St Giles calls for more residents

St Giles Home for the Physically Disabled is appealing for more residents to grace its doors at the back of a Department of Social Development mandate.

Its director, Errol Caister, told the EXPRESS that the department has committed to providing the home with a quarterly subsidy, and noted that this will improve the home’s financial situation drastically, looking ahead.

Caister, who is nearing retirement from the NPO’s directorship, said part of the department’s conditions for providing the home with the subsidy requires for more people to be placed at the home.

St Giles currently looks after 17 physically disabled residents, and now looks to increase this to about 30.

As a result, Caister is appealing to people in communities beyond just De Wetshof, where the home is based, to consider making St Giles a home.

“We have come to a point where we have spare capacity to house more people who are disabled,” said Caister.

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“We are now embarking on a process of trying to find people who will identify well with us and who will be able to come in and fill those slots.”

Caister admitted that the home and the department are no strangers to each other. The two organisations had previously been in a joint venture, up until sometime in 2016, but Caister said it became unfeasible and fell by the wayside.

“It was unworkable financially at that stage, so we decided to go private. At the end of the same year, we started to enroll new residents who could afford higher fees, to make this run as a private enterprise. That didn’t work either and at the end of last year, we once again approached the government to assist us on a funding basis,” he said.

Caister informed the EXPRESS that talks with representatives from the department have gained momentum over the last four months or so, and will see a better funding model being put in place.

“We’ve come to a point where they have now agreed to fund us properly for the foreseeable future,” said Caister.

“We are also now putting the final dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s in place. To get that in place will give us a strong financial platform to work from, and that means that St Giles will move forward with the clear knowledge that we are sustainable.”

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