• During 2004, LifeLine/Childline continued to offer its services in the areas of greatest need
• The telephone counseling service has been operating (with the work of trained, volunteer, lay counsellors) continuously since November 1968; some 310,000 hours
• The counseling centre answers around 8,500 calls per month, for both LifeLine and Childline, allowing thousands of individuals to find their voice and speak to a counsellor, for whatever reason
• Of the Childline calls, around 80 calls are referred to the Childline centers each month, with about 35 children being referred to Childline from other agencies
• The Childline social workers together have an average of around 100 cases current each month, and conduct around 160 - 180 counseling sessions per month
• LifeLine/Childline Western Cape has been contracted by the Provincial Government of the Western Cape to provide awareness and voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) services to all provincial government employees
  

• Court Preparation Programme – in an attempt to reduce the number of cases of sexual abuse that have been failing to get a conviction owing to the lack of court preparation, we have partnered the Child Protection Unit (CPU) to develop a programme to prepare sexually abused children, between the ages of 3 and 18, for their court cases. We work with children to prepare them psychologically to be witnesses; to empower them to testify and ultimately to have more perpetrators convicted. This programme is offered at Wynberg, Bishop Lavis, Guguletu and Khayelitsha
• Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Programme – pre- and post-test counselling and support groups in the HIV and AIDS programmes in clinics and day hospitals in Khayelitsha, Nyanga and the central health district of Cape Town
• Crisis Counselling – anonymous, confidential, telephone counselling 24 hours a day 365 days a year, for adults and children. Face-to-face counselling is available at all of the centres, including the Cape Town centre
• Trauma Debriefing Programme - in response to violence and crime in the country.   Individuals and companies approach us to do victim empowerment or trauma debriefing with people who have experienced trauma from violence of any sort. The service is offered to individuals, groups and businesses by a team of fully trained and supervised counselors
• Support Groups – for children, teenagers and adult survivors of abuse, and for people affected by HIV and AIDS. Some Childline social workers also work with mothers of children who have been sexually abused (in Bishop Lavis, for example)
• Alternative therapies/care for the carer – as a policy, LifeLine/Childline Western Cape insists that all volunteers and staff members involved in counselling be in regular supervision. In addition to regular supervision, an alternative therapy that is offered to LifeLine’s HIV and AIDS counsellors, and to staff members and clients in the Bishop Lavis centre, is reflexology
• Training courses – for would-be volunteer counsellors and others interested in acquiring the skills, we offer personal growth, communication and counselling skills, youth development and parenting skills training programmes
• Bursary Fund – for those who wish to do our training programmes but do not have the means to pay for them
• Youth development programmes – programmes offering peer counselling training and supervision, as well as programmes to stop bullying in schools, are typical areas of focus of the youth development programme, operated out of the Bishop Lavis centre. Youth camps, focusing on life skills, leadership and communication skills, are held every year for youth from marginalized schools
• Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) programme – in partnership with the Provincial Government of the Western Cape (PGWC) our VCT department offers awareness workshops, pre- and post-test counselling and support to employees of all departments of the PGWC
  

We form part of the consortium of nine Western Cape-based NGOs being funded by the National Development Agency (NDA) in terms of their urban renewal programme, with a specific focus on HIV and AIDS, home-based care, and food security projects in the Khayelitsha and Mitchell’s Plain areas.
 

• Western Cape Networking AIDS Community of South Africa (WC-NACOSA)
• Quaker Peace Centre
• Philani Nutrition Centre
• Partners with After School Care Project (PASCAP)
• U-Managing Conflict (UMAC)
• Abalimi Bezekhaya
• Khayelitsha Education Resource and Information Centre (KERIC)

We form part of the Khayelitsha MSAT (multi-sectoral action team), a network of NGOs in Khayelitsha involved in HIV and AIDS work, and co-ordinated by the City of Cape Town Health Department,
 
Our executive director participates in the Western Cape Directors’ Forum.  Through our HIV and AIDS programme, we work closely with the Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), in that our adherence counsellors work on their treatment programme; with Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and with lovelife,
 
Through our counselling services, we offer a comprehensive referral service to specialist agencies and non-profit organisation’s in the province.

• To maintain and develop the counselling service offered to the community
• To maintain a well-balanced, structured counselling programme that supports counsellors, builds and develops counselling skills, and supports and equips counsellors to effectively integrate and use counselling skills
• To create a continued interest in being involved in LifeLine/Childline Western Cape’s counselling programme through developing and enhancing existing counselling skills of volunteer counsellors
• To provide life and leadership skills to youth, particularly from marginalized areas
• To help and support mothers whose children have been victims of sexual abuse
• To provide groups of victims of sexual abuse with a safe, therapeutic setting to talk and work through their feelings regarding the abuse
• To provide life skills to children at risk in a healing therapeutic environment
• To open a drop-in counselling centre in Mitchell’s Plain
• To ensure that the staff members rendering a therapeutic service have a complementary service to counteract burnout and stress
• To create an effective HIV and AIDS counselling and support group programme in community health centres in Khayelitsha and the central health district
• To have patients tested, counselled, and in possession of the facts around HIV and AIDS
• To employ unemployed persons from the local communities, as required by the Department of Health’s PMTCT programme, and following successful completion of LifeLine’s Personal Growth and Communication and Counselling Skills courses
• To establish and maintain support groups in Khayelitsha and the central Health District
• To run employment-generating projects within the support groups to help group members to become economically self-sufficient
• To establish and maintain vegetable gardens to encourage group members to maintain a healthy diet and to become self-sufficient in this respect
• To accredit the three LifeLine/Childline Western Cape training courses: HIV and AIDS, including peer counselling programmes and workplace programmes
• Personal growth course, and Communication and Counselling Skills course
• To ensure current and future financial sustainability of the organisation