In the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Republic Centre – PORAKA and its social services complemented and adapted the programme activities. Respecting the recommendations for physical isolation and staying home, the social services of the Republic Centre – PORAKA continued to implement the adapted programme for psychosocial support and adjusted individual educational programme with the users of the day centres and their families. All activities are being performed at home using telephone and video online communication.
Within the psychosocial support priority is given to support, advise, reasoning, encouragement for easier understanding and dealing with the situation we are in. Different types of communication are used that are suitable for the users and their parents/guardians, including telephone conversations and video communication if the user/parent/guardian used Viber, FB Messenger, or other application. Special attention is given to those users who are more independent since they are in a greater risk of unsuitable behaviour i.e. not to respect the official recommendations and limitations.
Within the realisation of the individual educational activities, the everyday communication with the users and their parents continued in the past period. The priority was to engage the users at their homes, i.e. to give guidance and tasks for conducting activities that would maintain the skills and possibilities of the users.
The activities were aimed towards:
- Maintaining the health and behavior during infectious diseases, while using online resources for preventing the spread of COVID-19 given at the Facebook pages of the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization, which are shared on PORAKA’s Facebook page, especially easy to read formats.
- Stressing the importance and the proper ways of keeping personal hygiene, especially washing hands.
- Restrictions that must be respected, including the state of emergency especially for those users that are more independent.
- Including the users in all practical activities at their homes, for example, maintain hygiene and cleaning, tiding up their room, preparing simple meals, washing the dishes according to their possibilities, whereby the educator provides guidance and information to the parents regarding the involvement of their child in these activities at the day centre.
- Providing simple educational activities, which do not require specific materials or tools, i.e. that can easily be performed at home, in accordance with the possibilities and the interests of the users, considering the characteristics of the family as well. Those are everyday practical and cognitive activities that need to be practiced and repeated.
- Pointing out to educational contents in TV and Internet, which could be adequate for engaging the users.
