CHERNOBYL CHILDREN'S PROJECT (UK)

Update on Training Programme

GOODBYE TO INSTITUTIONAL CARE FOR CHILDREN?

All our training is aimed at reducing the need for institutional care for children and young people by helping to set up new community based services and improving those which already exist.

Family based care is now well established and Adoption has now expanded to include children other than healthy babies. 432 children were adopted in the first 9 months of last year. Joan Hunt and Kate Jackson from North Yorkshire Social Services delivered training in how to support adopters at the National Adoption Centre in Minsk.

All 7 polyclinics in Gomel have set up parenting programmes based on the training delivered by Kirsty Hill from Wakefield Social Services and Dr. Lorena Cecchi from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Team in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. This will help prevent babies and young children from entering the baby home which has until now been the first step towards a childhood living in institutions.

Joan Hunt and Kate Jackson have trained family placement workers from every region in Belarus to set up banks of specially trained foster carers to care for babies and young children and prepare them to return home or move to adoptive families. This will lead to eventual closure of baby homes.

Setting up community based mental health services for children and young people to prevent in-patient care at the psychiatric hospital is being promoted by Dr. Siobhan Smart and David Loveday- Sims from CAMHS in Harrogate. Together they have delivered training in handling difficult and challenging behaviour and will make their 3^rd trip to Gomel in February to train in handling self harm and suicidal behaviour in the community.

The first 18young people on our Leaving Care Project have left the institution and entered their vocational schools. They have settled well with the support of their mentors, funded by our Italian partners Forum. There are now 50 young people benefiting from support and the mentors are now passing on what they have learned in training to foster carers of young people.