, so we can see room for improvement here,” Loynes says.
The girls who enter the home are of school-going age and the institution is run, as far as possible, as an ordinary household with a teaching couple heading the home. Social workers are available if there is a need for their services.
‘We want to teach the children family values so that they will one day be able to integrate easily into the society or community they return to. We work on a developmental model and want to help the kids reclaim their responsibility every moment that they are in this home,” says Loynes.
Loynes is excited about this giant gender leap forward for the organisation.
But now a new challenge lies ahead — the wave of orphans threatening to crash as HIV/Aids sends disastrous ripples through society.
‘We are definitely seeing more children orphaned by Aids, and children who have little or no support from a biological family or a community are the children who are the most difficult to help,” says Loynes.
Girls and Boys Town believes the answer lies in strengthening communities so it is better equipped to support their boys and girls.