Monday 7th & Tuesday 8th April - House Parent Training Day

Monday the 8th of April
Kelechi told me he lost a brother today and had gone to see him in the morgue. Martha said brother does not always mean biological and that this brother was actually a cousin and not too close. I still felt for Kelechi because going to a morgue could never be easy.

I spent the day relaxing and doing washing. I swept the house and did some work to my scrapbook, it is looking fine. I have stuck in everything from my visa application form to my fist pure water bag.

Catherine asked me to marry her and take her to England. She said she has 100 Naira to marry me with. I told her woman could not marry woman so I am sorry I can not be her wife. She laughed at me. She enjoys joking about marrying people. She also asked Very Rev Timothy to marry her. He said she must be dressing fine and bathing fine and changing her clothes before he could even think of marrying her.

Tuesday the 8th of April
Cecil ran a House Parent training day. I decided I would become closer to Amaudo if I attended the training so I can have a better understanding of the work done.

The job of a house parent is that of a parent. They have to make sure their resident’s bath, tidy their rooms, take their medicine, eat their meals, attend church and work hard in their workshop. They have to get to know their residents and make them feel comfortable living in Amaudo and create a caring relationship with each of their residents so that if they have any problems they will go to the house parent.
We started the day by drawing pictures of our jobs. Two of the pictures I liked very much. One had the house parent surrounded by his residents and they were drawn in a very stylised way. The second was a fancy picture of a proud farther, which was in another stylised manner with a wig and trousers like King Henry VIII.

We split the training into House Keeping and House Parenting and talked about the problems.

Problems faced by House Keeping
- A lot of residents will not wash clothes unless they are told to. Some do not have adequate storage for their clothes once they are clean. E.g. wall hanger with coat hangers on, any shelving or big bags to store them in.
- Residents need to sweep their houses regularly.
- The houses are getting old and some have cracks. All would benefit by being repainted. It has been suggested that spending the extra money to use gloss paint is important as you can wash it and it lasts longer.
- New residents may excrete and urinate inside of the house because they no longer understand the concepts of home and toilet after living on the street for so long and because they are mentally sick.
- The foams residents sleep on are getting old and have been attracting bed bugs. The pillows are old, as are pillowcases and the bed sheets.
- Females have problems with their menstrual cycle because they do not always use pads. This can be because their house parent may not have pads to give, the resident may not have pants to use to keep the pad in place, or the residents sometimes are not in a fit mental state to use them.
- Underwear in general is a problem, as it is not often donated.

The Standard of House we will fight to keep.
1. Gloss painted walls
2. No bed bugs
3. Several buckets for fetching water
4. Storage for clothes e.g. wall hangers and bags
5. Brooms for sweeping and each house parent should have a long broom for sweeping away cobwebs.
6. All residents need light so each house should have a lantern for if we do not have power or the electrics have a problem in their home. We should try and fix all electrics.
7. Clean shower room and toilet
8. Soap dishes to keep their soap in and razor blades for shaving and cutting nails.
9. Slippers (flip-flops) must be kept in the rooms and towels/ wrappers.
10. Shutters and blinds must be kept well so they open and do not have any holes in.

How we plan to solve our problems.
We wish to buy…
· Maintenance work for all of the buildings to repair cracks and leeks
· Gloss paint
· Buckets
· New beds, new bed sheets, new pillows and new pillowcases for all houses.
· Things for keeping clean; soap & soap dishes, sponges, razor blades, towels, moisturiser (this is VERY IMPORTANT in dry season!), toilet tissue, toothbrushes & toothpaste and more slippers (flip flops)
· Things to keep things tidy; wall hangers, clothing bags and brooms*
· Detol for bathing and cleaning cuts and grazes. And insecticide to kill insects and bed bugs.
· Lanterns for all rooms
· Underwear for males and females.

*Brooms we may be able to get made in our rehabilitation workshop.

BRING BACK COMMUNITY WORK
We need to discuss and organise bringing back community work. This is where residents are organised to clean under the supervision of their house parent. Different residents are given different tasks. So one will clean the shower rooms and toilets for all the residents in their block. One will wash all the bed sheets for all the residents in their block. One will sweep a scrub the rooms. This needs to happen every month if not twice a month. Residents should be encouraged and reminded to sweep their rooms daily. We must organise and keep a rota to make sure this works.

House Parenting Issues
Problems faced by House Parents when dealing with residents
Ø Abuse of staff. Verbal abuse and insults, physical violence. On rare occasions stealing.
Ø Refusing to take drugs
Ø Refusing to bath and keep clean. This includes refusing to wash and change clothes and bed sheets.
Ø Urinating and excreting in the house
Ø Laziness & stubbornness
Ø Residents may try to escape (mostly new ones)

Problems faced by House Parents in every day work
Ø Need a torch for checking up on the residents in the night
Ø They need a residential driver in case of an absconder or in an emergency
Ø Co-operation of security and management to make sure that all residents are brought to dining, workshop, chapel, community work and their weekend movie viewing.
Ø Staffs need some time off because at the moment they are on duty 24 hours a day and working 7 days a week. There needs to be planned off and on times so when a member of staff is on duty he or she is fresher for working. It would be best to try and arrange both a male and a female house parent sharing duty times.
Ø Co-operation between house parents so if one is away then others will care for their residents. The on duty house parent must be readily available when a resident has any need on his or her shift

Things we should buy or try and get funding for.
· Good torches to be used by House Parents to check up on Residents in the night time
· A residential driver
· A new vehicle to be used for home visits that are an important step in being ready to go home
· Money to support further House Parents training days (costs of printing booklets, refreshments, paper and pens)

After the training I got chatting to Kelechi and Unice and asked them to come round to my house for tea and to chat about the day. It felt nice having them come to my house and eat and drink with me, I felt like we were now proper friends. Unice drew me some pictures of animals to watch out for like the giant millipede and the poisonous centipede. Martha told me a story that a centipede sat in the kettle in someone’s house and the mum made tea and everyone in the family drank the tea and then everyone died. She also told me about soldier ants. They are ants that move in an organised line and they are arranged with killing ants that go out and organise themselves to kill food to feed all the ants in the colony so something like a lizard. If you accidentally stand on their line then they creep up your leg and into your clothes then they suddenly start to bite you. Sometimes a whole swarm will enter a house and you can find them eating a whole stew if they come across one. When you see them you have to put kerosene to block their line or cover them in petrol to kill them. I really do not want to see soldier ants at all! I asked Bro Philip and he said I will meet them, and Very Rev Timothy and he also said I would meet them but he will be there to protect me.