Shelter for child survivors of abuse in Malaysia

Covid-19 hit us just as school resumed early this year. We had just finished Chinese New Year school break and more news about the pandemic was breaking. Right at that point we quickly implemented new hygiene rules to the shelter. For the kids, we had a special tutorial to teach them what Covid-19 is and how important is was to practice good hygiene. We also had a hand washing tutorial at the Child Care Centre to ensure all our kids were keeping good hand washing standards.  Our child-care providers ensured all school kids had their showers the moment the got back from school and all other activities. 

When the 2-week Restricted Movement Order (RMO) was announced, the children were sent to stay with their mothers. We continued to support the women and children remotely with food and toiletry supplies, medical treatment and educational workbooks. They were also offered to have counselling via Google Hangouts. Our dedicated Social Workers kept in touch with them frequently to ensure that they were not in any hardship. We arranged for clinic trips when any child or mother was sick. We also closely monitored the children who were home because of MCO and helped their mothers maintain a balanced structure in the children’s lives in terms of academic, activities, meals and hygiene. On that note, we would like to share a case on one of the children who had difficulty in accepting and practicing structure.

David was 10 years old when he came to WAO shelter in 2018 along with his mother and two siblings and he continues to be a recipient of our services under WAO Child Care Centre. Growing up in a home that saw violence frequently, being aggressive with his siblings came almost as a second nature to David. This was a struggle for David’s mother when David first came to WAO shelter. She had to manage his outburst of energy, in addition to the prevalent sibling rivalry among her children.

While David’s mother worked towards obtaining protection orders and job opportunities, David struggled to regulate his energy and adapt to the rules in an entirely new environment. We learnt from David’s mother that David is a very active boy who had a lot freedom back at home due to the lack of proper family structure and poor parenting skills.  As David’s father did not contribute to his family and comes home late being drunk. David’s mother on the other hand had to work really hard to make ends meet. This struggle contributed to the lack of structure in the children’s lives.

The first part of healing for many child survivors include establishing a structure which allows them to have a sense of certainty and security. In the effort to establish structure, we quickly enrolled David into school again and introduced academic and sports programmes. David, being a very active boy, he naturally excelled in sports. At WAO, we give equal importance to curriculum and non-curriculum activities. David had also represented his school at district level for athletics (running).

David always stood out in the crowd. He takes pride in helping adults. However, we recognized that David would not communicate the same way to children of his age. He had difficulties expressing his true emotions and his actions were a resemblance of the toxic masculinity in which he grew up. While he wants admiration of other children, being seen as vulnerable was unacceptable for him. As such, we introduced him to therapy to enable him to formulate and articulate his feelings and thoughts, and to promote self-control. Part of the therapy also included play therapy which promotes frustration tolerance and intervention in terms of installing appropriate interpersonal behaviour through modelling. David showed a lot of improvement in his interpersonal skills and almost entirely stopped physical violence. 

David is a very bright boy and had so much potential, yet his grades in school were not reflective of his actual ability. After trying out multiple interventions in terms of assisting him personally in academics, we assisted David’s mother to get him assessed at a government hospital for hyperactivity. Through that intervention, we were able to help David to focus better in his classes. We are very hopeful that David will also show good progress in the academics.

Now, even after leaving our shelter, David continues to be recipient of our services. David’s mother is very grateful to WAO for the interventions which are holistic and tailored to the individual needs.