We believe that to provide quality care for the children we need the right staff to child ratio as you would find anywhere in the U.K. We currently have eleven full and part time carers for the children all carefully selected, a nursery teacher and three helpers in the garden and home farm. There are always two carers that sleep over with the children and Naomi and Bill who are the managers are also on site.
We employ a teacher who works with the nursery aged children every weekday mornings. This encourages the children to engage in all the early educational skills. Two of our older children go to a school in Kitale. We feel this is beneficial to broaden their educational and social experience outside of the home. We feel that a sound education is essential if the children are to one day be independent and happy adults. We hope to offer this to all our children as they grow older with individual sponsorship for their education and we currently have children needing this extra provision.
The children go to pastor Winnie's Church on Sunday mornings. They are kindly collected by the church vehicle and are accompanied by the staff for a very warm and lively service held in the Kitale Museum.
Many of the babies arrive in a malnourished state. Malaria, TB, typhoid is always a threat. HIV status needs to be tested and medical advice and treatment is always sought as soon as a child appears ill. Medical treatment in Kenya is private and is paid for out of our budget.
As part of creating funding for the centre, we are using 3/4 acre of the land that comes the house to grow beans to sell. We also grow spinach, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbages to feed the children directly. Formula milk, maize, flour, pulses, beans and meat still need to be bought. Our food bill is roughly 1/5 of our monthly budget.