By Vivian Warby
Cape Town - Cape Town Executive Mayor, Helen Zille, on Thursday night [30 October 2008] paid tribute to Lifeline SA, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, acknowledging the efforts made by its volunteers, partners and donors.
The mayor thanked those who had been involved in growing the organisation from one branch in Cape Town to 26 branches across the country and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and serving 1.6 million people annually.
“Today LifeLine is a South African institution that everyone trusts, a symbol of our caring society, and an example to other non-profit organisations,” she said.
LifeLine, which now has its headquarters in Braamfontein, is a telephone and face-to-face counselling service. It operates under the belief that an emotionally-well person copes better with life's challenges, has higher self-esteem and maintains more meaningful and satisfying relationships.
Ms Zille said that the city valued the work that LifeLine did in providing emotional support, guidance and life education to citizens.
“In Cape Town we have a number of factors that impact on the emotional wellbeing of our citizens, including high crime rates, HIV and AIDS, unemployment and poverty. The flipside of the coin is that many of our serious social challenges stem from emotional and mental disorders, such as depression, including substance addiction, domestic violence, vagrancy and suicides.
“All of these factors impact on the health and productivity of this city’s workforce, youth and families.”
She said municipalities also aimed to address the root causes of many of the quality of life challenges that affect the people of Cape Town, within their constitutional mandates.
Ms Zille said local government’s core strategy for this region was to attract investment by creating a solid platform of infrastructure and services.
“We believe that this is the best way we can promote increased economic growth and job opportunities, the main drivers of development, which in turn helps to address challenges like poverty, unemployment and social fragmentation.
“This may sound removed from the issues of mental and emotional health but improved services and infrastructure also contribute to making a city an inspiring environment, and help to address the quality of life issues that can contribute to depression and mental suffering.”
The mayor said social problems arise as the city becomes more attractive for investment, including public drug and alcohol abuse, and social fragmentation, which all impact on conditions in Cape Town.
“So while we pursue the objective of creating a better and healthier living environment overall, we do also have targeted interventions to deal with these issues.”
In Cape Town drug-related crime has climbed from 5000 incidents per year in 2001 to 25 000 in 2006.
She said they had therefore taken a leaf out of LifeLine’s book and set up a substance abuse helpline.
“We are also trying to make similar counselling services to those offered by Lifeline more available, with specialised treatment for drug addiction. We are in the process of establishing evidence-based treatment facilities in our existing municipal clinics, which are aimed at reducing the impact of drug related crime in our city.
“At the end of June this year we were able to open the first Matrix Model outpatient treatment facility in South Africa.”
Ms Zille said that a series of similar outpatient centres would hopefully be opened during the course of the next two years in areas where the need is greatest. - BuaNews |
