ANALYSIS O F FINDINGS
5.5 CHALLENGES FACING CHBC TRAINING PROGRAMMES
about ordinary people who only read about awareness campaigns on billboards created by Lovelife ?
In my view, the stigma and ignorance that surround the issue of HIV and AIDS is still the number one killer of people living with AIDS. As indicated in the reports of the three caregivers who work for the CDC, since the introduction of ARVs some people fail to access drugs in fear of being known to be HIV positive in their communities. Due to this reality, it is sad to note that people continue to die unnecessarily. My argument is that voluntary caregivers have the potential as agents of change, to transform the present reality. This can happen only when the CHBC ensures that the learning is situated, and building on people's realities.
5.5 CHALLENGES FACING CHBC TRAINING
and begin to realize the importance of using the training to put them on a career path.
During the review of various CHBC training manuals, which included a training manual of the CHBC of the organization in this study, it was observed that many CHBC courses are not accredited with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).56 Uys (2003: 12) cautions that exploiting voluntary caregivers' vulnerability is not to be commended. She goes further to say that the CHBC training invested in volunteers should give them additional skills and confidence, and in some instances, make them employable.
However, even though it might seem right for voluntary caregivers to grasp any opportunity for employment that comes their way, this arrangement is not always practical for many CHBC organizations in KZN who are expected, particularly by funding organizations, to deliver measurable results, and these organizations often work under financially constrained environments. Therefore, they find themselves trapped in positions with high expectations placed upon them, feeling the weight of responsibility without sufficient resources to perform the way they would wish. This simply means that a dropout in the number of voluntary caregivers who have moved to formal employment is not perceived as a success story. In the case of the CHBC under investigation, it was established while conducting this study that to retain their voluntary caregivers, they have initiated certain strategies such as withholding certificates presented after the course, until caregivers complete their 6 months practical component, which is now considered strictly as an important component in the course. It needs to be noted that this was not the arrangement in their former CHBC trainings, nevertheless as a result of voluntary caregivers turnover they considered this to be an appropriate response.
Offering further training
The study indicated that some of the CHBC trainers are unable to deal adequately with the challenges involved in the training of voluntary caregivers for people living with AIDS. Therefore, there is a need for re-training CHBC trainers, with emphasis
56 The South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) Act was passed in 1995. The Act brought the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) into being, with SAQA as the body responsible for developing and implementing the NQF. The NQF was created to drive a process of creating parity between academic and vocational learning, as well as between formal, non-formal, and informal learning (Allais: 2003)
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on the adoption of adult education principles. As the study has shown, the participants in CHBC trainings are mainly adults, therefore, it is a basic necessity for trainers to have skills and/ or experience in basic adult education methodology. As all caregivers recognized that they have been doing home-based care all along without even knowing, "I have been in caregiving all my life ".
Unlike children, adults bring prior experience into the learning situation, and for this reason, adult education principles argue for a need to build on such experience, since adults do not learn in a vacuum, but bring their experiences from their social context into the learning environment. Post-modern feminists support this view as they proclaim that all identities are socially constructed and therefore the outcome of context-specific relationships (Hurtado, 1996). However, this does not mean that facilitators need to romanticize the experiences of adults without any critical engagement. Brookfield (1987: 37) stipulates that there is a need "to identify and challenge assumptions" to promote critical thinking and perspective transformation.
This occurs when one becomes aware of and begins to question the habitual role or system of rules that he or she automatically follows in a given situation and begin to acknowledge that alternatives exist.
As mentioned in the study, during observation in the training, the CHBC trainer made no attempt to challenge some of the misconceptions presented by the training participants. As a result, the trainer failed to adequately address some of the key challenges prevalent in the field of HIV and AIDS, such as misinformation, ignorance, denial, stigma, and discrimination. A potential danger could be that while on the field of care, caregivers could perpetuate the existing misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. For example, when I accompanied one caregiver, Sibusisiwe, to visit one of her patients in the local community I observed the following: We found a terminally ill young man of about 35 years old. The man was with his parents, wife and children, when we arrived. He related a story of how he had been bewitched by colleagues at work who were jealous of him, thus bluntly denying the possibility of being infected with AIDS. The voluntary caregiver continuously offered unrealistic reassurance that things would get better, despite the fact that the PLWHA was actually dying without a proper diagnosis. Clearly it would have been most helpful to
the family, particularly the wife who was also present, for the voluntary caregiver to find out how the entire situation affected them, and listen with minimum interruption.
Such attitude could have probably helped the family to express their anger and frustration and put them onto a path towards inner healing, and might have lead the wife to go for counseling and a test, herself. However, such an attitude could be attributed to the emphasis in the CHBC training placed on how voluntary caregivers should make PLWHA and families feel better, which then compels caregivers to be flattering and pleasing even in complex situations.