Give HK Cleft Lip and Palate Families a Smile

2024 Community Educational Exhibition

The association's 2024 Community Educational Exhibition was held on 2/6 in the basement of Kowloon City Plaza. This community educational exhibition was assisted by the MTR Volunteer Team and we held a preparatory meeting in advance.  On the day of the educational exhibition, a total of 10 volunteers from the MTR Volunteer Team participated and were responsible for 4 pure game stalls. The association is responsible for five educational booths, including: the Journey of Cleft Treatment, Cleft Lip Babies’ Transformation, Ways to Get Along with the Patients, Incorrect Behaviours, Quiz Games, Exhibition Boards, Wishing Tree, TV Wall playing HKACLP’s promotional video, and distribution of cute balloons and leaflets.

The participants at the venue were very enthusiastic then. The children enjoyed very much the interesting games and there were often long queues in front of the booths.  There were also a Wishing Tree for the people to write their own wishes on a memo and stick it onto the Wishing Tree.  Besides, the well-designed exhibition boards also attracted many citizens to stay and view.  

The event was going on smoothly throughout the afternoon.  It was ended in happy atmosphere and each of the child got some small gifts to bring home.  We hope that through community educational exhibitions, the public can learn more about cleft lip and palate anomalies and the needs of patients, so as to enhance social inclusion.

Life Education Activities at Schools for2024-26

Since cleft lip & palate deformities are on the face, the patients, no matter where to go and who to meet, he has to show his face at the first instance, never can he hide away the facial defects.  It is very embarrassing for those patients who have their cleft lip badly repaired that resulted in obvious crooked and asymmetrical lips and noses.  So they are prone to attract strange looks, rejection, isolation, discrimination, and even bullying at school.

Therefore, since 2004, HKACLP has been conducting every year life education activities in middle schools as well as primary schools in various districts of Hong Kong.  During each life education activity, there will be a host introducing cleft lip and palate deformities and HKACLP's services by means of PowerPoint presentation.  Besides, there will be question and answer session, and also the patient’s/parent’s sharing on cleft problems and long term treatment with the photos showing different stages of growth.  

Though the educational activities, the teachers and students in the school may understand the feelings of the patients and family members, thereby promoting their acceptance and care for the patients, and to achieve harmony and integration on the campus.

Prenatal & Postnatal Support for the Mothers

Senior parents who have cared for their cleft lip and palate children for many years so they have become true experts in raising the affected children.  To the new parents, the senior parents’ experience is very useful and valuable which make them feel worry-free and at ease during the long journey of treatment.  Therefore, we recruited a number of these senior parents and trained them to be helpers to the new parents.

In order to enable pregnant mothers to receive assistance as early as possible, after their first contacts with HKACLP, we assign senior volunteer parents to provide ready help and support to them in the form of "one volunteer to one family". The tasks of these senior volunteer parents’ are:

• Share experiences, feelings and strategies for coping with the treatment with new parents;

• Reduce new parents’ loneliness, hesitation, distress, depression and anxiety;

• Improve new parents’ skills in caring for their children to cope with challenges;

• To broaden the knowledge of new parents about cleft lip and palate treatment services so that they can seek the most appropriate treatment for their children;

• Encourage new parents to help their children face treatment actively.

We hope to help every affected baby receive due caretaking and quality surgeries so that they can have the best rehabilitation.                                                                                                     

Links:

• HKACLP Official Website

Community Educational Exhibition

This year's community educational exhibition was held on 2 June 24 at the basement of Kowloon City Plaza (KCP).  By then, we hired the LCD video wall from KCP to broadcast HKACLP’s promotional video continuously.  We also prepared 10 educational game booths enabling the public to learn from the games the problems faced by patients with clefts, the treatment they need and how to get along with them.  During the exhibition, there were some display boards giving information about the craniofacial anomalies, the treatments required and the services providing by HKACLP.  Some volunteers helped in answering queries from the participants and held the quiz games.  We also had set up a Wishing Tree at the venue so that the participants could write down their wishes and stick onto it.  There were about 300 people joining the event and 40 volunteers assisted in hosting game booths and charity sales, keeping order, distributing leaflets and answering enquiries. Through community educational exhibitions, members of the public can know more the difficulties and needs of cleft lip and palate patients, so as to promote their acceptance and care to the affected patients, with an aim to reduce discrimination against the patients and promote social inclusion.

Oral Myofunctional Therapy Workshop

Due to cleft anomalies, the affected children may have slower growth of their upper jaw.  It is because they have undergone palate repair surgery around 1 year old, some oral muscles have been damaged, so the development of oral muscles will be poor.  Furthermore, the palatal scars are inelastic and creates pulling force which hinders the growth of the maxillary bones that resulted in dented midface and under-bite problems.  Oral muscle dysplasia will also seriously affect language development, resulting in ambiguous pronunciation, apart from affecting chewing function.  In more severe cases, some children may fail to coordinate oral muscles, causing failure to close the mouth resulting in crowded teeth & irregular teeth alignment.  Proper Oral Myofunctional Therapy is very important.  Multiple studies by foreign experts have proven that proper oral muscle exercises are wholesome to the affected children.  Therefore, HKACLP collaborating with Dr. Vicky Tsui, orthodontist & qualified oral myofunctional therapist, organize from time to time Oral Myofunctional Workshop for cleft lip and palate children.

On 13 April & 11 May 2024 two sessions of workshop were help with the help of Dr. Tsui’s team.  There were altogether 24 children members and their parents joined the workshops.  The parent-child teams learned a number of exercises for them to practice at home every day so as to improve the children’s upper jaw growth and dental bite, thus helping their eating, communications and social interactions.

 Prenatal & Postnatal Support for Mothers with Born & Unborn CLP Babies

In order to ensure that pregnant mothers can receive support at an early stage, as soon as they contact HKACLP, senior volunteers parents are deployed to provide immediate & all-round support to new parents in the form of ‘one volunteer to one family’.  The objectives of the service are as follows:

1)      Sharing experiences, feelings, coping strategies etc. with new parents;

2)      Reducing loneliness, distress, depression, frustration, anxiety and fatigueamong new parents;

3)      Helping new parents to improve their skills to take care of their affected babies;

4)      Motivating new parents to manage cleft anomalies and stick to treatment plans positively; and

5)      Increase the awareness of new parents about cleft anomalies in order to help them seek appropriate treatment for their children.

Through this service, we aim to help the parents give the best care and due treatments to their cleft lip & palate children, so that they can rehabilitate smoothly without facial difference.  The volunteer parents have cared for their own cleft lip & palate children on a daily basis, thus over the years they have become the true experts in raising the affected children.  Their experience is very useful and invaluable for new parents that can make new parents feel at ease during the long journey of cleft treatment over twenty years. 

Links:

• https://www.cleftlip.org.hk/