Staff at Kamakhyanagar gear up to expand their skills and their work parameters in physiotherapy Julie, the physiotherapist from Ireland has been busy on the work front and has completed training her colleagues Abhishek, Supriya and Lalit. They are now preparing the course for the village level workers. The workshop is to run over the month of August for six days and will include lectures, practical sessions and workshops with some of the children. The staff has put together a work book and some quiz’s to ensure that the village level workers get the most out of the training.
Julie remarks, It’s very rewarding when I see my colleagues leading treatment sessions and instructing parents in correct handling and stretching. That’s how I know I’m making an impact through my placement. She shares that one of her objectives during VSO placement is to ensure the sustainability of physiotherapy in the
community based rehabilitation programs. As most rehabilitation and therapy should take place in the home and community, there is need to look at ways of ensuring continued provision and also support to the village level workers.
VSO India is working to promote national volunteering, which aims to establish more concrete links between trained therapists and CBR programs through local NGO’s. With this in mind Julie visited the physiotherapy department in SVNIRTAR on May 15th. SVNIRTAR is a 100 bedded hospital situated outside Cuttack and has well established inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation service. She spent the day with the students and therapists, witnessing first hand work they do. She hopes that that they can help support aaina’s community base rehabilitation programs through national volunteering. The proposal is that they would provide training, education and advice to the village level workers and families in their own villages. This would ultimately help to ensure the sustainability of community rehabilitation.
The plan for next few months will be to develop links between SVNIRTAR and AAINA . The focus of training now moves to the village level workers, resource teachers and parents
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