For more information, visit

www.westerncapestreetsoccer.org

www.streetfootballworld.org/network/all-nwm/western-cape-street-soccer-league

www.homelessworldcup.org

News from the World Cup squad:-

Hi there, my name is Martin Africa, and at 32 years old I am the captain of the South African team competing in Milan. First of all I want to thank everyone who has made our trip possible. I can’t believe I am actually on the way, really this time, as I have had so many disappointments in the past.

Last year I was also chosen as captain, but I wasn’t able to get my identity documents through in time. This year I had a lot of help from Home Affairs in Cape Town, especially from Mts Jacqueline Englebrecht, so I had everything sorted, but then we had the problem with our airline tickets. Thanks to you guys, I can now believe I will be in Italy in a weeks’ time. It’s no longer just a dream.

We have been training for this event for nearly six months now, and we’re very fit. Our training sessions are daily, and involve every weekend. There will be eight players travelling, seven in-field players and one goalkeeper. When we play in teams it is four-a-side, with 7 minutes play each end – a full game is 15 minutes. It is fast and furious, so we have to make sure we can score accurately and quickly. We will be playing three games a day, and as the oldest in the team, the pressure is on me to perform… I am always getting teased about my age, and have earnt the nickname ‘old man’.

All of us come from the Cape Town area, and have spent the majority of our lives living on the streets. We have been involved in gangsterism, drugs and alcohol, and soccer has provided us with the drive and opportunity we have needed to change our lives for the better. Myself, I lived on the streets for 21 years, and was in and out of prison many times. I have been shot four times, attacked by a panga, stabbed by knives more times than I can remember, and was a member of the notorious 28 number gang.

Today I have put my past behind me, and I am looking forward to a better future for myself, and my son Renault, who is 4 years old. I want to save some of the money I will get as a subsistence allowance in Italy so that when I come back I can take my drivers’ test and get a good job. Football will always be my passion, and has been responsible, as well as my involvement with MyLifE, a charitable project here in Cape Town, in changing my life forever.

Thank you so much again

The A24 Group is delighted to announce that we are now sponsoring the South African football team to play in the Homeless World Cup, Milan 2009. We stepped in to fund the travel costs for the 10-man squad this week when I read that funding by the City of Cape Town had to end because of demands on their budgets in the recession.

The Homeless World Cup, Milan 2009, runs from 6th to 13thSeptember 2009, with 500 players from 48 nations.

An estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless. Football for homeless people builds self-esteem: it brings purpose and direction to their lives. Homelessness is a terrible waste of good people, usually overtaken by events with which they just can’t cope. I know from personal experience. I was homeless myself for a brief period, and with my three very young children lived in a refuge before starting Ambition in 1996.

South Africa hosted the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town in 2006. The domestic league now involves 100 volunteers and activities in various communities of Cape Town and the Western Cape focusing on education, social support and HIV awareness for street children. The league has grown to involve over 700 players in 55 teams. Some 50 per cent of the players are currently living on the street, a number of them are in drug rehabilitation programmes and others in institutions for street people.

SAHSS (South African Homeless Street Soccer) has successfully used football to foster healthy individual development, teach positive values and life skills, strengthen education, and prevent disease through education (particularly HIV/AIDS).

You can follow the team day by day here on our A24 Group blog at http://blog.a24group.co.uk/. We’ll be posting details of their progress, results, team and other news. All our divisions will be engaged, including Ambition 24hours and the NS group.

According to a poll by ‘Nursing Times’ magazine, one third of UK nurses may refuse to have the swine flu jab. Of 1,500 readers, 30 per cent would not say ‘yes’ to the vaccine, while 33 per cent said ‘maybe’. Just 37 per cent said that they would definitely have the jab.

Of those who said they would refuse the jab, 60 per cent said their main reason was concern about the safety of the vaccine. A further 31 per cent said they did not consider the risks to their health from swine flu to be great enough, while 9 per cent thought they would not be able to take time off work to get immunised. Some 91 per cent described themselves as frontline nurses.

Professor David Salisbury, the Department of Health’s director of immunisation, said it was unfortunate nurses would ‘knowingly leave themselves at risk’.

The survey comes after health chiefs said doctors should watch out for cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome when the vaccine is introduced in October. The syndrome, which affects around 1,500 people a year in the UK, attacks the nervous system and can result in temporary paralysis.

From The A24 Group: Ambition 24hours, Nursing Services or the UK.

Nurses, midwives, hospital doctors and dentists vacancies in the UK have increased for the first time in five years, according to official figures from the NHS Information Centre. Increasing patient demand, the lack of training places, staff retirement and changes in immigration laws are all thought to responsible for the situation.

Agency nurses and AHPs and locum doctors are now in peak demand by the A24 Group nationwide, and its divisions Ambition 24hours, Ambition 24Locums and Ambition 24AHPs.

The agency has recruited dozens of additional compliance staff to assist the process of registration and ensure that candidates can be available for work as soon as possible. The agency has one of the most advanced on-line registration systems of any locum or nursing agencies to enable medical staff to manage their availability and receive notification of more work, more easily than ever before, according to the agency.

Vacant nursing jobs increased from 2.5 to 3.1 per cent – of which 0.7 per cent were long-term, up from 0.5 per cent the previous year. The chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing has expressed concern about long-term vacancies – but even unfilled short-term vacancies leave nurses under unsustainable pressure, he said, with higher workloads, leaving staff too busy to provide the standard of care they would like.

The new European rules limiting junior doctors hours to 48 a week, which recently came into force, are also thought to have added to the pressure on staffing for healthcare providers. Senior doctors have called for the restrictions to be suspended until after the NHS has dealt with the H1N1 outbreak.

It is reported that vacancy figures, which look at jobs unfilled on March 31 this year, found that over 5 per cent of all NHS medical posts, which includes hospital doctors and dentists, were vacant. This is up from 3.6 per cent the previous year. The proportion which had been vacant for three months – which is considered an indication of hard-to-fill posts – was 1.5 per cent, up from 0.9 per cent.

Meanwhile, vacancies among GPs rose 1.2 to 1.6 per cent, although long-term vacancies remained broadly the same.

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All locums (www.a24locums.co.uk), AHPS (www.a24ahp.co.uk) and agency nurses (www.ambition24hours.co.uk) working in the UK must be fully compliant with Department of Health Measles and Mumps requirements to be eligible for work with the A24 Group. The Department of Health has written to Trusts to inform them that all healthcare professionals should be able to prove immunity.

Candidates will need to produce written evidence in the form of a compliant certificate of fitness. This requires that candidates have the following evidence available: proof of positive antibody for Measles and Rubella; or that they have received two MMR Vaccinations; or that they have received a series of two Measles, Rubella and Mumps Vaccinations (6 in total).

Also, if a candidate has a positive antibody for Measles and Rubella but his or her mumps are negative or equivocal then appropriate action must be taken as mumps immunity is still necessary. For further details contact us on the agency web sites – see www.a24group.com.

Latest figures show the uptake of the MMR triple vaccine in the community has risen slightly to 89.6% from 83.4%.

However, they are still a long way off the 95% level needed to provide “herd immunisation” and prevent the disease taking hold in the community among unvaccinated people.

Some states in the USA have a requirement for children to be vaccinated before they start school. The country has a 99% uptake of MMR among school entry children.

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