Trauma & Reconciliation
Leading UK institution joins our circle of care in Kosovo
For over ten years now One to One Children’s Fund has been at the forefront of trauma and reconciliation in Kosovo, rebuilding the lives of children in the aftermath of the conflict. Our two counselling centres in the Prizren and Peja Regions of Southern and Western Kosovo were turned into day care centres with a grant from the European Commission and some funding from the Medicor Foundation to provide social services to children with special needs.
Filling a crucial gap in the provision of such services in the country, the One to One day care centres offer daily educational activities, physical therapies and counselling for children with special needs from the region and their families. In parallel, the Charity supports a children’s shelter for abused, trafficked and abandoned children and has developed a programme to strengthen the capacity of national and local social welfare services.
Our well trained staff are central to the work we do, which is why we were extremely honoured when Rose Johnson (CEO of the Speech, Language and Hearing Centre, Christopher Place) agreed to offer our staff additional training.
The training took place between 24th-27th October 2011 and the feedback has been phenomenal! Amongst the issues the training focused on were on the development of visual schedules, especially for children who need structure and routine, ways of using social stories to help autistic children undertake simple tasks and increase the involvement of their parents and other caretakers.
Rose prepared a great training handout, which offered staff a template that could be used to assist in the day to day work of the centre. Staff were encouraged to reflect on their own practice and ways to ensure continued improvement. After a formal evaluation of the 4 days training, each person considered 3 targets they would pursue over the next three months and two things they hoped to do, rather than they would definitely do by May next year. Rose very kindly committed herself to posting these back to them in February and May 2012.
It is clear that the staff were very much inspired by the training given, as reflected in one staff member’s saying: “the gained knowledge is helpful and it will help very much in our work with children, everything welcomed, especially stimulating the communication among pupils and the parents.”
Rose praised the great commitment to the children shown, their extensive knowledge of the children’s backgrounds and family circumstances as well as the team work palpable in both centres. We are enormously grateful for Rose’s recommendations and look forward to drawing on the expertise of her and her team in the future. This training is particularly timely as 121 CF will be applying for an additional contract to extend our work in Kosovo with the assistance of the EC in the new year.
It was a pleasure and honour to welcome Rose to our centres, her first-class training and advice is invaluable to the charity and the centres’ staff.
