Our Work
Our work at Home from Home centres on providing safe, loving foster homes for vulnerable children in South Africa. Through a structured model of care and a range of support programmes, we create stable family environments where children can heal, grow, and build positive futures.
Our approach combines family-based foster care with educational, therapeutic, and independent living support, ensuring that every child in our homes receives the care, stability, and opportunities they need to thrive.
How We Work
Home from Home operates foster homes that provide children with the stability, love and belonging of a family environment. Within these homes, children are supported by dedicated foster mothers and through programmes designed to address their educational, emotional, and developmental needs.
Our work is guided by a structured Model of Care that focuses on building a strong family foundation and supporting each child through four additional key programme pillars.
Together, these elements help ensure that children receive holistic care while preparing them for a future beyond foster care.
Our Model of Care
Home from Home’s Model of Care is built on a strong foundation supported by four key programme pillars. This approach recognises that children who have experienced neglect, trauma, or family disruption require more than just a safe place to live — they require consistent loving care, emotional support, and opportunities for growth.
The foundation of our work is creating a loving family home environment. From this base, the four programme pillars provide additional support that addresses education, therapeutic care, independent living support, and family reunification.
Together, these five elements give children the best chance of leaving our care equipped with the confidence, skills, and stability they need to become positive and contributing members of society.
Foundation: Loving Family Home
The foundation of our work is creating a safe, loving, and nurturing family home environment where children can experience belonging, stability, and care.
Our goal is for each child to experience their foster home as a true family, where connection and support continue even beyond foster care.
Within this stable and loving environment, children build meaningful relationships with foster mothers and siblings, helping them develop confidence, rebuild trust, and begin healing from past trauma.
Our foster homes are located within the communities from which the children originate, helping children remain connected to their language, culture, and local environment.
Each home is supported by foster mothers who provide daily care, guidance, and love.
Foster mothers are carefully screened during the recruitment process and receive ongoing training and supervision from our social work team. This helps ensure that every home reflects strong family values and provides children with consistency, structure, and a loving sense of belonging.
Additional support services are accessed when required to address the specialised needs that many children in foster care may have.
This loving family home environment forms the foundation for the four programme pillars.
The Four Pillars of Our Model of Care
In addition to the stability of the foundation provided by the loving family home environment, Home from Home’s Model of Care is supported by four key programme pillars. These programmes ensure that children receive the educational, therapeutic, and independent living skills support necessary for healthy development.
The following pillars work together to provide holistic support throughout a child’s journey in our care.
Pillar 1: Education Programme
This programme ensures that every child in our foster homes has access to appropriate schooling, academic support, and opportunities to develop their potential.
Key components include:
- Access to suitable educational institutions
• Provision of school uniforms, stationery, and transport
• Additional tutoring and learning support
• Mentorship and extracurricular activities
The Lizo Nobanda Resource Centre in Khayelitsha plays an important role in this programme by providing educational facilities, including a computer lab, library, training spaces, and support offices for staff and service providers working with children in the surrounding foster homes.
Pillar 2: Therapeutic Intervention Programme
Many children who enter foster care have experienced trauma, neglect, or loss. Our Therapeutic Intervention Programme provides specialised support to help children process these experiences and develop resilience.
Our social work team develops individual therapeutic plans for each child and coordinates interventions that may include:
- Individual counselling
- Group therapeutic sessions
- Referrals to psychologists, counsellors, or occupational therapists
- Therapeutic extracurricular programmes such as Surfpop and Orange Art Project
These interventions complement the stability of the foster home environment and support children’s emotional healing and development.
Pillar 3: Evelyn Connolly Independent Living Support Programme
Preparing young people for life beyond foster care is a critical part of our work.
Children in foster care typically transition out of care between the ages of 18 and 21. The Evelyn Connolly Independent Living Support Programme helps prepare young people for this important stage of independence.
The programme focuses on:
- Life-skills development
• Training for foster mothers and staff in supporting older youth
• Focussed preparation for independence from age 15 onwards
• Independent Living housing for young people without family placements
• Continued support after leaving care
Home from Home partners with organisations such as Mamelani and Isibindi, which specialise in transitional support for youth.
Pillar 4: Reunification Programme
Whenever possible, the best long-term outcome for a child is reunification with their biological family or placement with an adoptive family.
The Reunification Programme focuses on identifying, assessing, and supporting potential family placements. Where placements are not possible, establishing and maintaining healthy contact with the biological family becomes the focus.
This process may involve:
- locating biological family members
- assessing their suitability as caregivers
- facilitating trial visits and gradual placements
- providing ongoing support during the transition period
Even when full reunification is not possible, maintaining relationships with extended family members is important for supporting a child’s identity and long-term well-being.
Family Beyond Foster Care
Every child’s journey is unique. Some children may eventually reunite with their biological families, while others transition into independent adulthood. Whatever their journey, Home from Home remains family.
At Home from Home, we believe that family is forever. The loving relationships formed within our foster homes do not end when a young person leaves our care. Ongoing connection, support, and belonging remain an important part of our approach, even beyond foster care and into independent living.
We remain committed to supporting children and young people through these transitions, helping ensure they leave our homes with the confidence, support networks, and life skills needed to build meaningful and positive futures.
Child Protection Policy
Give every child the stability and care they deserve
Supporting children through foster homes requires the partnership of communities, individuals, and organisations.
You can help support this work by contributing to the programmes that sustain our foster homes and provide children with the opportunities they deserve.
Give every child the stability and care they deserve
Supporting children through foster homes requires the partnership of communities, individuals, and organisations.
You can help support this work by contributing to the programmes that sustain our foster homes and provide children with the opportunities they deserve.