A New Home for Medically Fragile Babies
Part One - Training and Planning
Part Three - The Babies Arrive!
In early 2009, Half the Sky was offered an extraordinary opportunity to do something for China’s most fragile children - babies who might otherwise not survive. Together with our new partners at the China Care Foundation and, as always, with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, we have managed to create something new and much needed: a government-sanctioned interim care home for orphaned babies who will undergo life-saving surgeries.
Our first task was to recruit and train the very best nannies and care staff that we could find. They came to us from assorted backgrounds, but all share enthusiasm for coming to work to help hurting babies.
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Half the Sky program directors, Jeronia Muntaner (above), Wang Weiling and Debbie Tong, offered an introduction to the HTS approach to nurturing care. Founding HTS board member, Dana Johnson, MD, PhD, presented a developmental perspective, explaining how various birth defects come about. And Roger Tan, MD, the China Care Program Medical Director, a pediatrician, gave a talk about ways to promote basic good health and optimum development in fragile children.
Teresa Weidenbacher, RN, with 30 years experience in neonatal intensive care, was there to train and guide the nannies from the first day. She spent a total of six weeks, working with caregivers and medical staff, to help launch the program using current best practices in infant care.
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While training was going on, we settled on a wonderful site for the HTS China Care Home – an apartment building in central Beijing, close to everything, including many of the hospitals that we will cooperate with. Thanks to the economic slump and some compassionate landlords, we were able to secure an entire floor of apartments for our babies’ new home!
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We were lucky enough to secure the services of four wonderful pediatric nurses shortly after they took mandatory retirement from Beijing Children’s Hospital. When they weren’t sitting in on nanny training, they visited the babies who would soon become VIP residents. Then they set about helping the staff plan for a home worthy of its new tenants.
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Part Two - Getting Ready > > >
