Medical And Healthcare Professionals

One of the founding objectives of FOC is to assist in the advancement of health and medical services in China. These programs have only been possible because of the excellent cooperation that has been established with local government health officials and provincial bureaus. FOC is grateful for this productive cooperation and continues to make plans for future academic exchange programmes and development programmes for hospitals and clinics.

Henan

Hope Henan, which operates under the NPO “Youhua” made five visits to orphanages and ran a number of training programmes: two to raise awareness of CABA5, four for volunteers and two on awareness. In addition to these, two further training programmes are currently being developed on “Building Resilience in CABA” as well as another on “Grief and Bereavement”. There is still ongoing research into the needs of CABA and the AIDS situation in China.

Shaanxi

Ms. Cheng, Hanzhong regional coordinator and senior occupational therapist, continued to be the supervisor for the foreign and local staff of the orphanage in Hanzhong. For the last five years, she has also been invited as an honorary supervisor of the Entry and Exit section of the Hanzhong PSB. She attended their meetings and gave feedback and annual reports. In addition, she is also a member of the board of Firm Foundations Training Centre (see below).

Sichuan

During 2008, FOC has continued to support Firm Foundations Training Centre, a residential skills training centre for disadvantaged and disabled teenagers in Nanchong.

Training teachers at Firm Foundations

From April to July, FOC provided an occupational therapist who visited Firm Foundations on a monthly basis to provide training and support for the staff, assess the students, and give advice about how to deal with the students’ physical needs. In August, this occupational therapist became a full-time staff member of the training centre.

During the course of the year, FOC has also introduced experts to the centre to provide staff training in a range of areas. Amongst other things, these have included, a five day course on improving interpersonal skills to help improve teamwork amongst the staff and better equip them for building up the student team, and a two month placement of an experienced teacher from Australia to provide teacher training for the staff and to provide support for the executive director. FOC also facilitated the formation of a training link between Firm Foundations and a business teacher, who made regular visits throughout 2008 to provide advice, training and support to the teachers who are training the students in business skills.

Following the earthquake in May, FOC provided people to support the trainers at Shepherd Counselling Company. Several training programmes were organised to train hundreds of volunteers to assist those who survived the earthquake. As well as this, Shepherd Counselling Company also trained teachers at various schools affected by the earthquake, both to assist teachers in how to understand and handle their own trauma response as well as that of their students.