A rural home in KZN offers a glimmer of hope for terminally ill children

Categories: Care, Featured, and In The Media.

Children abandoned by government hospitals are finding a new home in a far-flung corner of rural KwaZulu-Natal as one foster family is giving hope to those in need of end-of-life care.

“The babies’ lives are like a butterfly. A flutter, a beautiful glimpse, short, but the beauty lasts,” says Tarryn Bell with a smile.

Bell and her husband, Dr Christoff Bell, are the founders of Butterfly Home, a foster home tucked away in the lush green landscape of Ingwavuma in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). But Butterfly Home is no ordinary foster home – they only take children in need of end-of-life care.

“We’re the only hospice setting as far as I know that only takes orphaned and abandoned children. We take the children that are forgotten in the government hospitals, that are just laying somewhere,” says Bell.

Butterfly Home, part of Izandla zeAfrika, a registered NPO, turns two in May 2020 and Bell plans to register the facility as a full-time hospice for children.

The Bells are made aware of each child through their connections in the medical and social work field. Prior to starting Izandla, Tarryn worked as a social worker at Mseleni Hospital in the Umkhanyakude district in KZN and realised the need for a special home for orphaned terminally ill/palliative children.

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