We cannot envisage how a caretaker can look after a bedridden patient when they have to rely on the Government’s Care Dependency Grant of R1 500 per month.

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The Homecare Foundation will only support bedridden patients that can provide a medical report. We also help patients to register for the Government’s Care Dependency Grant. Our financial support can be viewed as a top-up and we can only pay out what we were able to raise.

 

We inform the caretakers that we will distribute funds on a monthly basis amongst patients who were visited by the social worker in their area. (Our area managers also help social workers by visiting patients on our database) We do a financial assessment of the shortfalls on budgets and we will distribute the available funds proportionally amongst all the caretakers whose applications have been approved.

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Our focus is to implement 4 funding structures to assist caretakers:

1. Financial support from family members

2. Government’s Care Dependency Grant

3. Homecare financial support from the private sector

4. Special grant that we want to negotiate with Government for bedridden patients

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Family members

It is a fact that family members often get into arguments when one person is diagnosed with a disease such as Multiple Sclerosis (Motor neuron disease). There are frequently family members that choose to distance themselves from the patients and the burden to support the patient then falls on one family member. (We publish this content on the website to explain to business owners how relationships between families are demolished as a result of diseases. We worked on this project for years while we developed software to earn income for patients. We know of many families that are influenced by diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, MDS, etc.)   

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The family member “caretaker” in financial need will in future approach the Homecare Foundation for financial support.

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Our first task is to be an intermediary between the family members and to help them find a solution to support their patient. A better solution to such problems can often be found when a third "independent party" gets involved.

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The applicant must provide a list of immediate family members and also what financial support the caretaker receives from the other family members. It often happens that family members choose to distance themselves totally from the patient and it is usually a scenario where the “caring natured” brother or sister ends up with caretaking and the financial burden.

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Our admin team will contact the brothers and sisters and explain that we were approached to help fund shortfalls. It may be possible to negotiate with the brothers and sisters to donate, for example, R200 each.

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We found that when a person is diagnosed with a disease such as Multiple Sclerosis that some family members rather choose to distance themselves as they know that the brother/sister with Multiple Sclerosis will need frail care support for years. We know of MS patients that lived 13 years with full frail care support. This results in a long-term financial and emotional burden on the caretaker.

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In scenarios where people are diagnosed with for example Cancer, the family members tend to support one another better… It is as if the family members know that the burden will be for a short period.

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The fact that an outside person contacts the brothers and sisters will help the applicant. We can explain to them that we have to compile a full report as part of our application procedures. It is explained that we assist the one brother/sister with sourcing funding from the private sector and also from Government.

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In most scenarios, the applicant will not talk to brothers and sisters that decided not to help. They are often so disappointed and cross that they cannot or just do not want to ask for financial support, even if the amount is only R200. The Homecare Foundation can act as intermediary and we can also arrange that professional people meet with the family members to provide counselling. The counselling process may help the family to reunite. We might in certain scenarios raise R5 000 from other family members, and arrange the Government’s contributions as well.

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The first focus point is actually the most important. We have a reason to communicate with all the immediate family members and we can get professional people to save families that are destroyed by a disease!

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Government’s Care Dependency Grant

There are numerous people diagnosed with serious diseases that are not registered to receive a grant.

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The first thing the patient do is to deny that he/she is ill… They believe they will overcome the inevitable.

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The caretaker often finds it difficult to explain to the patient that he/she struggles to support the patient financially. They know that to apply for the Care Dependency Grant, they need to provide medical reports and they need the patient to help with the application process.

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Often, the caretaker doesn’t want to hurt the brother/sister and they choose to go without financial support from Government.    

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Our task is to get professionals to visit the caretaker and patient and explain to the patient that we have to involve as many people as possible, even Government, to support the caretaker until the patient has healed and is able to go back to work (We will obviously try to keep the patient positive about his/her circumstances).

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We explain to the caretakers that the Homecare Foundation can only pay out funds from the private sector after we confirmed that Government also helps the caretaker. We provide top-up support.
 

The first 2 focus points will in most cases already help the caretaker enormously.   

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Private sector contributions

The Homecare Foundation supports businesses in order to earn income for patients. We invite you as a reader and we explain in the website what we can do for your small contributions.

 

The private sector will also include the general public that can donate to help caretakers. The public will be reached via media campaigns. We need to emphasise the fact that a small contribution, from a large number of people will make a huge difference to the caretakers.

 

The Homecare Foundation commits to distribute available funds to caretakers where the confirmations were received that the patients are still in need of support.

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We will publish the fund distributions nationally and per area on the website. We will also publish the number of people that didn’t received donations when we couldn’t confirm their status We will publish the fund distributions nationally and per area on the website. We will also publish the number of people that didn’t received donations when we couldn’t confirm their status (we provide an example of such reporting later on the website). ​

We hope to distribute on average R900 per month towards caretakers. It will only be people that are in desperate need (full frail care) that will receive funding.

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Government additional Special Grant

The Homecare Foundation is now busy with preparation to approach Government.  

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We will ask Government to please help the small number of people with a special grant. We will show them that the private sector is involved and that we as a group want to assist Government to look after the most vulnerable people in our country.

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This process might take 2 years to complete, but we are confident that we should be able to source additional funding, especially if we show Government our distribution policies and how many private sector companies are willing to help. We hope to raise on average another R1500 per patient under our support structures.