— What we do

About Us

Our Mission

We provide a safe, loving and homely environment to young children in desperate need of care and protection. Our individualised services create a foundation to help promote healing and develop them into a happy, healthy and confident child.

Our Vision

“It`s every child`s birth right to belong”

After the Children’s Court proceedings are finalised, they are either reunited with their parents or family members, placed in foster care, transferred to other long-term facilities or adopted.

We strive to develop the family bond by either visiting or being accommodated in the mother’s room. We educate them on how to nurture and safely care for their children, once reunited back at home.

Heartlands Baby Sanctuary is a registered Child and Youth Care Centre and Community Mental Health Facility.

Heartlands also offers parents the Mother’s Room where they can receive training in order to be better equipped in caring for their children when back at home or out of a hospital environment. This is a key step in the process of rehabilitation and integration back into the community.

Heartlands Baby Sanctuary’s aspirations are to continue providing high-quality temporary residential care and support to at-risk children and their families through a holistic, multidisciplinary team approach.

Heartlands Baby Sanctuary was established on the 4th of May 2015 in response to the request of the Western Cape Department of Social Development to offer temporary residential safe care and support for children in need of urgent care and protection.

Heartlands is located in Somerset West in the Western Cape and is a registered Child and Youth Care Centre and a Community Mental Health Facility caring for 25 children at any given time. The centre provides holistic care for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) from birth to six years of age.

Children are placed “temporarily” with a court order and after the Children’s Court proceedings are finalised, they are either reunited with their parents or family members, placed in foster care, transferred to other long-term facilities or adopted. We strive to develop the family bond by either the parents visiting their children or being accommodated in the mother’s room. Parents are educated to be better equipped in caring for their children, once reunited and back at home.

Our Values

PASSION

We have an emotional desire and attachment towards the children and our work.

RESPECT

We value diversity, knowledge, integrity and contribution.

TRUST

We restore belief in the children and have confidence in each other.

HOPE

We aspire to a better future for all.

Our Objectives

To offer holistic short-term residential care for 25 children at one given time from birth to six years of age.
We provide specialised care to abandoned, abused, neglected, ill, special needs children and children with moderate intellectual disabilities.
Provide emergency place of safety.
To create a secure, caring environment in which the children learn trust, bond, and maintain relationships.
To provide effective psychosocial services to children and their families.

To provide comprehensive health care services to children.
To provide early childhood development programmes that develops children holistically and minimise developmental delays.
To return clinically well children back to the community through reunification or alternative community- or long-term institutional placements or adoption.
Educating families about general health issues and how to care for their children once back at home while accommodated in the mother`s room.
To provide palliative care to children in the acute phase of their illness.