Crystal High School in Hanover Park is working with a non-profit organisation that provides free mental-health services to the school.
Community Keepers, which was established 15 years ago, opened 40 new offices at schools in the Western Cape, Gauteng and the Eastern Cape in the third term. It provides crisis counselling, therapy, referrals, has support groups, and hosts wellbeing workshops for more than 50 000 pupils and their caregivers, at 79 partner schools in poor communities across South Africa.
A consulting room was made available at Crystal High where pupils, parents or caregivers and even the teachers can seek help from the NPO.
“Part of our aim is the destigmatisation of mental-health issues and to enhance mental-health literacy,” said Rochelle van den Berg, the organisation’s Cape Town area manager.
“We have an open-door policy. Before the office opened, we spoke in the classrooms, and we made sure to tell them that even teachers feel overwhelmed and need help at times, so there is no shame in reaching out for help.”
The co-founder and chairman of Community Keepers, Andre du Plessis, said the organisation was started when he learned that there was only one state social worker and one psychologist who serviced 45 schools and 32 000 children in the Winelands.
Community Keepers provides a full-time, dedicated mental-health facility on-site at schools in marginalised areas.
Crystal High principal Dino Abrahams said the Covid-19 pandemic had had a big impact on both education and mental health.
“We not only lost out on learning, but it also had a big impact on us psychologically. Traditionally, in a community such as ours (Hanover Park), we don’t really deal with mental health issues. We tend to push it back. However, we then go through some trauma, for example, and it catches up with us later, which can have dire consequences. This service is very much needed, especially in a township. We are grateful to Community Keepers,” Mr Abrahams said.