"The childrens house".

 

The place of the children home, have quite an area for the children to play outside and inside. The whole area is fenced, so the children can play safely outside. It is locatet on a silent road, and are close to the schools and centrum. The girls and the boys have seperate rooms, fx. the boys room are to the right at the first floor, and the girls rooms is to the left.

But it is only because there is two boys living in the same room up stairs, and the other two boys, have seperate rooms downstairs. 

If there is enough space to do it, then the kids get seperate rooms when they turn 13 years old. But this also depents of the mental state, that the kid is in.

 

There are at the moment 13 kids living at the house; 

• 1 girl and 1 boy at 17 years old

• 1 boy at 16 years old

• 1 boy at 14 years old

• 1 girl at 13 years old

• 2 girls at 11 years old

• 1 boy at 10 years old

• 1 girl at 9 years old

• 1 girl at 8 years old

• 1 girl and 1 boy at 6 years old

• 1 girl at 4 years old

 

There is a low rate of health or mental issues among the children. Only one has a minor brain damage, due to neglect while unborn and in the first year after being born, which result in emotional sensitivity, and learning issues. Besides that, there is one who has epilepsy and recieve medicine treatment on daily basis, but otherwise seems to function quite well.

 

At "Namu Zidinys" they have quite a lot of animals, and the kids are responsible to take care of them. They have: 

Two small lovebirds, a nymfparakit, two turtles, a hamster, fishes and 4 outdoors cats, from the same litter. One of the employees has rent a room in the house, and she has little dog. 

Most of the animals are not taim. Some of them are hand down animals, that have been donatet to the orphanage, and some was presents for kids who no longer live at the orphanage.

 

 

 

The Headmistress.

 

The Headmistress is a well spoken lady. She speaks rather good english, and is very freindly, and she can also have a calm, firm and respectfull attitude when needed. She has put up a reward system for the children, to earn their weakly allowance, and.the system works like this:

 

The children have to perfom specific chores, with accepteble results for the day, and then they will get one euro pr. day. If a child does not do the chores, or without a acceptable result, the child will get cero or minus one euro for that day. In the end of the week, they count together, how many euros each child have earned, and then the child gets the money to spend in a way they see fit. Usually they use them in school, for snacks, but some of them save the money, in interest to buy games on computer or something else. 

 

This way the kids learn about taking responsibility for own earnings. They try to keep a strong line of structure, so the days is easy to plan for everybody, and it gives a feeling of safety for both the adults and the kids.

The policy about smoking and drinking is at zero tolerance, and if a kid breaks the rules, they will be supervised more closely by the staff, and ingage in serious talks about the consequences for the person health and their future at the orphanage.

The Headmistress try to motivate the children to do good in school, so she sponsers a trip to the children, who gets the highest grades in school. 

This way they will get to travel some of the world; a treat that ophans usually not get, and they will focus on their education more motivated.

 

 

 

The employees.

 

There is about 8 employees to take care of the children. The staff veriate in gender, age and educational background. This counting is including the Headmistress. But for the gender part, there are 6 woman, and 2 men.

About the educational background of the staff, there are fx. a employee that has a bachelor in social studies, and going for a master degree. There is also a person who has a education in medicin, a person who is educated to be an art teacher, with parttime work at the art school and one who is a partly trained chef, with a parttime work at a restaurent. So the kids are in very qualified hands.

But i dont think that a education automatic makes a better person, when it comes to connect with the children.

A education qualifices your knowledge, and shows your determination to work in that particulary area of study, but some people still have that determination, without the education. They might not read all the litterature, and therefore miss some knowledge, that might could have given them some tools, but life experience also counts.

And then there is a voulenteer that helps out in the weekends. 

 

 

 

The employee to kids ratio.

 

Well here we talk about the rating between staffing and children. In Denmark there are no actually approved law about this within my areas of social and special needs, so is it also in Lithuania right now, but both countries are working on getting a bill, that will set the ratio. The danish organisation BULP, has suggest that the ratio schould be 3:20 at a commen kindergarten, that meens 3 educated pedagogues, for every 20 child.

In the profession of social/special pedagogy, there are no such lines, and i fail to see why not. There might be many reasons, but buttom line is, how come there are no rules about this yet, when there has been so many surveys, that light up the consequences, that follow under staffing, not only for the employees, but also for the residents.

With that said, i am actually surprised how well it funcktion here, they are 1-3 employees at the same time, for 12-13 children/young. When there are three employees at a time, one of them seem responsible for the kids education, and the other for the kitchen, like preparing food or doing household, and the last one is doing tasks like driving them to sports. Even when there is only one at work at nighttime, it seems to be working just fine. 

I have been told by the headmistress that the house have their standard being about 1:6 in employee to kids ratio, during "trafic" hours. 

When that is said, it is also important to notice how well the kids themself, are able to support and watch out for each others safety and needs, especially when in emergencies, or outside the house.