Making Changes

Last week I told you about Joyce, our Hong Kong Chinese social worker who enjoyed working in our Children’s Home in Xining on the Tibetan Plateau.  The Home is primarily staffed with government-employed carers, most of whom have no prior training in caring for disabled children.  Joyce was able to train the carers in recognizing the needs of children with different disabilities.  She was also able to help parents of the disabled children in their own community. This is the story of one of those changes.

When Joyce first went to our Xining Children’s Home, she was distressed to see that busy staff regularly fed the children as they lay on their beds.  She quickly pointed out that there is danger of a child’s airway being obstructed by doing this, and she demonstrated that when a disabled child is held in a carer’s arms, or is seated, there is considerably less risk of a child choking on food.   

Another important factor when feeding disabled children is that a disabled child is often unable to chew or swallow large portions as fast as a normal child can do this. Joyce went and purchased smaller plastic spoons and demonstrated that the child could handle the smaller portions more easily.

Over the next month, Joyce sometimes watched the staff feeding children at mealtimes and snack times.  She says, “The child’s response to being held in the right position and fed smaller portions was evident to the staff.  There was no more crying and resistance from the children to being fed.  Staff could see that the children were calm and enjoyed the new way of being fed.  Staff also came to see that there was no time being wasted trying to get a child to eat food that could not be swallowed fast enough.”

These seem like small things to teach staff, but I know you’ll agree that these are changes well worth making as we continue to open the eyes of others to the difficult world of a helpless, disabled child.

Thank you for praying for us and financially helping to send more professionally trained people like Joyce to our Children’s Homes.