Thuthukani Special School Governing Body relies on donor funding to enable the school to deliver quality educational and therapeutic services to the learners with intellectual disability enrolled at our school. This includes ensuring adequate staffing, maintenance and expansion of the school buildings.
The SGB has identified large projects that we can only complete with the assistance of donors / sponsors who are willing to partner with us in these programs / improvements.
In addition to our Sponsor-a-Child fundraising programme: https://www.thuthukani.org.za/sponsor-a-child/ ,we need funding to implement the following projects:
- Expansion of the current Occupational Therapy Section:
- Adequate Learner Support in the Classroom:
- LSPID Bathrooms:
- Parking Areas inside the school:
- Access road to the school:
- Culverts for rainwater management:
1. Expansion of the current Occupational Therapy Section:
Expanding the current Occupational Therapy Section would benefit all of the learners enrolled at our school and have a big impact on their parents and the wider community.
Thuthukani Special School is one of the few special schools that have enough therapists appointed by the Department of Education to deliver the required services to the learners at our school. This was due to long campaigning by previous and current Principals and SGBs, holding the Department of Education to their prescribed norms. In fact, we have 12 Therapists employed at our school. (8 Occupational Therapists, 2 Physiotherapists, a Social Worker and a Speech Therapist),
The Occupational Therapists (OTs) work with each child enrolled at the school, and offer the following services to the teachers and learners at the school:
- Developing an Individual Support Plan (ISP) in conjunction with the teacher for each learner at school. This plan is aimed at ensuring that each learner’s specific and special educational, therapeutic, and medical needs are identified and met.
- Group therapy in the classroom
- Small group therapy with learners who have similar therapeutic needs
- Individual therapy for learners with identified specific therapeutic needs such as sensory integration, training on Augmentative and Alternative Communication, neurodevelopmental challenges, perceptual development, pre-vocational therapy, etc.
- The OTs attend and participate in the parent support groups that are scheduled in the classrooms by the teachers.
In addition, the OTs offer services to the greater community:
- As a service to the King Cetshwayo District, our OTs deliver an assessment service to learners referred to schools in the district to establish if our school is suited to the child’s special educational needs.
- Due to the waiting list being so big, the OTs run waiting list support groups for parents and children with profound intellectual and additional disabilities who are on the waiting list. During these support groups, therapists do group and individual therapy with the children, and they run support and training sessions with the parents to ensure that the children’s developmental and educational needs do not fall too far behind while they are on the waiting list. The average time on the waiting list is about 2 to 2½ years. One of our dreams is to conduct more waiting list support groups so that we can support more parents and children in this position.
- The OTs also run specific support groups for parents who have learners in the school who have autism, parents who need to be trained in the use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (so that the parents can communicate with their children at home), parents who have learners with cerebral palsy, etc. It is one of our wishes that we can expand on these support groups to the community.
- Our OTs are all recognised and registered by South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). SASSA is the South African Social Security Agency, a government entity responsible for administering social grants in South Africa. It distributes social grants to millions of South Africans on behalf of the Department of Social Development. SASSA also conducts regular reviews of social grants to ensure beneficiaries remain eligible and to verify the accuracy of their information. The OTs conduct assessments and provide reports to SASSA to assist our learners, learners applying to be enrolled at our school, and adults who are working at the Thuthukani Adult Workshop to access child support grants and disability grants.
When the first therapy section was designed, there were only 2 OTs. When there were 5 OTs and 1 physiotherapist, the occupational therapy section was expanded, and the physiotherapy section moved to the building that was previously allocated as a staff room. When the social worker was appointed, the school nurse gave up her office to accommodate the needs of the social worker. Now we also have a speech therapist who has no allocated space to do her therapy.
With the influx of new therapists during the last two years, most of the floor space allocated to occupational therapy is taken up by workspaces for the Occupational Therapists (OTs). In addition, we had to divide the remaining therapy space to create some temporary rooms where OTs can do individual therapy and assessments using partitioning. This resulted in even more therapeutic space being taken up. OTs do most of their group therapy in the classrooms. This impacts on the quality of therapy delivered as the learners cannot come in class groups to benefit from exposure to the large therapeutic equipment, that currently is also not arranged in the best therapeutic setup.
We have plans from a reputable engineering firm to expand our current therapy section by building a second floor on the existing structure. We also contract a reputable local building company who is familiar with our school and the safety precautions required to work with consideration to our learners’ special needs.
