Therapists visit to Ukraine

Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) delivers NHS community services to the population of Medway.  We are a team of therapist that work with the most disabled children in our local Medway community. As part of MCH’s social values work two of our therapists travelled to Ukraine to try and help the plight of children with disabilities.

 Our social value work is in conjunction with  Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline Charity number 1014274.  

During the charities work in Ukraine, the plight of children who suffer from disabilities and long term illness came to our attention. They attend the Source Of Hope rehabilitation centre set up by Sarah Day who is a volunteer for the charity. We made links with a child development centre in the town of Korosten in Ukraine.There are only a handful of such centres in the whole of Ukraine and the healthcare workers there have very limited experience, mostly learning only from the internet.

We made our first visit in November 2016 when we assessed many children and taught the staff how to continue the children’s rehabilitation.  Training the healthcare workers was a large part of the visit so that they had some practical knowledge to continue to help progress treatment.

Using all the skills we have gained working for the NHS we feel we can make a sustained difference to the children and their families.  The NHS actively supports staff to work abroad on projects, and as a social enterprise, Medway Community Healthcare are supporting staff to expand this programme of works. We are visiting the centre and children in December this year to further train the staff and advance the children’s programmes