HOME OF HOPE – UPDATE OCT 2018
September was a busy month for Home of Hope. In 2015 Home of Hope purchased an old property called Mimosa House. It had been acknowledged by the Board of Home of Hope that as the children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) grew older they began to exhibit more serious behavioural problems particularly physical aggression towards their caregivers. A decision was therefore made to put the children who were in the long term care of Home of Hope into one central home. The home was to continue to have a family type atmosphere (the maximum number of children is 25) but with more support for the caregivers and more centralised services to be provided by the Home of Hope social worker. The renovations took a long time to carry out as they were quite extensive. The property had previously been an old age home for the last 30 years and so was in quite a bad state of repair. Many local and international individuals and organisations generously helped us to undertake the renovations both through donations of time, materials and money.
Finally in Sept 2018 the Dept. of Social Development came to visit Mimosa House for the final time and awarded the home registration as a Child & Youth Care Home. It took a long time and lots of blood, sweat and tears to finalise the registration and so much credit is due to our hard working staff.
To celebrate this registration we had an Open Day at Mimosa House in October. The children were hugely involved by baking cupcakes and serving juice to our funders and also proudly giving them tours of their new home.
Mimosa House has been a long journey and it will continue to be a road with bumps along the way but for now we are blessed to have all the children living in a wonderful new home where they are safe and loved.
