By TK NG | Adminstration Officer
Community Educational Exhibition
This year's community educational exhibition was held on 2 June 24 at the basement of Kowloon City Plaza (KCP). By then, we hired the LCD video wall from KCP to broadcast HKACLP’s promotional video continuously. We also prepared 10 educational game booths enabling the public to learn from the games the problems faced by patients with clefts, the treatment they need and how to get along with them. During the exhibition, there were some display boards giving information about the craniofacial anomalies, the treatments required and the services providing by HKACLP. Some volunteers helped in answering queries from the participants and held the quiz games. We also had set up a Wishing Tree at the venue so that the participants could write down their wishes and stick onto it. There were about 300 people joining the event and 40 volunteers assisted in hosting game booths and charity sales, keeping order, distributing leaflets and answering enquiries. Through community educational exhibitions, members of the public can know more the difficulties and needs of cleft lip and palate patients, so as to promote their acceptance and care to the affected patients, with an aim to reduce discrimination against the patients and promote social inclusion.
Oral Myofunctional Therapy Workshop
Due to cleft anomalies, the affected children may have slower growth of their upper jaw. It is because they have undergone palate repair surgery around 1 year old, some oral muscles have been damaged, so the development of oral muscles will be poor. Furthermore, the palatal scars are inelastic and creates pulling force which hinders the growth of the maxillary bones that resulted in dented midface and under-bite problems. Oral muscle dysplasia will also seriously affect language development, resulting in ambiguous pronunciation, apart from affecting chewing function. In more severe cases, some children may fail to coordinate oral muscles, causing failure to close the mouth resulting in crowded teeth & irregular teeth alignment. Proper Oral Myofunctional Therapy is very important. Multiple studies by foreign experts have proven that proper oral muscle exercises are wholesome to the affected children. Therefore, HKACLP collaborating with Dr. Vicky Tsui, orthodontist & qualified oral myofunctional therapist, organize from time to time Oral Myofunctional Workshop for cleft lip and palate children.
On 13 April & 11 May 2024 two sessions of workshop were help with the help of Dr. Tsui’s team. There were altogether 24 children members and their parents joined the workshops. The parent-child teams learned a number of exercises for them to practice at home every day so as to improve the children’s upper jaw growth and dental bite, thus helping their eating, communications and social interactions.
Prenatal & Postnatal Support for Mothers with Born & Unborn CLP Babies
In order to ensure that pregnant mothers can receive support at an early stage, as soon as they contact HKACLP, senior volunteers parents are deployed to provide immediate & all-round support to new parents in the form of ‘one volunteer to one family’. The objectives of the service are as follows:
1) Sharing experiences, feelings, coping strategies etc. with new parents;
2) Reducing loneliness, distress, depression, frustration, anxiety and fatigueamong new parents;
3) Helping new parents to improve their skills to take care of their affected babies;
4) Motivating new parents to manage cleft anomalies and stick to treatment plans positively; and
5) Increase the awareness of new parents about cleft anomalies in order to help them seek appropriate treatment for their children.
Through this service, we aim to help the parents give the best care and due treatments to their cleft lip & palate children, so that they can rehabilitate smoothly without facial difference. The volunteer parents have cared for their own cleft lip & palate children on a daily basis, thus over the years they have become the true experts in raising the affected children. Their experience is very useful and invaluable for new parents that can make new parents feel at ease during the long journey of cleft treatment over twenty years.
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By TK Ng | Adminstration Officer
By TK Ng | Adminstration Officer
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