My Community

It has definitely true for me that building community around me in my work is necessary for my well-being. Having a private practice can be a very solitary endeavour.

Over the last two years I have had opportunities to be linked into community more. Wonderful people spanning different sectors in the Midlands and even nationally. Other therapists, people in the NGO field, and experts in advocacy who are out there advocating for protection of children.

Yesterday was a day of being with my community. Suzanne Clulow, of the CINDI network and I, presented training to just over 50 people on harmful sexual behaviours and a brand new tool that has been adapted for South Africa, called the HART tool. HART stands for Hackett Awareness and Response Tool.

Simon Hackett is the British academic who came up with the continuum of sexual behaviours in children.

In March 2025 two colleagues and I set up Khanya Collective as a response to dealing with harmful sexual behaviours in schools. I had my Khanya Collective hat on yesterday as I delivered training.

The response to the training has been amazing. From the evaluations we have already started looking at as well as verbal feedback on the day, participants found it helpful. And also, at times heavygoing emotionally. 100% agreed, dealing with child protection and safeguarding issues of any kind is heavy work. And, this is why we absolutely need community and cannot sustainably go it alone.

To every person in the room who showed up to be in this training, thank you. Social workers, child and youth care workers, teachers, therapists, ECD practitioners, nurses, and psychologists. From a range of organisations and schools and cultures in the Midlands. To the person who drove all the way from Durban to be with us. THANK YOU. As I sat in the room with you all, I was blown away by the hard work you do, many of you in the frontlines of child protection. You are My Community and I am grateful to every one of you.

Vote of thanks

To Jellybeanz, you have paved the way and made the connections for South Africa to receive world class training around this important topic of harmful sexual behaviour. Thank you for making so many of your resources open-source, for your huge hearts and open hands.

To my dlalanathi community colleagues, Lungelo, Skhumbuzo, Luyanda and Thabile for handling the registration table.

To Nontobeko (Beko), another dalalanathi colleague for being our MC for the day and keeping us on track.

To Robyn for keeping us on track before the event and for being willing in such a busy season to still be present and share dlalanathi's work with us.

Thanks to Ascot Inn for being great hosts.

To Suzie for helping to link me further into community for this work specifically. We don't know what is going to happen next, but I look forward to it if yesterday is anything to go by!