Critical Needs Intervention

Cape Town Refugee Centre seeks to aid the most vulnerable refugees before any others. This is determined by a thorough interview for each and every client, both our main administrative task and principal tool for successfully meeting the needs of individual cases. There thus exists a rough frame through which the CTRC conducts assessments and distributes aid: Families are treated as single case units (apparently this is one of the foundational principles found in social work). Single women are viewed as more vulnerable than single men due to men’s de facto capacity to go out into the world by themselves and network with far less risk than their female counterparts. Whenever children are involved in a case, the entire family unit is automatically considered more at risk than they would be otherwise. Physically and psychologically disadvantaged individuals are often more unable to work than others, so they are considered an at-risk group. Finally, new arrivals (those whom have arrived in South Africa within the past 6 months) are considered to be more vulnerable than those refugees who have already spent a minimum of 6 months in the country and theoretically had enough time to re-establish themselves.

Given this rubric, certain cases raise immediate red flags for needed social assistance. One of these such cases involved a single woman with two children needing immediate assistance with housing. To make matters worse, the woman spoke virtually no English [and broken French!]. Her son had an acute knee problem that recently required an operation, rendering him unable to walk and placing him out of school for the time being. Although CTRC does not normally aid clients in finding living arrangements, this particular case warranted immediate efforts. As senior social worker Annel explained to me: “How can a person think about work when he/she does not even have a roof over his/her head?” Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs must come into play for this type of grassroots human development work. Food and water form the primary building block for human survival. Shelter from the elements and personal security follow closely behind. Only once these needs are met can an individual begin to worry about additional ventures: education and work, emotional contentedness, and ultimately self-fulfillment / helping others. Encouraging this family to put their son back into school would not mean much at the time if they were still unable to place a roof over their heads.

From this critical incident arose the essential inevitability of NGO networking. The CTRC does not have sufficient resources to provide for all the diverse needs faced by the South African refugee community. When we encounter a case such as the above-mentioned one, then, we need to call upon the resources available via surrounding civil society organizations, government structures, and other institutions in order to help meet our clients’ urgent needs. For the case at hand, we telephoned a nearby shelter called Bonne Espérance to see if they had sufficient room to house this woman and her two children. Bonne Espérance only houses vulnerable women and their small children, but it offers them education during their up-to-6-month stay, crèche (daycare) for the little children, and support for post-residency societal reintegration.

Luckily, Bonne Espérance responded in the affirmative. Since I played a significant role in this family’s case, Annel let me accompany her when she drove the family in her personal vehicle to their new temporary home. Bonne Espérance is located in Philippi, one of the South African townships. It blew my mind to see how different this community looked from its nearby neighbors: colourful shacks piled one atop another; roosters, cows, and goats ambling freely across the busy intersections; pervasive dirt; giddy school children in their uniform-best next to disheveled one-toothed vendors; piles of fresh fruit falling victim to mass swarms of flies and insects; chickens waiting on death-row to be consumed at a township braai; and oddly enough the cheerful façade of Bonne Espérance cloaked in protective barbed wire. The organisation’s courtyard and facilities evoked similarly unanticipated reactions of pleasant surprise. I watched “half-spectator / half-participant” as the family exited the vehicle into their new surroundings and wished “good hope” to my first case of critical life intervention development.