You Need
We are delighted to be sponsoring Melissa Potter, a Speech & Language Therapist working in China.
This is the first of her reports about her work:
It is almost a month since I arrived in Changsha in Central China. I am here for six months as a volunteer Speech & Language Therapist working for International China Concern (www.intlchinaconcern.org). This charity has been working with abandoned special needs children here in the Hunan province for the last ten years. They currently run an orphanage in Heng Yang (which they have just recently taken over) and seven homes in Changsha where I am based.
Changsha is not really your ideal holiday destination, it is very loud, very polluted and the traffic is crazy! There are not many Westerners who come here so being intensely stared at is the norm. Very few people here speak English, and as I don’t speak much Mandarin, I’m getting a first hand experience of what it’s like to have a communication difficulty!
Thankfully many of my colleagues here do speak the language, or are at least part way through their language study programmes. International China Concern (ICC) have a number of international Occupational Therapists, nurses, and one physio here at the minute. They employ local care staff and
also general ‘therapists’ who have mostly been trained for a year or two in massage and some basic physical therapy. ICC put a lot of time into training local Chinese staff. They run child care courses and encourage our local staff to professionally develop their own skills.
China is a rapidly developing country, however it is going to take time, and in some ways education, for attitudes towards people with special needs to change. There are a number of reasons why children are abandoned in China. One of those reasons is the divide between the rich and poor. The Chinese don’t have a national health service like ours in Britain and therefore many families abandon disabled children because they can’t afford to pay for any surgery or care that their child may need.
ICC have never had an SLT working here for any length of time so I am starting almost from scratch. I am very thankful to have had another SLT colleague, Jane Steele, here for the last month. Jane came out to Changsha about a month before I arrived and is due to leave in a couple of weeks time. She has been a huge help and I arrived to find that she had already just started to do some really good oro-motor and listening and attention work with some of the children.
The young people in ICC’s care range in age from birth to 30 years. ICC keep the kids in their care for life. There are children with all types of disabilities; many have cerebral palsy, some have visual or hearing difficulties, some have autism, epilepsy, spina bifida, hydrocephalus or Down’s syndrome, to name just a few.
There are so many children here who have communication difficulties! At the minute I am working at two of the orphanage homes, predominantly with children with cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, and children with quite severe intellectual disabilities. Jane and I have also been running short language groups at one home where the children have been making some amazing progress learning some basic Makaton signing, and using some Picture Exchange Communication methods. The children are also becoming more aware of the movements and sounds they can orally make.
A lot of time here is taken up trying to develop the children’s play skills. We are trying to improve their eye contact, turn taking, symbolic play skills, visual tracking, even just trying to get them to start exploring toys! The kids don’t have many toys that they have access to in their free time, and one of the main problems is trying to get the carers to actively ‘play’ with the kids. It is a cultural issue as well as a resource one, but hopefully with further training and lots of demonstration the carers will start to see the benefits!
There is a desperate need here for communication aids, especially for the intellectually bright children with cerebral palsy who aren’t able to speak. I am very grateful that Inclusive Technology has provided a bursary to enable me to start providing an alternative voice for many of the children and young people here who have not had the chance before to fully express themselves.
I will look forward to letting you know more about these very special children in the months to come.
Melissa Potter
Read Melissa's second report here.