Reunite a HIV affected child with the family

Mental Health Programme aims at providing psychological support to children rescued from the streets and ensure their emotional and mental well-being. 

This Programme was able to provide emotional psychological services to children living in residential centres and children affected by HIV.  The project aims to support a total of 550 children living in residential centres of SBT with special focus on children with developmental challenges and learning difficulties.

Introduction and Objective

The concept note briefly explains the support sought by Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) to strengthen it’s Mental Health Programme. The key objectives of the programme are as follows.

• To provide psychological support to children rescued from the streets and ensure their emotional and mental well-being.
• To provide adequate support to children with learning and developmental challenges by enrolling them to special schools and enrolling them to professional institutions for therapeutic treatment.

Thematic Area and Project Activities

• Structure and Process of the Programme:-
• Initial counselling sessions conducted with each and every new child enrolled in SBT residential centres
• Individual counselling sessions conducted on a monthly basis to address the psychological problems and needs of children in the residential centres
• Quarterly group sessions conducted with children to engage them in art, discussions on life skills and other aspects of life in a play way method
• Enrolling children with disabilities in specialised institutions
• Extending in-house academic and psychological support to these children and monitor their progress
• Quarterly monitoring of activities at each residential centre by Executive Council members and Mental Health Coordinator 
• Bi-annual reporting of psychological progress of children and educational progress of children. The educational progress would include the following

o   Higher Education Programme

o   Proper short listing and screening of students

o   Admission in various schools

• Long Term Plan

  • MHP plays a vital role in the development of each and every child who comes to SBT. This year we envision to provide better holistic support to our children with neuro – development difficulties with the aim to help them develop basic self-help skills
  • Through various workshops for the MHP team at SBT we plan develop the capacity and skills of the team enabling them to provideadvanced quantitative therapies to the children.
  • SBT’s MHP programme is recognised as one of its kind due to its uniqueness and focus on professional and trained care. There are several child care institutions such as government run children home who would largely benefit from such training. We envisage two training for external caregivers in the proposed year. It would be a step towardsreplicating our good practices.