Alliance India partners receive specialist child counselling training
29 July 2008
Partners in Alliance India’s Chaha project have been improving their child counselling skills with specialist training arranged by Alliance India. Participants explored innovative approaches for counselling children such as using arts and crafts, and will be putting them into practice in their day-to-day work.
The Chaha project provides care and support services to children living with or affected by HIV and their families in four states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Chaha means ‘a wish’ in Hindi.
Counsellors working for the project’s partners often have to deal with children’s issues in difficult circumstances. The specialist training, which was conducted by professionals with years of experience in child counselling, aimed to build on these experiences.
Forty-nine counsellors from all of Chaha’s implementing partners participated in the training, which explored activities that would encourage children to open up, such as arts and crafts, and drawing pictures. Participants also discussed how to discuss issues appropriate to the children’s level of knowledge and comprehension.
Participants developed workplans for applying the new approaches. These workplans will be followed up after two months. A feedback system has also been developed that will allow the counsellors to share their experiences and challenges of child counselling with their peers.
