Holy moly what a day! The first day of placement was great! It went in no way according to plan. We had thought we had appointments with clients in the morning and then do planning and paperwork in the afternoon. Nope. We started with clients in the spinal cord unit (sci) but they weren’t really up and about, and then the volunteer coordinator and head PT came and said he would be taking us on an official tour of the campus. We went into almost all of the buildings and gained a more through idea of all the different programs available. The kids in the early intervention centre and special needs school were so adorable. There are about 8 kids with special needs to one teacher. Then we checked out the vocational centre that offers over a hundred different degrees or certificate programs to people who are interested in furthering their learning. All programs are available for free to people with a disability. Then we got to sit in on a meeting with the whole village based rehab team that consists of SLPs, PTs, OT and special education teachers. There were about 50 people who serve hundreds of villages in the area. Today we found out that there is only one OT who divides her time between campus and the villages. Apparently they’ve been trying to hire another OT but the salary is lower compared to what you’d make in northern India and there are not many trained OTs in the country. But they said in the last couple years there have been so many OT volunteers that they have been getting by.

We had lunch before heading back to the SCI to actually meet some of our clients. The work that is done with clients is very biomedical. Lots of assessing ROM , strength, fine motor, etc. But the clients are all super motivated to improve their function and have been so great to meet. Steph and I each had two clients to start today and will pick up a new admission each tomorrow. We will likely have a maximum of three clients at any one time because things happen so slowly here and you do in depth, daily therapy. We will also be splitting our time between work on campus with village based rehab. We will be taking on a total of 20 clients in the villages who have issues with seating and posture. The goal is to assess and treat these children and then have enough of a sense of the common issues to create a manual that can be used to educate the other VBR workers and the families of the children, along with creating a system for future volunteers to implement in other villages.

We didn’t finish the day until after 6pm tonight, but we had the most amazing dinner and a beautiful sunset to make up for a long day.

 

 

Now time for a bit of prep for tomorrow before bed.