Child care services
Young Adults with Learning Difficulties...
New Residential Centre – St. Raphaels, Bucharest
In 2009 FARA opened a new rehabilitation centre, close to St. Gabriels childrens home in Bucharest. The centre offers recovery programme for ten young adults, aged between 18 and 24,some of whom are in the autism spectrum; the young people have come from appalling conditions in a state institution. The aim of the project is to enable some of these young people to be integrated into the local community. The newly refurbished residential centre and workshops also offer day care facilities for up to 10 local people with learning difficulties. Together with Romanian volunteers, the young people have transformed the ground and developed a horticultural project growing vegetables for the home. Ongoing staff training and clinical support is provided by FARA from U.K. specialists in learning difficulties and mental health. This project has been a huge success in transforming the lives of these young people who had no hope for the future.
Helping children and adults with learning and sensory difficulties to transform their lives
In 2009 FARA invited The Sound Learning Centre London to Bucharest to offer their assessments and treatment programmes for a group of young adults with a range of difficulties. The group consisted of four young men and four young women that have recently moved from state institutions to the new FARA home. All of the group have significant learning and sensory difficulties and had virtually been written off as young people with no hope of a productive future life.
The group were treated with The Sound Learning Centre’s specialist sound and light therapies over a period of 10 days that addressed their specific needs. These therapies of Auditory Integration Training (AIT) and Lightwave Stimulation (LWS) are among the most dynamic, non-invasive, non harmful treatments available and quickly made an enormous impact, helping them to read more easily and fluently, to process information more efficiently and to improve their social interaction, emotional wellbeing and self esteem. During their visit The Sound Learning Centre trained our local FARA staff in their SenseAbility course. This specialist course provided them with a greater understanding of how the underlying sensory issues were involved in the day to day functioning of all of their charges, and also provided practical activities and specific exercises to assist in further maturation of the sensory systems. The course gave the staff more in-depth knowledge of the implications of these complex sensory issues and the effects not only on physical behaviour but just as importantly, on emotional behaviour.
We have been delighted with the collaboration with The Sound Learning Centre and with the progress made by this young group of people, and we will continue to give feedback on their development. Pauline Allen, Principal of the Centre commented “We were so impressed and touched by the dedication and commitment of the FARA ‘family’ and we look forward to an on-going partnership with FARA in the future and to further developing our programme of therapies in Romania for other FARA children and young people”.
To find out more about The Sound Learning Centre please click on the following link: http://www.thesoundlearningcentre.co.uk/
OAT Farm...
FARA’s Oat Farm (Organic, Agricultural, Training) in the Suceava district offers young adults training and life skills in carpentry, horticulture and catering to enable them to find employment. Most of the students have come from local orphanages where deprivation, abandonment and lack of education have caused difficult behavioural problems. Over the last two years, 30 students aged between 18 and 20 years have attended the residential training centre, some for up to one year. The huge success of this project is obvious as most of the students have then found work and accommodation and have integrated into the local community.
