Care that comes to the house

Registered nurses and trained carers across the Helderberg — Somerset West, Strand and Gordon's Bay. Day visits, night shifts and live-in frail care, arranged inside a week.

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What we actually do in the house

Six things every family asks about before they phone. The packages and the prices are further down.

Round-the-clock care

Two hours a day or twenty-four. Bathing, dressing, feeding, turning, catheter and stoma care, wound dressings — whatever the discharge letter says needs doing, one of our people does it in your own house.

Night shifts

The hardest shift to staff and the one families need most. A carer is awake in the house from 19:00 to 07:00, seven nights a week, so somebody is on their feet when the calls start at two in the morning.

Trained, vetted, police-cleared

Every nurse is SANC-registered and every carer holds a recognised home-based care certificate. We verify the qualification with the council, run a police clearance, and phone two previous families ourselves.

Standing weekly visits

The same person, the same days, the same hours. A stranger every week is worse than no help at all, especially with dementia, so we build the roster around one carer and we hold it — December included.

The family kept in the loop

Every visit ends with a note: what was eaten, what was taken, how the night went, anything that changed. It goes to a WhatsApp group with whoever you put in it, including the daughter in Perth.

Medication managed

Weekly blister packs made up against the script, taken with the carer watching, and signed off on the chart. If the doctor changes a dose we fetch the new script from the rooms ourselves.

One sister and a bakkie, 2012

Marlene Fourie qualified at Tygerberg and spent nineteen years on the wards before she took a job nursing a retired farmer in his own house in Somerset West. His family had been told the only option left was a frail-care bed in Durbanville, an hour away from anybody who loved him. She nursed him at home for two years, and when he died his daughter asked whether Marlene could not do the same for a friend down the road. That was Sorg: one registered nurse, a white bakkie and a diary on the kitchen table. Fourteen years on there are forty-six of us and the diary lives on a computer, but the geography has not moved. We work the Helderberg basin and nothing outside it — Somerset West, Strand, Gordon's Bay, Firgrove, Sir Lowry's Pass and Macassar. Everybody on the roster lives inside that circle, which is why a carer can be at your gate in twenty minutes when a night goes wrong, and why we turn down work in the southern suburbs no matter what it pays.

14

Years nursing people in their own houses in the Helderberg, since Marlene took the first case in 2012.

46

Registered nurses, enrolled nurses and carers on the roster — every one of them living inside the basin.

112

Families on the books this month, from a two-hour weekday visit to a carer in the house day and night.

6

Towns we cover, and only six: Somerset West, Strand, Gordon's Bay, Firgrove, Sir Lowry's Pass, Macassar.

What care costs a month

Prices include the carer, the travel and the co-ordination. There is no joining fee, and nothing is signed for longer than a month at a time.

Companion

R7 400 a month

Two hours a day, weekdays
Bathing, breakfast, light housework
Lifts to the GP and the chemist
The same carer every visit

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Daily Care

R15 900 a month

Morning and evening visit, seven days
Medication given and signed off
Wound care and dressings by a sister
Note to the family group after each visit

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Live-in Frail Care

R28 500 a month

A carer in the house day and night
Two carers rotating, one week on
Registered nurse visit every Tuesday
Hoist and pressure-care training included

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Respite Week

R8 200 a week

Seven days, so the family can go away
Live-in or day visits only
Handover meeting before and after
Bookable on three days' notice

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Coming home from Vergelegen

“Four days’ notice that Pa was coming home with a feeding tube. Marlene met the ward sister, and by Friday there was a bed and a carer in our lounge. He had eleven months at home.” — Deon Wentzel, Strand

Families in the basin

My mother has dementia and does not cope with new faces. Elmarie has come on the same three mornings for two years and my mother still calls her by name.

Annalize Kruger · Somerset West

I work in town and my father is in Gordon's Bay on his own. The note that comes through every evening is the reason I sleep.

Sipho Mnyaka · Gordon's Bay

We took the respite week in June and it was the first time in three years my husband and I went away together.

Jenny Abrahams · Strand

The sister saw the pressure sore starting before any of us did and had the doctor at the house the same afternoon.

Willem Basson · Firgrove

The nurses who run the roster

Sister Marlene FourieRegistered nurse · owner

Nineteen years on the wards at Tygerberg before she started Sorg out of a bakkie. She still does the first assessment in every new house herself, and she is the one who phones the GP when something is not right.

Sister Nomsa NdlovuRegistered nurse · night roster

Builds the night roster and covers it herself when somebody is sick, which is more often than she admits. Twelve years of theatre and ICU behind her, so nothing that happens at three in the morning surprises her.

Elmarie SwanepoelEnrolled nurse · dementia care

Did the Alzheimer's SA course twice, once for the certificate and once because she wanted to teach it. She takes the dementia cases and trains every new carer on how to talk to somebody who does not know what year it is.

Riaan PetersenEnrolled nursing auxiliary · post-operative

Came to us from a rehab unit and handles the heavy work — hip and knee replacements, stroke transfers, hoists and pressure care. He is the reason we can take a patient who cannot weight-bear at all.

We can be there this week.

Phone 021 851 4460 and ask for Marlene. A discharge on Friday is not too short notice — we have done it before.

Arrange care

Sorg Tuisverpleging 8 Drama Street, Somerset West 7130 021 851 4460 · after hours 082 447 9013 marlene@sorg.co.za Office weekdays 08:00–17:00. The after-hours number is answered by the sister on duty, every night of the year.