DUBAI, (Pakistan Point News - 16th Jul, 2020) The Ministry of Community Development, MoCD, has announced the launch of the "Rest assured" initiative to support People of Determination, parents and staff, educate the community members about the comprehensive response of the People of Determination in the current circumstances to achieve a safe and fast response to the social reality changes and conditions.
Nasser Ismail, Assistant Under-Secretary for Social Welfare at the Ministry of Community Development, emphasised that the initiative reflects the directives of the UAE leadership to disseminate peace and positivity among Emiratis and residents during the current crisis, pointing out that the People of Determination are highly appreciated by the UAE government. As such, the initiative promotes and achieves their support especially in different circumstances and assures the quality of their needs depending on their types of disabilities.
He said, "The "Rest assured" initiative consists of five core programmes with multiple objectives and methods to respond to the demands of the People of Determination, parents and staff, and raise the community awareness of the pandemic, taking into account their needs, enabling all concerned categories to communicate, interact and take the initiative to provide the best for the People of Determination, based on nationality, community and development responsibility and maintaining an interactive and supportive environment for them.
Wafa Hamad Bin Sulaiman, Director of Welfare and Rehabilitation Department for People of Determination, explained that the core programme one of the initiative provides a "home psychological aid kit" to support People of Determination during a crisis; the initiative introduces the community to the effects of the crisis on children of determination who have different disabilities; understanding the causes of non-adaptive behaviour that appears among children during home quarantine, and thus providing a comprehensive vision of intervention and treatment according to each case.
She stressed that this programme contains a set of diagnostic features that characterises children affected by difficult circumstances, helps parents and family members detect them, thereby identify children who need therapeutic intervention either by parents or specialists, as well as a range of activities and exercises that can be practised in the child's environment to help him overcome these challenges.
The core programme two has been dedicated to supporting children with intellectual disabilities and autism during the pandemic by launching a series of social stories to support them during emergencies, crises and home quarantine. It contains simple visual answers to many questions that address children's imaginations, which, if not clarified on time, may lead to distorted and inaccurate concepts of the pandemic.
Bin Sulaiman added that core programme three is a training programme for staff who are working with the people of determination families to educate them and raise their awareness on how to reduce the psychological pressures they face during crisis and home quarantine. The goal of the training programme is to enable the psychological and social staff to detect behaviour through specific measures and ask parents to observe their children's behaviour and direct them to the right advice and guidelines.
The programme specifically supports parents to raise the level of psychological resilience in facing the pandemic and ability to provide appropriate support to their children during home quarantine.
At the beginning of the programme, specialists will assess the level of stress experienced by mothers through specially designed measurement tools, and after extracting the results from mothers, an orientation programme will be offered to those who have shown high levels of stress. The programme showcases how to reduce stress, manage time, how to deal with children's behaviour adequately, in addition to relaxation exercises, breathing, meditation, psychological and emotional discharge.
In support of the families of students of determination during home quarantine, Wafa Bin Sulaiman explained that the ministry has prepared a home-schooling guide for students with intellectual disabilities and autism, as well as a range of educational and academic goals as well as steps for parents to follow up their children during home quarantine.
As for the fifth and final part of the initiative, the MoCD worked on this since the beginning of the pandemic and disseminated a lot of awareness information and advice on how to deal with People of Determination and train them on coexisting with the pandemic, methods of sterilising according to each disability, and the forms of information that are available to them in sign language for the deaf categories, instant text translation, voice description for blind categories or simplified methods through social stories for intellectual disabilities and autism categories.
