Date: 30.01.09
Venue: Udayan Care office, 16/97A, Vikram Vihar, Lajpat Nagar IV, behind Vikram Hotel
Participants:
MM Vidhyarthi, CWC, Lajpat Ng.
Mamta Sahai, Savera/ CWC MayurVihar
Kiron Modi, Udayan Care
Vikram Dutt, Udayan Care
Ranjan Ghosh, Udayan Care
Sheela Goyal, Udyan Care
Shubhra Shahare, Udayan Care
Zaved, Butterflies
Bishwanth Mahato, Butterflies
Anita Rawat, Butterflies
Surya Prakash, SBT
Shashi Singh, SBT
Preeti, Deepalaya
Dharamveer Singh, Deepalaya
Rashmi Nair, Deepalaya
Dr. Alok Kumar Bhuwan, Manovikas Charitable Society
Kumari Gareema, Manovikas charitiable society, (BRAC, DU)
Dooly, (BRAC, DU)
S.P. Sharma, Bal Sahyog
Megha Sharma, Manovikas Charitable Society (BRAC, DU)
Pooja Negi, Trainee (BRAC, DU)
Ravi KantYadav, Trainee (BRAC, DU)
Kesar Parveen, Project Officer, QIC&AC Delhi
Agenda of the Meeting:
To discuss the concerns and experiences by the care givers working in the Children Homes from the selected organizations who will speak/discuss their experiences on the day of Mental Health Consultation on 6th & 7th Feb.09.
Before starting, Vikram Dutt Ji introduced Dr. Alok Kr. Bhuwan from Manuvikas Charitable Trust (MVCT) and invites him to explain the model of MVCT. Dr. Alok talked about the respite care provided to the parents of the special children and the need of habilitation of the special children. Before 6yrs. he started providing respite care services to parents of handicapped children. He also shared that there are only 150 respite care centers in India.
On the day, most of the participants were new therefore all were introduced themselves with there area of interest and expertise.
To establish the common understanding on the agenda i.e. Mental Health as per the JJ System, Kiran Modi Ji stated S-46 for the participants.
Points Discussed:
Mr. Dharamveer, Deepalaya initiated the talk shared about the strategy they have adopted to serve the best services to the children. Acc. to him, when they found children at railway station they record the physical appearance of the child which is usually not satisfactory. Then they immediately send them to counselor who tries to take the background details and prepared their individual report. If child able to write they prefer to take the details in his/her own writing. Same time care takers continuously observe their activities to analyze the status to plan the future action.
Activities such as: feel isolated and not accepted the scheduled activities as they usually like to live their own free life.
One thing commonly accepted by the participants is that children run away from their houses due to the want of love and affection. And so we should not scold them when they reached at our Homes.
He shared that as perhis views, when children are not ready to share and we force them. This would affect on their perception. In view of this only he himself also prefer to walk out on such instances but keep watching on their activities and tries to join them to create the accepted environment to them.
Ms. Shashi, SBT added, she prefers to engage the children after their admission in Home.
Here, Mr. Vikram Dutt put up his concern regarding the behavioural changes children usually come across after their admission in Homes.
Mr. S.P. Sharma, Balsahyog, introduced his organization & its fabulous work with children. He shared, they started residential Home in 2005 only. Earlier they provided services to people from lower economic group and identify needy children and facilitate them in getting vocational training from various agencies. In the initial days Ms. Indira Gandhi regularly visited balsahyog and listen their problems. Latter with the object to address their problems they started organizing “child conference”.
Mr. Dutt while facilitating the talk put forward his concern that children are already come from distress and we are also pushing them towards discipline, education & hygiene. Besides, children usually catches their pear group and so do involve in some god as well as bad habits. What would be the strategy to handle such situation and to handle the negative influence?
Mr. Bishwanath Mahato added that some times two children start fighting due to “n” number of reasons. At such instances it would be very difficult to resolve the crises. After elaborated discussion on the same it was come out that rational approach is very important to get the positive outcome. Such as, to give some punishment to both the parties to made them understand that they both are important and equal before care givers. Therefore indirect massage sould be given to them that they are cared by someone.
Mr. Dutt put forward several examples from Udayan Care for the common understanding on the issues of concerns while dealing with children and so facilitates the care givers to analyze their experiences when they deal with the problem of bad habits i.e. speak lie, stealing things, withdrawal of studies. He asked them to share their own strategies to tackle with such problems.
On this, all care givers started putting forward such situations they ever faced. Few of them are:
1) Violent behavior of the child
2) Use of abusive language
3) Not ready to go to school
This discussion emerge the quarry that what would be the first reaction of the care givers & how they tries to stop such behaviour either by slapping the child or with the polite attitude.
Here, Ms. Kiran Modi, Udayan Care shared that Child protection Policy should be the part of ACT so that we ensure the optimum standards to be followed at all Homes.
Mr. Ranjan, Udayan Care, showed his disagreement with Mr. Dharamveer when he says he leave the child alone when he was not ready to cooperate/share. He added, he tries to join the child’s activity even though he showed non cooperative behaviour till the time child didn’t start thinking to join him in his activities as he does
After the prolonged discussion group consented that caregivers may have different strategy to handle the same situation but fact lies in the intention & expected outcome which should be in the best interest of the child. Mr. Dutt added that Mental Health is not a medicine, it is a long term treatment. Mr. Ranjan added that he provided special care to the problem children and also consulted to Dr. Deepak Gupta, Psychiatrist, when ever needed.
Mr. Dutt continue to facilitate the discussion by putting the concerned issues such as, handling of girl child who has been raped several times and at last reached to Home. Ms. Shashi, SBT, shared that in one of her case a girl child was not ready to share about herself. When she ignored her she herself came forward to share the details.
Ms. Sheela, Udayan Care accepted that some times even after the best efforts they were not found the positive change in the child. On this Mr. Dutt said that is children have the same understanding of love & affection what others have. By putting example he tries to focus on the perception of the children and applied the participants not to influence from their personal believes/ perceptions. It may be happened that we are saying to the child that call us mother but he/she has some bad memory attached with this word “mother”.
Mr. Dutt also shared that it is the hard reality to accept that even though girl child may safe on street from rape but almost all male children on the streets are the victim of sodomy.
Mr. Dutt address the problem of changing statements by the children. Through putting examples, he shared the tendency of cognitive development in the children. In which they were not hiding information purposely. But it is because of common believe of reminding only good memories. Therefore according to him strategy to handle the memories should not to “forget them” but it should be to “accept them”
Mr. S. Prakash, SBT, said that care givers should recognize their work then only other will do. Also they should not take any failure as a personal failure. Mr. Sharma, Balsahyog added, if they provide space to the children to speak and share, most of the problem get resolved at their initial level only. He shared about the provision of children conference they have adopted and get the positive change in the behaviour & attitude of the children.
At the end, Dr. Alok shared about the difference between their services under the National Trust Act with the professional care givers who works on the behaviour of the children whose chronicle age would be more then 18yrs. but mental age is less then 18yrs.
Mr. Dutt suggested to Alok ji organizing capacity building programme for the caregivers while handling the mentally challenged children.
Outcome of the discussion: Parameters were decided for the final representation by the care givers on the day of mental health consultation. Parameters revolve around the problems such as:
a) Speaking lies;
b) Violence;
c) Ignoring studies; and
d) Non-cooperation etc.
· Ms. Preeti, Deepalaya agreed to record this particular session on the day of Mental Health Consultation.
· Capacity building prog. would be organized by Dr. Alok, Manovikas to orient the care givers to deal with special children more professionally.
