Reactivating Human Care
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Most agencies working with children who have undergone
extreme deprivation naturally focus on their physical needs. But
keeping them alive is only the first step. It is now well known
that unless a child has a caring adult to love him and teach him
life skills, social behaviour and morals that he needs, his mental
and emotional development will be impaired.
Recent research suggests that normal physical development
of the brain depends on proper interaction between a caring adult
and the growing child. In normal circumstances such learning happens
naturally.
But when families are uprooted through social changes,
migration, catastrophes, children losing their parents, or having
been numbed by severe deprivation and emotional shock, this care
often breaks down and has to be reactivated through skilled help.
If children do not receive sufficient love and attention
while they are young, the problem also perpetuates itself because
later on they become inadequate parents.
ICDP's focus,
therefore, is on trying to break this cycle. It does so by reactivating
the existing caring skills and network that have been overlaid by
stresses related to extreme poverty, social uprooting, migration,
war and disaster.
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