Increasingly we have to take care of the family as well as the child!

Anyone visiting KGVI cannot avoid being inspired by the resilience and courage of the children and we who work here feel very privileged.  However it is not possible to forget that ‘our’ children have tremendous problems.  Outwardly we see the courage and the cheerfulness, but every so often the pain slips through whether they be disabled or non-disabled.  With the increasing difficulties being faced by everyone in Zimbabwe, counselling has become a very important element of our programme.  Counselling covers such issues as disability awareness, conflict resolution, relationships and dealing with grief.   The children are encouraged to bring their problems to any member of either centre or school staff.  To the casual observer our children seem to be remarkably well adjusted but inevitably they need help to deal with such problems as the continuing illness and loss of family members, the fear of the future and the outside world or simply the frustration of a disability. 

It is possible to gain a good picture of the problems facing our students by taking a look at just 10 of our boarders:-.

• Child 1 is deaf and has AIDS.  She is an orphan taken care of by an old Grandmother who already has 5 other young children to look after.  This little girl often ends up caring for her siblings. (Sadly this poor child died in 2010)
• Child 2 has Muscular Dystrophy and is an orphan.  It is difficult to find anyone in the family prepared to look after him during the holidays.
• Child 3 has Cerebral Palsy and AIDS.   She is cared for by a sick mother since her abusive stepfather has recently died.  They have nowhere to live
• Child 4 is deaf and has lost both his parents.  He is cared for by an aunt who has no interest in the child and even sells the few clothes the Centre have to provide him with.  He has to be visited in the holidays to make sure his uncles do not beat him.
• Child 5 has a mother out of the country so she is left with uncaring relatives during the holidays.
• Child 6 is one of a family of three deaf children.  They are orphans and cared for by an aunt who already has a large family of her own.  
• Child 7 became disabled following the car accident which killed her mother.  She was in hospital for many months and not once visited by her father.  No one in the family wants to take responsibility for her.
• Child 8 had polio and has lost both parents.  The family are presently arguing over who will take care of him. When he arrived at KGVI he was dressed in rags and had not eaten for 2 days.
• Child 9 had to be rescued from an abusive stepmother who made him do all the housework
• Child 10 is a little boy with Cerebral Palsy who has lost both his parents.  His aunt often left him alone with his younger siblings and he once caused a fire when he tried to prepare a meal for them.

We have had to appoint one of our staff members to visit some families in the holidays to make sure that the children were being properly looked after.  We now have a holiday care programme where at risk children are visited often several times to make sure the child is being taken care of.  These are inevitably orphans who are being taken care of by distant relatives who really don’t have the finances or the inclination to look after a disabled child as well as their own children.  In some cases medical supplies are given to the family and sometimes food.   Sadly most of our orphans are also our most severely disabled children – life really is not fair for these doubly disadvantaged children!