By supporting Thuthukani Special School in this expansion we can deliver OT services that allows for:
- Space to ensure that the specialised OT equipment available is used efficiently, appropriately, and is accessible to all learners
- Space to ensure that SASSA and applicant learner assessments, individual therapy, and confidential discussions are conducted in appropriate spaces allocated for this
- OTs have appropriate workspaces that are not taking up therapy space
- Expanding on the support groups to parents of learners with disabilities enrolled in school as well as those on the waiting list, and the wider community.
- Provide the speech therapist with a suited workspace
2. Adequate Learner Support in the Classroom:
At Thuthukani we limit the size of our classrooms to maximum 17 learners with 2 adults per class i.e. a qualified teacher and a class assistant. The reason for this is that our children all have severe to profound intellectual disability and need the higher levels of care and attention that is provided by the 2 adults in the class. In staffing for this, we ensure that the learners achieve their maximum educational potential and that their safety is at all times ensured. This often entails that the teacher / assistant can take care of individual needs of a child, such as a medical or hygiene emergency while the rest of the class remains under supervision and learning and teaching can continue.
The Department of Education provides a teacher per class, but as our school has seen significant growth recently, we do have some teachers in our school, employed by the School Governing Body (SGB), as we currently do not have enough teachers in departmental posts. Despite posts being created for support staff, they have been frozen indefinitely at Government Level, and we need to fundraise to provide a teacher and class assistant for each class.
Our SGB paid and volunteer class assistants, general assistants, and therapy assistants are key personnel in our school, as they provide much needed support to the teachers, but also to the learners. Our class assistants and therapy assistants drive our extra-curricular projects, such as Mr and Miss Thuthukani, Interhouse Sport Day, Concerts, ballroom dancing etc. All our assistants receive ongoing theoretical and practical in-service training to improve their knowledge, ability, and skill in working with persons with disabilities. Their dedication and passion for education and compassion in working with learners who have severe to profound disabilities also circle out to their families and the communities where they live. In addition to the class and therapy assistants, we have other SGB paid or volunteer support staff, crucial to the welfare of our learners, such as cooks, general workers, cleaners, and office staff.
Due to the great need for essential additional support staff such as class assistants, the school has implemented a program to attract youth who want to volunteer in exchange for training at our school. Most of our volunteers receive sponsored transport on the busses that serve our learners, as they assist with the safety of the learners in the busses during transport to and from school. Many of our class assistants are studying to become qualified teachers and some of them are requesting Thuthukani to use their cost-of-living contribution to cover their tuition fees.
We have an agreement with our volunteers that clearly describes the relationship between the school and the volunteer, that was approved by a labour law expert. We also limit the time that an individual is allowed to volunteer at our school to 2 years, so that we may empower more individuals by implementing this programme. Thuthukani SGB is currently providing 44 volunteers with ex gratia cost of living contributions of R56 per day worked. With an expected 199 school days for 2025, each volunteer will receive on average R11 144.00 during the year – at a total cost of R490 336.00 to the SGB per year that needs to be funded by fundraising.
Sufficient staff to provide learner support at our school.
Without these persons on our staff, we will not be able to educate and care for the disabled children at our school. We will be forced to close classrooms, and as a result, more children with intellectual disability will be deprived of their constitutional right to education, safety, and dignity.
At this stage we already have a waiting list of over 300 learners who need to be placed at our school – just imagine the devastation to the disability sector if we are unable to continue with our current levels of education and care for these children.
All the individuals benefitting from this funding (i.e. receiving cost-of-living contributions and wages) are Black South African Citizens. Many are youth that are given an opportunity to work, receive training and to develop their skills in the Disability and Education Sector.
We are requesting that you consider sponsoring (a) volunteer/s to enable us to continue to provide learner support as well as our programme of empowering previously disadvantaged youth in our community.
3. LSPID Bathrooms:
The LSPID area of our school is specifically for our learners with severe to profound intellectual disability. Many of these learners have additional severe disabilities, such as Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder, vision, speech, and hearing impairments, all requiring very high levels of support. They have a separate bathroom that they use.
Due to the weather conditions, constant sunshine or rain, the one side of the roof has become rusted, and we are requesting that new roofing is installed at the specific area. At the same side, there are outside wash basins, where the learners wash their hands. This area is constantly exposed to the elements, and the existing wash basins have deteriorated. The learners are also exposed to the elements when using the facility.
We are requesting that while the roof is being repaired, that an awning is constructed to protect the learners, and that new wash basins are installed.
When the building was constructed, our sponsors at the time insisted that we use wall-hung bowl urinals in the boy’s toilets. As they look like toilet seats, some of our more profoundly disabled learners took to sitting on them, despite being supervised, and as a result they broke, have become unsafe for use and were subsequently removed.
We are requesting that the boy’s toilets be fitted with a stainless-steel trough urinal, which will allow our teachers to teach the appropriate use, and as they look very different to toilets, the learners will be able to identify the correct place to use when needed.
To access the bathrooms, our learners use a pathway that crosses the access way to the Thuthukani Adult Workshop (TAW). TAW creates work opportunities for adults with intellectual disability by doing recycling. Several times a day, trucks must cross this pathway. We have ensured the safety of our learners by placing a fence with a gate that needs to be opened by an adult supervisor before learners are allowed to cross the pathway. As expected, the pathway has become damaged and needs to be replaced and strengthened. The drainage at this pathway is also not functioning well, and it often becomes waterlogged, leading to unsafe conditions for our learners, especially those with mobility and balance challenges.
We are requesting that this pathway be repaired and strengthened, and that sufficient drainage or culverts are included in the plans.
4. Parking Areas inside the school:
At Thuthukani Special School we have a parking area just inside the school’s gate, which means that everybody who enters the school, needs to navigate this area. The parking area closest to the school is compacted sand and has old concrete railway sleepers to demarcate the parking spaces. Due to many years of rains, flooding and daily use, the area has become very uneven, slippery and unsafe for our learners, staff, and visitors. In fact, initially the railway sleepers were about 2cm above ground level, but currently the exposed parts can be as high as 10cm. Other parking areas within the school grounds have also eroded and during the rain seasons, become inaccessible to both pedestrians and vehicles.
Many of our learners have mobility and balance challenges, requiring the use of walkers, wheelchairs and other assistive devices, as do many of our visitors. Having our school accessible and safe is a priority for us, and we have experienced some slip-and-falls in this area, especially after rains as the soil washes onto the paved areas, or the ground becomes so waterlogged that the parking areas are inaccessible. We also experienced damage caused to vehicles.
We are requesting that the parking areas be tarred to ensure learner safety, as well as safe access for the staff and visitors’ vehicles.
5. Access road to the school:
Thuthukani Special School as well as our neighbouring school, Dover Farm School is built on land that is held in trust by the Thuthukani Trust. The Department of Education uses the land for educational purposes, but the land, all buildings, and improvements to this land are owned and managed by the Trust. As a result, the access road to both schools is considered to be a private road and not the local municipality’s responsibility to maintain.
The image on the right is the first access from the tarred road where the busses enter our property. Most of the learners come to school with busses, and the daily heavy use of this road has caused the road to be severely potholed, dangerous for learners to navigate, and it causes damage to the personnel’s vehicles. Even in dry conditions, this road is severely potholed and uneven. We have had instances where learners from both schools, who have mobility issues have fallen and injured themselves. Learners who use wheelchairs or mobility devices are also severely impacted by this.
The image on the left is taken from the main gate of Thuthukani. This is the area where several busses park for morning drop-off and afternoon pickup. Even though the area is grassed, the soil is clay, and it becomes incredibly slippery, even with a little bit of rain. On occasion busses have become stuck or have slipped back and had to be towed out. This is a situation that carries a severe risk for injury to our learners. If a bus needs to be towed, it has a concertina effect, as many learners must wait, and be supervised while waiting. As many of our learners come from far rural areas, it often means that they miss their connecting transport and may need to be assisted to get home safely at extra expense to the school and parents.
We are requesting that the whole access road and bus parking area is levelled, compacted, graveled and filled with the sand removed during levelling. (In the past we had a donation of asphalt that was lifted from roads under repair, crushed, and then used to gravel the road. This lasted for at least 10 years.)
6. Culverts for rainwater management:
Dover Farm School is located on higher ground than Thuthukani. We have identified two areas where stormwater drains into our school and causes damage and creates a potential safety hazard.
During moderate to heavy rains, the water that flows into our school at one specific area looks like a fast-flowing river coming from Dover Farm School. This is extra hazardous, as the water flows past one of our main electricity boxes. The second area is just below this, behind our Home Economics class. In the past this area became flooded often, also leading to problems with the electricity box.
The Rotary Club of Empangeni built a culvert to assist with the drainage of the flood water some years ago. The water from the existing culvert flows over a covered cement slab that is used by learners to play and receive therapy and drains onto a grassed play area. This area remains waterlogged and unsafe for learners to use as a playground, often for many days after it rained. Unfortunately, this culvert is no longer sufficient, and the effect of the rain is detrimental and dangerous to the learners and staff that need to access the area.
We are requesting that a culvert is built that will manage the stormwater between Dover Farm School and Thuthukani, and the existing culvert be upgraded to deal with the higher levels of rain that we are experiencing.