Training together: Community Based Rehabilitation staff with families
- Country:
- India
- Organisations involved:
Samuha-Samarthya has been working with people with disabilities through its Community Based Rehabilitation programme since 1989 in the arid, drought prone southern districts of the state of Karnataka, districts of Karnataka – Raichur, Koppal and Uttara Kannada - in South India since 1989. "Samuha" is the Sanskrit word for "organised group". Samuha-Samarthya works with over 1,400 families in 193 villages.
Samuha-Samarthya aims to meet the needs of people with different disabilities. It has been working in partnership with IDCS-India to meet the specific needs of deaf children and their families in its target areas. Read more about the partnership between IDCS-India and Samuha-Samarthya.
- Synopsis:
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Samuha-Samarthya and IDCS-India started working together on a partnership project in the district of Koppal. This project aimed to develop the capacity of home-based programmes to support deaf children and their families more effectively and to encourage the formation of self-help parents group.
Taking deaf children’s needs into account in CBR work
Before this project, Samuha-Samarthya’s community based rehabilitation (CBR) staff had attended training courses on CBR, ear mould making and hearing aid maintenance. However, they had received little specific training on deaf awareness, different communication approaches or on supporting deaf children to read and write. Based on this, it soon became clear that a key need was for CBR staff to improve their skills and awareness of deafness. IDCS-India conducted a training needs analysis to identify technical areas which should be included in the training workshop for CBR workers. It was also central to establish the level of understanding of participants. Levels of understanding are not all about the number of training courses attended or intellectual capacity. They are also influenced by the experiences of participants, their cultural background and the language they use. If these are different from those of trainers, understanding could become challenging. Trainers need to identify a level of understanding with which participants feel comfortable and adapt their training to meet these needs.
The four-day residential training programme which followed was attended by 20 members of staff from Samuha-Samarthya’s CBR programmes. 6 children from Samuha-Samarthya’s existing CBR target project areas were also invited accompanied by one parent.
Inviting parents and children to CBR worker training
Initially, deaf children and their parents were invited to provide practical experience for CBR workers during their training. Including beneficiaries into the training was very successful. It meant that
- CBR workers received hands-on experience in working with parents and children.
- CBR workers were able to get an insight into how parents felt, what THEIR priorities were for their child.
- CBR workers were more aware of and sensitive to the handling of parents and deaf children in their work.
- the skills and confidence of CBR workers has increased.
- CBR workers now have a better understanding of deafness, its implications and the ways in which to respond appropriately.
- CBR workers have realised the need for learning support materials. Throughout the training, CBR workers learnt simple and effective ways of creating and using teaching aids targeted to deaf children.
- learning support materials have become an essential part of their training kit during home visits.
- CBR workers are now able to share the lessons learnt with families during home visits.
There were also a number of unexpected outcomes to the training. These show the value of training parents and practitioners side-by-side. For example,
- CBR workers’ interest in their children, and the information they are being given during the demonstration sessions, has motivated parents to communicate more regularly with their deaf child.
- parents involved in this training are more motivated than their peers. They attend parents meetings and short stay camps more regularly.
- Parents are sensitised to the usefulness of hearing aid equipment and maintenance. Their children have been wearing a functioning hearing aid more regularly than their peers.
- Parents have increased their levels of communication with their deaf child.
It has also been reported that parents are now spending more time with their children and are making an effort to communicate with their children even when they are not using their hearing aids. Parents have also stopped preventing their children from expressing themselves using modes of communication other than speech, such as gesture and Sign Language. Parents have also been very creative in the range of activities and games they share with their child. Previously parents’ interaction with their child was limited.
Another positive indicator is that families feel more comfortable with CBR workers, now that they understand the rationale behind the activities that are carried out. In addition, the increased confidence of the CBR workers has helped to strengthen this relationship.
- Issues encountered:
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Gender and parental involvement
During this workshop, five fathers and one grandfather participated. During home visits however, mothers tend to be at the centre. They often are the parent most involved in caring for and working with deaf children.
As this training programme was essentially targeted to CBR trainers, the presence of parents was crucial. As this was a four-day residential programme, a higher presence of male members of the families was to be expected. In the cultural context of Karnataka, it would have been very difficult for women to leave her familial duties and her deaf child’s brothers and sisters to travel away from home and stay at a strange place for four days.
Organising this training session away from people’s homes made it difficult for mothers to participate actively. If this were the only method of reaching out to families, this course of action would never be appropriate. However, both parents have a role to play in their child’s life. It was a welcome experience for project staff to work with male relatives.
In addition, increased participation of male relatives and fathers, potentially increases awareness of and commitment to the specific need of the deaf child within his/her household. This appears to have been confirmed by the follow-up to the workshop which showed that fathers went back home feeling enthused and empowered.
Professional-parent interaction
Training parents and professionals together required a different dynamic to the expert-beneficiary divide usually present in training catering for one specific group. For example, there was a session where parents were involved in creating teaching aids. Parents helped making noun cards with matching flash cards. This provided parents with a clearer idea of why CBR workers produced these materials and also the level of effort that went into their work. Families also really enjoyed engaging in creative activities with their children. This was a great way of motivating them to continue these creative activities at home. Active and practical learning methods where both CBR workers and parents are involved were key to making this training useful.
After the training
Parents went back home happy with the work CBR workers were doing and were increasingly willing to support their efforts with their child. This may also be partly due to the confidence CBR workers were displaying as a result of their training.
Greater confidence in their own ability provided CBR workers with more motivation. As a consequence, their visits to families with deaf children increased from once a month to once a week. CBR workers reported that prior to the training they did not know how to teach and communicate effectively with a deaf child. They also said that the emphasis had shifted from teaching a deaf child speech to teaching the child language and improving his/her communication skills. One CBR worker said that before they used to think a child without a hearing aid could not be taught but that this had now changed.
Samuha-Samarthya CBR staff also decided to share what they had learnt to a number of families and organised a short-stay camp. During this camp, they covered similar topics to those covered during the training they had themselves received. Eight parents attended the camp, six fathers and two mothers. They made every attempt to make the training enjoyable, including plenty of fun and games.
The use of images and visual props was the main theme of the training. Visual aids provided to CBR workers during the initial training covered a wider range of topics, from teaching simple words to teaching full sentences and stories. CBR workers focused the training they provided parents on matching picture-to-picture stage. This helps build children’s visual discrimination skills, which contributes to reading whole words. Parents will be sensitised to other techniques gradually, through further training.
