Though a tough, financially precarious year, made tougher by serious staff shortages, the PlettAid team managed to make a significant difference in the lives of the Bitou community. The sheer number of community members who were supported by Community Health Workers, nurses, social workers, volunteer emotional supporters and lay counsellors, tells a tale all by itself.

Our Hospice Plett team of three sisters with the support of 7 home-based carers and a social auxiliary worker, together with three emotional support volunteers, paid 8751 visits to a record 307 patients and their loved ones, performing over 35,184 interventions. These ranged from pain and symptom management, medication management, counselling, social welfare support, assisting patients and family with the adjustment to their illness and bereavement support

Hospice Plett has grown in stature and reach and is now the organisation of choice to which private general practitioners and the public health services refer when Home-based Palliative Care services are needed in Bitou. Our psycho-social support services still need development and we were fortunate to appoint a Senior Social Worker this February 2024. The Hospice team was without a social worker for 10 months and Celéste Pires made an immediate impact, highlighting the social issues which had been dealt with by the social auxiliary worker, consolidating the tenuous network of partners and offering psychological counselling and support to patients and their families. The Social Workers with be concentrating on the vulnerable and/or orphaned children of patients this year. The plan is to develop a holistic support structure for the OVCs in our Hospice Plett programme, inclusive of education, bereavement and basic life-skills support.

The Plett Wellness team, driven by two sisters with our 29 community health workers and 2 lay counsellors, did over 25,000 visits to households throughout the various communities in Bitou, performing 47,501 health and wellness screenings and referring 1771 community members for further support at appropriate health care facilities. Furthermore, 13021 clients were supported with adherence counselling to improve the correct and continuous use of chronic medication for HIV, hypertension, diabetes, TB, asthma and epilepsy. The aim of this programme is to improve the overall health of our community by improving their health literacy, early identification of illnesses and referral to appropriate health care services to ensure treatment.

The work of the Plett Wellness Team is supported by 9 lay counsellors who work in the Primary Health Care (PHC) clinics throughout Bitou. These dedicated counsellors assist community members with adherence support, HIV and TB screening and testing through a voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) process and ante-natal support for expectant mothers.

A grant from The Lipschitz Trust enabled us to expand the 1st 1000 days project, from May 2023. This is a project within the Plett Wellness programme and it takes a holistic view of the 1st 1000 days of a child’s life – from conception to 3 years old.

We partnered with Knysna Education Trust to train all 40 CHWs and lay counsellors on baby and toddler development and how they can educate parents/carers about play-to-learn, book-sharing and promoting the healthy growth and development of their children. The care of the parents is an integral part of this project and we have started parenting workshops for parents of babies and toddlers, to enable them to use healthy parenting skills. Mental health and wellness underpin community wellness and through this project we started community dialogues regarding mental illness, the stigma attached to it, how to recognise mental illness, and where to seek help, in an effort to destigmatize and improve awareness of mental illness.

Our dream of getting all the service organisations in Bitou to join forces and work collaboratively has started to take shape during the first quarter of 2023/24. The Bitou Social Development Forum (BSDF) was established through the collaborative efforts of the Bitou Municipality, Herman Nieuwoudt in particular and several Non Profit Organisations. The goals of the BSDF are:

1. Strengthen and support member organisations and individuals in addressing problems areas in the health, welfare and social development spheres.
2. Encourage and facilitate networking and the effective flow of information and data between member organisations.
3. Raise funds to support the BSDF and its members to reach their goals.

The PlettAid Foundation is committed to harnessing the strength of all the amazing organisations in Bitou who aim to uplift and care for the vulnerable in our communities.

Funding the work of the PlettAid Foundation remains a top priority for the Board of Directors and management team. The Plett Wellness Programme is 95% funded by the Department of Health, but the Hospice Plett Programme is fully dependent on our fundraising efforts. The Hospice Charity shop is our most important fundraising project and since its inception in 2018, has gone from strength to strength and Sharon Bright and her team managed to turn over just less than 1,2 million rand in 2023/24, adding almost R650 000 to our coffers, after costs.

We are so very grateful for the ongoing support of the Bitou Trust.

Thank you
Cecily van Heerden

POSTCRIPT: We are delighted to share that the Sister Cecily van Heerden, CEO of the PlettAid Foundation, has recently been asked to accept a nomination as Chairman of the Western Cape Palliative Care Association (previously HPCA). This is a great accolade of which we are all, justifiably, proud. We believe it will continue to build the network of care providers who engage with the PlettAid Foundation, ensuring a more effective inter-agency approach to ensuring continuity of care across domains.