Yonder Frail Care Centre Project (2013)

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Yonder is a centre for adults with an intellectual disability. Many of the people who live there are without any support system, except for Yonder. Their families either leave them there or the parents and siblings die and Yonder become their “family”.

Because the inhabitants are intellectually impaired, but physically there is often nothing wrong with them, they can become quite old, and outlive their parents and siblings. The eldest person living there at the moment is 83 years old, with the mean age 46 years.

In time, the need has started to arise for a frail care centre at Yonder where the older and weaker inhabitants can be accommodated. The small subsidy the centre receives from the government does not make it possible for them to establish it out of their own finances. There is an existing room available at the centre, which can be used to establish a frail care centre, but they will need help with furnishing it.

We were lucky that we received some of the items needed as a donation from the local Mediclinic hospital. That went a long way in furnishing the room for the frail care centre.

The centre was established, and furnished with the most important items so that it can start functioning as a frail care centre. Because of a lack of enough funding, there are still some items they need, for instance two more beds, a patient hoist and several smaller items. We will therefore carry on with this project in the new Rotary year.

The objective was to establish a frail care centre for intellectually impaired elderly adults. That was done. Yonder is able to make use of the centre, which consists of one room with two beds. They can nurse two elderly patients which is all they need at this stage. We are looking at establishing another room for male patients, because the male and female patients have to share a room at this stage.

The frail care centre has only been established in 2013, and is still very new. Once it has all the equipment it needs to be fully functional, it will be sustained by the Yonder management. They have a nursing sister full time in their employ, they have the infrastructure and now they have the most important equipment to keep going. Rotary will be involved in supplying more medical equipment and establishing a second room for male patients.

Denise Coetzee delivers a wheelchair to Yonder for the Frail Care Centre