On Monday evening, besides having meetings with Children in Trouble about the Summer visit, I met Frank Schwarz, an American who lives in Minsk with his Belarussian wife, to discuss projects we might have in common. He is interested in setting up a small group home for some of the physically disabled children from Novinki, and is also planning a training programme in Portage, a type of ‘Early Intervention’ support for children with disabilities. I said that we would like to know more about both these initiatives and we promised to exchange information.

At UNICEF I signed the agreement for our $6,000 grant which will fund three visits to Britain in the Autumn – from the Minister’s group, three senior members of the Education and Social Protection Departments in Gomel and a group from Abandoned Babies Home. (We also have a grant from the British Embassy to fund an Early Intervention training visit to Britain, a physiotherapist to Belarus and Sue and Brian Carlyon to go to Gomel to organise a Symbol Communication training programme). Elena Selchenok, the lead UNICEF officer in Belarus, was very enthusiastic about our ideas to help set up small units in some of the special schools and/or a house in Rogachev. Natasha and I also talked to her about Elena Lutsevich, who has applied for a huge European Union grant, with some support from CCP(UK), to provide support to young people when they leave orphanage care. I suggested that it would be good for Elena and her colleagues to come to UNICEF to discuss their plans and to find out what else is being discussed in this area of work. She was keen to meet them and would also like to compile information about all the social initiatives being undertaken in Belarus to ensure that there is co-operation and inter-action between projects whenever appropriate.

At the Republican Rehabilitation Centre in Minsk, Albina the Director was anxious about her future, believing that her contract would not be renewed when it runs out in mid-August. She is still full of plans for the centre, the biggest one being a Horse Riding Therapy Centre. She has the money for the plans and permissions for this, about $9,000, but said the whole project and salaries for the first year or so would cost about $80,000. I don’t know if she was hoping for any help from us with this, but all I could think of was that we could create three mini Cloud Nine homes for this sum. She would also like a sensory garden for the children in the park next door. She is hoping that she may become deputy director and be able to supervise these projects. She was an architect by profession before she became head of the Centre she created and perhaps this supervisory role would be more appropriate for her.

Whilst at the Centre we also met Natalia and Nadezhda who had just returned from a visit to North Yorkshire, organised by Jean Holt. Nadezhda was a psychiatrist at Novinki, the huge home for mentally disabled children in Minsk and she was so appalled by the way children who are distressed or disturbed are treated in Belarus that she resigned and she now plans to set up a small project with Natalia, a Deputy Director of the Rehabilitation Centre, to promote appropriate care and support for children with challenging behaviour. They had both found the visit to Yorkshire extremely useful and had come back brimming with ideas. They will put together their thoughts on setting up a unit to support about ten children who are in danger of getting into trouble with the law, so they can work with the children, the school, the parents and the police to try to turn the situation around. Denis Krivosheev, who was their interpreter in Britain, will help them to prepare a grant application.

We were joined by Elena Lutseva and another Natalia who are planning the big project to support teenagers leaving care. There was a certain amount of friction between them and Nadezhda, as she clearly thinks that their knowledge is largely academic and they do not have the practical experience to work effectively with such young people. However, we had a useful discussion and I suggested that they visit UNICEF as soon as possible (they did this a few days later and have subsequently written to say that they now wish to set up an international NGO to further their work and asked us to support this).

On the Tuesday afternoon Natasha and I accompanied Anna Gorchakova, Director of the Children’s Hospice in Minsk, on a visit to her ‘Summer House’. She has been trying to get me to visit this house in the countryside, an hour and a half out of the city centre, for at least two years, so eventually I had given in and said I would go.

On the journey we talked about Anna’s plans. She too has applied for a large grant from the EU’s TACIS programme. She spent several months liaising with an Austrian partner about the establishment of adult palliative care in Belarus. If they get the money it will not be available until next year, so in the meantime she hopes that Lynn Hutton, the Education Officer from Springhill Hospice in Rochdale will be able to visit during the Autumn, and she is also hoping for a second visit from Jean Davies, the Manager for Sick Children‘s Nursing in North Wales who has organised several excellent educational programmes for hospice staff in Wales. She is delighted that Anna Goldman, the Children’s Palliative care Consultant from Great Ormond Street has promised to visit in November. We need to find funding for all these visits, so I will apply to the Victor Zorza trust again. Anna is also in need of a ventilator for a child who will have to spend months in hospital otherwise. This is not just an oxygen machine but also one which will inflate the lungs and can be used with a tracheostomy. I will seek advise about this from a home care team in Salford.

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