Last week, Hope and homes for children – Bulgaria conducted IMPACT training for two districts of Burgas and Pazardjik to specialists from the Family type placement centers for children and young people with disabilities. For three days, from 18.09. until 20.09.18, Nadezhda Petrova and Plamena Stefanova, consultants of “Hope and Homes for Children – Bulgaria” presented the IMPACT program in Sozopol. The training was attended by 16 specialists – managers, social workers, psychologists, nurses, as well as child care workers working at the Family Type Placement Centers for Children and Young People with Disabilities from Bourgas, Karnobat, Pomorie, Pazardzhik, Atia and the village of Hadjievo.
During these three days, the participants had the opportunity to get acquainted with the innovative methods and approaches underpinning the IMPACT program, aimed at preventing crisis situations in children and adolescents in the Centers. In the process of presenting the program, they themselves have brought the enormous need for multidisciplinarity to solve problematic situations. They are convinced that planning and development are successful for a person with special needs if he is in their center, and that we need to focus on the opportunities, strengths and interests of a particular individual in order to be able to build on. They understood the importance of a proactive crisis management approach that requires a good knowledge and understanding of children and young people with special needs and aims to reduce the need for any intervention responding to needs before they arise.
The issues of harm of specialized institutions have been addressed, and their consequences have led to severe institutional syndromes, Attachment Theory and Why love matters?, the rights of people with special needs, the understanding of problem behavior and the interaction between the environment and the individual, etc. .
The main tools for performing a functional analysis were presented: “A-B-C” chronology used to gain insight into the behavioral prerequisites and its implications for the individual; and the Motivation Assessment Scale created by Durand and Criminus, which is used to analyze the relationship between environmental events and problem behavior, and helps answer questions about the function of problem behavior. This contributes to the development of hypotheses about the function of behavior or why behavior manifests itself.
In their feedback, participants appreciate learning as extremely useful and comprehensive, presented in an accessible way.
