The ICDP programme
REACTIVATING HUMAN CARE
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.
