UNAIDS estimates that there are between 280,000 and 870,000 children orphaned or made vulnerable by AIDS living in Ethiopia. These children require comprehensive care and support, yet many of the community caregivers currently working with this most vulnerable of populations lack the knowledge and skills they need to address their complex needs effectively.
Since 2007, the Addis Ababa University School of Social Work has been partnering with Jane Addams College of Social Work and the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center at the University of Illinois, Chicago, as well as the Tanzania Institute of Social Work in Dar es Salaam, to implement a training program to arm these community-based caregivers with key social work and case management skills they need to support their clients by linking them to advocacy and legal support, psychosocial support, education, health services, food and nutritional support, housing, child rearing, life skills, and vocational training services.
Specifically partners are working to:
- Improve the capacity of partner institutions to
deliver quality pre-service social work education, in particular in the area of HIV/AIDS; and
- Design and implement programs that use highly qualified social workers to train and supervise para-professionals working at the grass root level on case management and HIV/AIDS.
Partners have conducted a situational assessment on the existing training programs related to HIV/AIDS, case management, and social services in the area of
psychosocial care and support programs. In addition, they have developed a mental health and HIV/AIDS training manual and conducted training for community-based
caregivers on psycho-social care and support of vulnerable children and families.
Through this program, partners have trained more than 250 people using the psycho-social care worker training package they developed. They have also provided field supervision
training to more than 60 individuals, conducted three trainings on psycho-social care and field supervision skills in healthcare settings, and developed a mental health and HIV/AIDS training manual. In addition, the partners organized a professional symposium on social work education and practice in Ethiopia and made several presentations on various aspects of their program at the 1st OVC in Africa Conference in Johannesburg in October 2010.
Plans for the coming year include conducting three regional trainings for Para Social Workers on psycho-social care work, along with three regional trainings on proper supervision skills for supervisors of Para Social Workers. They also plan to organize a national symposium to share the best practices in care and support services and research for people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS to pertinent originations
and implement monitoring and evaluation activities related to partnership training courses and how the training is being used by trainees to improve the care and support services they are providing.
Updated November 14, 2011
.gif)
