Reiger Park Crisis Centre continues its good work

Reiger Park Crisis Centre is a Reiger Park-based organisation that caters for the needy, crime victims and the sick, including families affected by or infected with HIV, gender-based violence (GBV) victims and others.

It is also an organisation dealing with people affected by HIV and aims to help its beneficiaries through tough times.

Social worker, Phina Moholola said the centre provides psychosocial support to its beneficiaries.

“We do house visits where we provide counselling to our beneficiaries and we link them to relevant resources, especially with services that we are not able to offer.

“We have orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and child-headed families, which are families that are taken care of by a child between the ages of 16-18. We also have youth-headed families which are taken care of by children of the ages of 19-35 and granny-headed families which are families taken care of by people from the age of 60,” said the social worker.

Moholola highlighted the crisis centre has been helpful to the community since 1998. It has over 600 beneficiaries on its system and over 400 of them need support as they do not have anyone to help them.

“We are funded by the Department of Social Development, but sometimes it can take up to three months for funds to be allocated to us. As our financial year ends on March 3 that can be a huge challenge on our beneficiaries because most of them depend on the service we provide.”

Moholola said caregivers should be highly appreciated as they are the ones who monitor the patients in terms of adhering to the correct medication schedule.

“We have programmes for vulnerable children who are taking drugs and we also provide food parcels to those who are really in need.

“Only 100 beneficiaries will receive food parcels because for now we are funded to cater for that amount of people,” said Moholola.

According to the social worker, the crisis centre used to have donors but due to the pandemic, companies no longer donated.

The crisis centre has recently received knitted items from the Advertiser’s Winter Wool Drive, lovingly knitted and donated by Dayanglen resident Daphne Braaf (94).

For more information about the crisis centre, contact the chairperson Wayne Newton on 083 739 3507.

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