Inside the FSP: The Important Role of Reviews and Assessments
Mark arrived home from his recent quarterly trip to Cambodia on March 13, where he had spent a week reviewing our programs, including the AIDS Patient Family Support Program ( FSP) , which helps indigent families impacted by extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS.
From the beginning of our FSP in 2000, we have taken a long term approach to keep families together , to prevent trafficking and to keep kids in school to help to break the cycle of inherited poverty. Over the past 18 months, we have conducted an extensive and careful review of each family’s current status, stability and potential for financial independence outside our program. During that time we identified 8 families who over the past 6 to 12 months are gradually being phased out of our care.
Several families are headed by single mothers with AIDS who are now be in a position to resume independent living. These are mothers who have benefited from our support for as long 10 years and who now have raised, educated and proudly launched their children into a stable lower middle class life. Their children, now grown, are in a position to care for and support their mothers. For a few others, we felt that they should be gently moved out of our programs assistance arena over time for specific reasons. For example, one family was asked to leave due to a serious violation of our rules, by seeking support from two organizations at the same time without permission from either , or put differently, “ double dipping” . Another is a mother who was removed from our program because she ran away after stealing money from her neighbors.
We view these periodic long term assessments as a vital and natural part of the FSP. They free up scarce resources and it honors our commitment to our donors that we will carefully monitor all expenditures to be certain that funds are used, to the best of our abilities, optimally and ethically.
One of our mothers recently passed away quite unexpectedly, leaving a 12 year old daughter who was temporarily cared for by other members of the FSP while our home care coordinator worked extremely hard to find a placement in a reliable institution. We will continue to monitor her situation . One of our great successes is that our Home Care Team has worked hard from the very beginning to foster a community attitude among our families sharing scarce resources, emotional support as well as help and friendship.
Mark reviews the status of each family every quarter and any decisions that are made are implemented carefully so as not to undo what may be years of slow progress. Structure and discipline are applied with large amounts of understanding, accommodation and compassion.
We hope that this progress report has given you some insights into the operation and challenges that we face. We are grateful for your support and it is our honor to have our efforts supported by you. We could not do this without you!
Barbara & Mark Rosasco
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