The Abbeyfield SA Model

Mission Statement:

Abbeyfield South Africa facilitates opportunities for older people to become self-fulfilled in a caring, loving, and supportive environment within a secure and safe homely home where they co-exist in a supportive, compassionate, and dignified place of self-determination. As a financially viable, sustainable, and transparent NPO, we utilise our available resources effectively.

Vision:

Abbeyfield South Africa provides quality, independent, safe, and affordable homes to older persons, guided by our common international ethos, expanding into all of South Africa.

Our Core Values:

Caring about people, Support, Compassion, Dignity and Respect, Unity.

It is common cause that aging and associated progression to elderhood is a natural and inevitable process of human development and growth. The older persons have for the longest of time been regarded as fountains of wisdom and sources of blessings. Different societies throughout the world will continue to approach, embrace, and engage differently with aging.

These different approaches are by and large associated with prevailing socio-economic factors and cultural beliefs in different societies.

Other factors that contribute to the way older persons are treated these days are:

• Ongoing high levels of industrialisation and associated technological advancements that uproot people from their family homes to go and seek employment elsewhere.
• High levels of educational attainment, independence, emigration of young adults and their children in search of better job opportunities.
• Formation of new families where the newly-weds generally leave their older parents to establish their own families.

Older persons are often left on their own to look after themselves, lonely and vulnerable. The fortunate, educated, and affluent elderly can find themselves accommodation in retirement villages where they can be safe and in the company of their peers. Unfortunately, the less educated and affluent find themselves alone, lonely in their homes and vulnerable to abuse, violent crimes and more specially the prevailing scourge of gender-based violence.

Therefore, providing safe, affordable, and dignified accommodation to older persons has increasingly become critically necessary.

We believe that through the collective effort of the Abbeyfield Board, staff, and volunteers, we can continue to provide our model of housing opportunity. Companionship, friendship, and care for the elderly lies at the heart of Abbeyfield SA mission.