Education Cambodia Project #35134

Therapy Services for 80 Cambodian Families

by Children In Families Organization

Project Report | Aug 23, 2019
August Global Giving Update

By Courtney Smith | ABLE Occupational Therapy Technical Advisor

ABLE has been busy with an increase in partner referrals, cases accepted and frequency of family visits. We are happy to see that more children with disabilities are remaining in their families and that those already in care are receiving an increase in therapeutic in home services.

5 New Cases in 2 Months

Providing holistic services for children with disabilities in family based care can be a slow process, however ABLE has found that slow and steady wins the race when working with families and children in crisis. Families often require weekly support in the beginning phases and ABLE is happy to see that this investment often results in stable families who have increased confidence to care for their children who may have complex needs.

Through ongoing advocacy with the wider disability community in Cambodia, ABLE has seen an increase in referrals from partner organizations over the past 3 months. These referrals result in an assessment with ABLE team and kinship care staff, where a plan is made with the family to provide support to ensure that families stay together whenever possible or find other solutions that result in children staying with extended families or other safe families in the community. This month, ABLE has accepted 5 new cases resulting in 4 out of the 5 referral cases remaining in their families. We are overjoyed to see children with disabilities realize their right to grow up in loving safe families.

Increase in Family Visits

A core service of ABLE is family visits: opportunities to meet with families in their homes and support them in a variety of ways such as psychical or occupational therapy services, special education, medication management, and family training. Many of the families who need these services live rurally in Cambodia, requiring ABLE staff to travel nearly a day in some cases to visit one family. The value of providing services in the natural environment has led to safer, more stable, and more confident caregivers. It’s also expensive and time intensive. We are excited to say that with increased funding and staffing we will now be able to see every family at least once a month. For many cases we see them weekly, especially families new to services or families experiences are particularly stressful time, but we are happy to say moving forward we will be able to meet our goal of increased frequency of services for all of our families. Thank you to all donors and supporters for being a huge part of making this happen!

Accessing Training and Improving Services

Through the support of our Global Giving partners we are happy to announce that we have hired new key staff members which was outlined in pervious updates. However, with ongoing support our staff have been able to access ongoing training in key areas of disability. These past few months our staff have trained in Autism and sensory integration and one staff has returned back to school to pursue a bachelors in physical therapy. These trainings have increased the quality of our care especially in the area of supporting children and their families with Autism.

The past few months have been busy and in reflection a fruitful time in seeing 5 children supported to remain in their families, an increased frequency of services provided to nearly every family, and an increase in quality of services for children with autism in family based care.

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May 29, 2019
An expanding teams means expanding services

By Courtney Smith | ABLE Technical Adviser

Chet and Bridget meet Srey Ny

The ABLE team would like to take a moment to say a special thanks for your continued support and update you on the progress of our team and families over these last few months.

An Expanding Team

To expand on our previous report, our team has welcomed an additional physiotherapist, Chet, and she has been a perfect addition to the team. She is busy already supporting families with medical appointments, in home therapy sessions, and providing additional coaching to our provincial staff around physical therapy interventions.

We are also happy to welcome Bridget to the team! She is an educational psychologist who will spend the rest of the year volunteering with our team to research, prepare and provide training regarding behavior management skills to our staff and families. Her experience in autism is especially valuable to our team as we seek to provide comprehensive supports to children with autism at school, home, and in the community.

Expanding Services

As the ABLE team expands in both expertise and staffing we look to increase the frequency and quality of our services. Previously our project manager, SreyNy Sorn, was wearing many hats as project coordinator and lead physiotherapist. As the team expands we are excited to free up time to increase staff training, home visits, and program development. We look to expand services not only to the families supported by ABLE but also to partner organizations. As staff numbers have increased, we have been able to provide consultation and training to two partner organizations around feeding, nutrition, adaptive education, and community inclusiveness. We look forward to expanding these partnerships so that many more children and families can receive the support they need to grow and thrive.

Expanding Confidence and Independence

For one young boy a supportive home environment has made all the difference in his confidence and independence at home and in the community. Before entering the project, he struggled to walk short distances without having breathing difficulties due to his chronic health issues. ABLE is happy to report that with family support, continued training, medical management, and home adaptation he is now running and playing with his sister around the family home. He loves to walk around the community with his family and welcome his sister home from school.

ABLE is happy to see that as our team expands, our expertise increases. It effects real life change in the families that we serve. ABLE has become convinced that children belong in families, and with the right support they can grow and thrive as valuable members of their communities.

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Mar 1, 2019
Inclusive families create Inclusive communities

By Lisa Yunker | Technical Advisor for the ABLE project

People with disabilities often face barriers which prevent them from participating in the life of their communities. The ABLE project works to remove the barriers that prevent children with disabilities from entering into family-based alternative care and making these systems more inclusive.

Community attitudes can often be one of the biggest barriers to inclusion of people with disabilities. Fear or stigma attached to disability can make a community less inclusive and keep people with disabilities isolated. In such an environment it may seem impossible to recruit a family willing to foster a child with disabilities who is not related to them, and even the sustainability of kinship care can be threatened by negative community sentiment.

What we have learned from our experience is that we don't need to look for inclusive communities, we just need to look for inclusive families who can pave the way for making their community more inclusive. Within any community there are people who think differently, who have had different experiences which make them more willing to take on the challenges that come with caring for a child with disabilities. By identifying the kind of families who are willing to take on the role of being a foster family, and then equipping them for that role, we help them to become community advocates. The experience of watching a family care for a child with disabilities breaks down barriers for others in the communities and begins to make the communities more inclusive. It leads to other families expressing a willingness to care for a child with a disability.

Since our last report...

In December, we reported that we were looking to recruit another physiotherapist and that they were in short supply. We can announce that we have hired a physiotherapist, named Chet Aom, who has recently graduated from the country's only physiotherapy training program. She will start mid-March. We have also enrolled two new children into the ABLE Project, both of whom are in Children In Families' Kinship Care project, bringing the total number of children in the project up to 49.

During January and February the Better Care Network filmed an interview with Srey Ny Sorn, ABLE's project manager, and Lisa Yunker, one of ABLE's technical advisers to share their learning. This video will be completed soon and will be available via the Better Care Network's website to allow other family-based alternative care organizations to benefit from the experiences of the Children In Families' ABLE team.

Srey Ny is speaking this week at a UNHRC side event on preventing unnecessary separation and institutionalisation of children with disabilities. We are grateful to share the lessons we have learnt about how to create inclusive communities that support children with disabilities and the families that care for them. We look forward to learning from the other organisations represented at this event and together, see children with disabilities thriving in loving families and communities. To find out more, follow our facebook page.

Thank you for your continued support. We cannot do this work without the generosity of partners like you.

With Much Thanks,

Lisa Yunker (ABLE Technical Advisor at Children in Families)

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/ChildrenInFamilies/

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