Community Keepers: From Chaos to Calm in Low-Income Schools
October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and for this month’s feature, we had the opportunity to meet with New Business Developer Reece Carstens from Community Keepers, an NGO that establishes psychosocial support at 89 low-income schools in South Africa by providing counselling within the schools.
Carstens started as a counsellor at Community Keepers, contributing to his holistic understanding of the services they offer and the need for them. In this month’s feature, we take a look into the service that Community Keepers offers, touch on the stigma that surrounds mental health and get some tips for managing mental health in the workplace.
More about Community Keepers
Within the school context, mental health challenges exist on different levels, from management to teachers to students, and are influenced by external factors like economic uncertainty and gang activity. Within these contexts, the students are the most vulnerable to the negative impacts of mental health, and in lower-income schools, the vulnerability is exacerbated due to a lack of resources to support the students in navigating these challenges. This can negatively impact the quality of life that a student experiences while in school and what they can achieve after school.
Community Keepers, CK for short, focuses on improving the mental health within schools by placing counsellors to provide support for students, teachers and parents at the schools with an aim to create a stable environment that combat the chaos clients face in their lives. Alongside offering support to schools, Community Keepers also practices support within their organisation, emphasising the need to look after the well-being of their employees to ensure the sustainability and quality of their offerings.
An example, and a big shift in the structure of their services, would be the recent establishment of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) at schools.
Building Resilience: Responding to a Growing and Changing Need
Since its establishment in 2009, CK has undergone a shift in their structure to respond to a growing need for mental health support through incorporating MHFA training for Care Facilitator positions. The Care Facilitators act as the first point of contact for clients, offering support and assessing whether meeting with a counsellor is necessary, which has allowed CK to increase the reach of their mental health support, while the counsellors can go deeper with the clients that require it.
What started as a way to build capacity for counsellors at school through admin positions soon turned into a program to train previously unemployed members of the community to become Care Facilitators. The MFHA has tuned the local communities in which CK operates into a pool of resources, inspired by Professor Vikram Patel’s Global Mental Health Peer Network and the Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe.
Additionally, the MFHA also holds the opportunity to impact communities as a whole. For the position, multiple candidates go through training due to the benefits that it holds, even if it does not result in employment. This can be attributed to the training curriculum covering topics of Trauma and Adversity, Containment Strategies, Understanding Boundaries, Listening Skills and Protocol for Referral Pathways, thereby equipping candidates with the skills to better navigate their personal lives.
Going Beyond: Breaking the Stigma
In many communities and cultures in South Africa, mental health and the related challenges still hold a stigma and the receptivity to the service differs across different contexts. Furthermore, Community Keepers may also face resistance from clients as they feel that the counsellors or Care Facilitators cannot relate to their situation. However, Carstens iterates that while situations may differ, often the emotions underlying them – which are those of despair, loneliness or wanting to give up – are universal and can be used as reference points to dissipate the stigma in both cases.
Tips for Mental Health in the Workplace
With the 2024 Mental Health Awareness Month theme being Mental Health in the Workplace, we asked Carstens to share some tips on how workplaces can work towards a culture that supports mental health. These tips include:
- Show appreciation
- Create time to go out in nature
- Create atmospheres of care for one another
- Monitor isolation in employees and colleagues and if you see them isolating, reach out
- Organise active activities
- Learn to say, and accept, no and prioritise well-being without guilt
Conclusion:
Community Keepers is addressing the mental health crisis in South Africa by establishing psychosocial support at low-income schools, intending to expand their reach to 100 schools by 2025. Their business model shows dedication to serving the students and the school, emphasising the need to look after mental health workers and acknowledging the need to be innovative with solutions by involving the community. Through this initiative, CK can effect change over the broader South African landscape and inspire us with the holistic nature of the offering.
Rapid fire:
Carstens’ quote for dark days:
I just know it is going to be okay, because of my faith.Carstens’ advice for someone working, or wanting to work, in the mental health industry:
Be prepared to work on yourself first. Anybody who wants to go into the field must be prepared to go on the journey themselves. Lastly, find one reason that is going to keep your passion [alive], why you do what you do to prevent burnout or getting numb.
For more information on Community Keepers, visit here:
Website: https://communitykeepers.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/communitykeepers.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/communitykeepers/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/community-keepers-npc-9565ba181/%20