Aims and Objectives [ The House Drop-in Centre - Junior Section (females - under 19) ]

1. Providing a therapeutic short-term 24 hr. residential care centre for females under the age of 19.
2. Providing a 10 -15 bed overnight facility.
3. Prevention and early intervention into the lives of children lured to, and trapped in a life of child-prostitution and drug addiction.
4. Interaction is value based - based on Humility, Simplicity and Compassion.
5. Providing for basic physical, emotional and social needs - providing first aid, basic meals (bread with peanut butter and jam, coffee/tea, soup), wash facilities, laundry facilities.
6. Enhancing quality of life, in line with the harm reduction principle, without making life in the street so bearable that motivation to rehabilitate is lost.
7. Working towards reintegration with society, assisting with legal, social, therapeutic and other necessary resources.
8. Providing a 'first base' to adapt to, and attain to certain standards, before referral to following phases.
9. To endeavour for the children to be readied for a further phase of development, whatever that may be (Intombi Shelter, drug rehabilitation, reorientation, therapeutic accommodation, welfare placement, shelter placement, reintegration with family, etc.).
10. Equipping the children with the necessary life, social and personal skills to make their chances of success in further phases more likely.
11. To recruit, train and employ volunteer workers to facilitate the various aspects of The House Dropin Centre.

Aims and Objectives [ The House Drop-in Centre - Senior Section (females - all ages) ]

1. Providing a therapeutic casual drop-in care centre for females of any age.
2. Providing facilities accommodating 45-50 people daily.
3. Prevention and early intervention into the lives of women and children lured to, and trapped in a life of prostitution and drug addiction.
4. Interaction is value based - based on Humility, Simplicity and Compassion.
5. Providing for basic physical, emotional and social needs - providing first aid, basic meals (bread with peanut butter and jam, coffee/tea), wash facilities, laundry facilities.
6. Enhancing quality of life, in line with the harm reduction principle, without making life in the street so bearable that motivation to rehabilitate is lost.
7. Working towards reintegration with society, assisting with legal, social, therapeutic and other necessary resources.
8. Providing a 'first base' to adapt to, and attain to certain standards, before referral to following phases.
9. To endeavour for the women and children to be readied for a further phase of development, whatever that may be (The House overnight facilities, drug rehabilitation, reorientation, therapeutic accommodation, welfare placement, shelter placement, reintegration with family, etc.).
10. Equipping the children and women with the necessary life, social and personal skills to make their chances of success in further phases more likely.
11. To recruit, train and employ volunteer workers to facilitate the various aspects of The House Dropin Centre.
    

Philosophy

Although the centre operates on the harm reduction principle, following that it is better for the children to be in the centre than on the streets, it should never be seen as a 'lounge for prostitutes' or to be making life on the streets easier so as to condone -   but rather to be a temporary therapeutic intervention in the lives of these children, assisting them to come to decisions and to put into practice a feasible Future Plan.

Mission Statement

To retrieve female children from the streets, particularly from the subcultures of vice in the Johannesburg area and to capacitate the children by means of providing life skills training and counselling to choose alternatives to life on the street as a child-in-prostitution.

Situated on 62 Olivia road, Hillbrow Drop-in is right in the heart of the drug and vice district of South Africa. Hillbrow Drop-In Centre is a facility aimed at providing young girls and women a safe place to go to. Most of these girls live on the street because they are involved in survival prostitution or do not have a place to sleep because they may have run away from an abusive home. They come to the streets of Hillbrow in search of a better life and end up caught in a circle of prostitution and sometimes drug abuse.

At the Drop-In, the girls can take a shower, wash their clothes and have a meal. Here they are treated with respect and they are not judged for their lifestyle, but are loved and cared for by Youth Care Workers. The Drop-In provides a safe place for the girls away from the dangerous streets of Hillbrow.  Their choices are respected, although they are encouraged to leave the streets and integrate with society or their families. The first giant step is when a girl makes the choice to leave the streets and commits herself to an integration programme.  Should she choose to go to Intombi Shelter for girls, she is transferred to Intombi Shelter after a probation period at the Drop-In to ensure the safety of the girls in Intombi.

The primary goal of early intervention services is to serve as reunification with the family and reintegration with normative society.