This community was established in 1976 and was where coloured families from Durban were relocated during the Apartheid era. Sarason defined community as "a readily available, mutually supportive network of relationships on which one could depend" (Dalton, Elias & Wandersman, 2007). If you compared this community to what this definition is saying you would see that the Mariann Ridge Community is providing supportive relationships for those in the coloured community but not to others and therefore aren't reaching their full capability of what they could be to one another.
Before we entered the community we had a tut with our lecturers as an introduction and to help prepare us. During this a lecturer said something very profound, she said that when we are doing our projects we must not be driven by our personalities and what we want but rather about what the needs of the community are. This really hit me because I often tend to go with what I want and what I think would work best but that is wrong because the people in the community know more than me with regards to what the needs are and what needs to change.
One of our projects in the community is in the Creche and Primary School in the area, we were coming in and running groups with the children to provide stimulation in order to encourage normal development and to pick up any delays in individuals. We have looked at it and because the OT students come and go it isn't sustainable to only treat the children, a more beneficial way of doing the project is to run an educative programme with the teachers to equip them with the skills and resources that they need. This is focusing on changing the environment that the child is in rather than just treating the child's problem, which in turn aid the treatment of the child's problems.
We have also started a new project which involves working with the clinic in the area, There is no OT or Physiotherapist that comes to service the clinic so the clinic lacks knowledge of what we do and how we can assist them. We met with the head sister there who sat down with us and told us what patients they see and how we could help them. So from that we have established a need for intervention with mothers and young children with regards to developmental milestones and education for the mothers on stimulation for the child.The checklist we will be basing the project on is the WITS Developmental Profile which gives us the gross motor, fine motor and social developmental milestones a child should of reached at a certain age.This age group is my passion and it fits in with a need of the community but i also want to increase my knowledge and scope of practice so I am going to be speaking to the clinic to see what other needs there are and maybe start a support group with the older members of the community who suffer from chronic illnesses and are needing assistance with regards to function and some education.
There is also a project at the high school which the Katey and Haseena will be heading up to do with empowerment of the adolescents. This is a tough project because you have to motivate the learners to attend the groups and make them fun but at the same time teaching them valuable things that they can use to change their lives. I will be working as a co-therapist in the groups and I am very excited to be involved because I have been involved with Micah 6 (http://micahsix.blogspot.com/). Katey and Haseena have also been doing a lot of research into this field and have found such amazing resources so I know that it is going to be a success. It is so important to target these adolescents at this age because they are going to be the next generation and the change needs to start with them in order to see long term change.
There have been breakthroughs with some of the things the group before us wanted to achieve. The first of which was getting into contact with DSW in order to get bins for the area outside the Library and Cafe where all the children congregate after school. Bins in the area are normally used to make drugs in so we ordered concrete bins but in the meantime we had new plastic bins delivered and these will have to be taken inside every night so that they aren't stolen. Me and a fellow student got so excited when this happened that we hugged each other and did a happy dance because we know how this will create pride in the area. We are also wanting to create a play area so a clean environment will make it more welcoming for the children after school to use it to play in. This seems like such a small win in the community but all these small wins add up in the end for the change this community needs.
Another breakthrough was learning about the Institution Level Support Team (ILST) which is a supportive structure at schools that focuses on the screening, identification and support of areas needing development. This team includes the whole school committee, educator support committee and the learner support committee. The support group is still in its formative stages but will be a vital resource to us working in the community as soon as it is up and running. There is going to be a meeting where this team will be discussed and we will be attending in order to give our input and see if they can help sustain our project in the school.
This is the Social-Ecological Model of Health that focuses on the different factors that will impact on an individual's health. A person's health is impacted by these different factors. It can be used to help us identify the different factors at different levels that contribute to poor health and to develop action plans and approaches to change the physical and social environments rather than modifying only the individual. This is very helpful when working in the community because all the community members are affected by different environments throughout each day so in order to treat them we need to be aware of how each of these environments are affecting them.It is also important to include in therapy their cultural beliefs, religion and values in order to treat them holistically. To see change happen there has to be action on each of these levels in order to reinforce and produce change.
My mind is going crazy with information and trying to solve the problems that we have identified in the community. Think I still need to learn that I can't solve all the problems but rather focus on a few that will make a change. Looking forward to having a weekend to get my mind around what needs to be done, reading up on theory to base my projects on and coming next week with an action plan.
Mariann Ridge does have a blog although it is outdated, but it does have some information about the community and some of the projects that are running. http://mariannridge.wordpress.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment