Guardian Angels

Vanessa Ruiters

Vanessa is an Occupational Therapist, who specializes in Sensory Integration. She visits our school every second Friday to train the staff and work with the children. Her sensory integration techniques have resulted in a marked improvement in our children's behaviour and their ability to concentrate.

Visiting Pets (VIP)

Janet, and her beautiful dog Daisy, from Pets as Therapy visit us in our classroom for an hour every Friday. At first the children were terrified, and much persuasion was needed to get them to even stand near Daisy. Week after week, Janet and her wonderful Daisy lovingly and patiently persisted. After a few short months, every one of our children has learned to love Daisy, and they now thoroughly enjoy the weekly visits. The children have learned to stroke gently, walk the friendly pooches on a leash, and feed

them treats. They are calm and relaxed in the dogs presence, and love stroking, brushing and cuddling their new friend.

The problems we experience with children and dogs are that some of the children are nervous of the "unpredictability" of the dogs, for example. sudden movements of the body, head, licking, tail wagging, etc. Once they get used to the "movements" of the animals, they soon overcome their fear and love to be near the dogs and to touch them.

Pictured above, Gill with Pippa from the old Pets as Therapy, they used to visit us on a Thursday. Now we have Janet and Daisy visiting us.

Volunteer Therapists

We have been very fortunate to have Speech Therapists from Frere Hospital and Occupational Therapists from Cecelia Makawane Hospital, visiting us from time to time, to assess our children and develop home programs for them. We look forward to a long association with these Hospitals and their 'Angels'.