The Home and its Residents

Visitors stepping through the door of the Avril Elizabeth Home soon find it a place filled with love, light and laughter. Sunlight and music pour into the corridors where residents and staff shout out their greetings.

The Avril Elizabeth Home Teddy mascot is everywhere, a constant symbol of the security and stability provided by the Home for its residents.

The Home is known for its progressive ideas, quality care and its dedicated and enthusiastic staff. The residents are not simply housed and fed, but are encouraged to reach their maximum potential. The Avril Elizabeth Home facilities assure its residents of the highest physical care. Staff attend ongoing training programmes to keep in touch with the latest developments in the field and round the clock nursing services are provided.

The Avril Elizabeth is currently home to 147 permanent residents and provides day care to 23. All residents and day care attendees are intellectually disabled, many with a physical disability. Twenty-four hour monitoring and care is provided to the residents who range in age from 4 years to 72 years. The main buildings house children and those with severe handicaps and the five cottages, each with house-parents, are home to people whose handicaps are less severe.

Residents' families are charged fees, but many cannot afford the full cost of providing round the clock care for the mentally disabled person. Of the residents in the Home, 75 are either orphaned, abandoned or from indigent backgrounds, placing additional drains on the Home's finances.

The Avril Elizabeth Home is engaged in various ongoing income-generating projects, which include a book room and a secondhand sales room, as well as fundraising functions throughout the year.

Despite numerous cost-saving measures being introduced, the Home continues to need the partnership and support of the donor community to enable them to continue providing our orphaned, abandoned and indigent residents with the quality of care they deserve.

Stimulation Centre and Therapy

The Avril Elizabeth Home provides a stimulation programme noted for its progressive approach. It is a team effort and all departments consult in an individual's programme, while making full use of medical knowledge, training and skills of the staff.

Music is used extensively and enjoyed by the residents whether in the form of singing, musical instruments, moving to the music or just quietly listening. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, remedial speech and functional skills help each resident to gain confidence and dignity.

There are ample recreational facilities and residents can enjoy the outdoor swimming pool and indoor hydrotherapy pool which enable profoundly disabled people to experience greater freedom of movement in the water. Arts and crafts such as rug making, tapestries, knitting, crocheting, embroidery and patchwork are enjoyed by our adults.

Simple computer programs are in use in the Stimulation Centre for even the most profoundly disabled resident and special keyboards are available for them, using variable speeds to allow for longer response times.

More about the Stimulation and Education Centre

The Adult Therapy Centre

Part of the plan as set out by the Principal of the Stimulation Centre is to integrate persons with a disability into society and to assist members of the public in their awareness of this disability and to form positive attitudes.

One way of creating this awareness is through the Teddy Workshop. In order to create a sense of normality, adult residents attend the workshop, where contracts with companies are secured.

The contracts are simple tasks that the residents can perform with as little supervision as possible.The residents who attend this workshop are capable of numerous tasks, for example; the insertion of paper into envelopes, putting terminals together, packaging products etc.

The Home is always looking for new, simple tasks for the Centre. If you are in the Johannesburg area and need simple repetitive tasks performed, please contact Nicola Tudor on (011) 822 2233

THE ADULT THERAPY CENTRE "OUTREACH" PROGRAMME

The Avril Elizabeth Home runs an outreach programme in the Adult Therapy Centre situated on the premises, which is attended by intellectually disabled adults from the community, together with residents of the Home, on a Monday to Friday basis.

The centre provides an environment where simple, repetitive tasks are carried out for the commercial sector, thus giving adults with milder handicaps a sense of purpose, providing them with stimulation and companionship.

The Bakery

The Avril Elizabeth Home has its own fully functioning bakery. The bakery is run by Garth, one of the residents, with assistance from Regina, a staff member.

Since 1996, Garth has experimented with the making of bread rolls and raisin bread, over and above the normal quota of brown and white bread. Garth is very proud that he is able to carry out the important function of supplying the Home with this very basic necessity of daily living.

Every weekday the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread wafts over the Avril Elizabeth Home. Trace the source and you are more than likely to find Garth in the Bakery.

From an early age Garth's eagerness, enthusiasm and the fact that he was very keen to learn, was realized and when Albany Bakery, a sponsor, offered to set up a bakery with the necessary equipment and to provide training, Garth and Regina were identified.

Garth now bakes ± 80 loaves of bread daily, which takes care of the needs of the residents. On Fridays he bakes delicious raisin bread, which is also sold to the staff. Garth has also mastered hot cross buns, which he bakes at Easter, as well as hamburger buns and hot dog rolls for functions held at the Home.