Today we celebrate the Social Worker’s Day, one of the most important holidays of the year for us. Surely, working with people is very important and necessary, but at the same time this work is very time consuming and emotionally demanding. Who are those people whose day-to-day work is to face human troubles and help in difficult situations?
Maria Almanova came to this field when she a very young medical nurse.
After 12 years in the local health center, she was fired under the personnel reduction policy. Soon she met the director of the Elatomsky children’s home for mentally challenged children, where she began working as a senior nurse. For more than 30 years of her work Maria has seen a lot… Children with severe psychophysical developmental disorders are often considered hopeless, and society turns its back on them, or they get nothing more than a formal approach – the minute after being fed and changed they are forgotten. But Maria kept asking herself – is there anything that can be done to improve the lives of these children after all? At least to change the attitude to be more humane.
The dream became a reality when representatives of the Diema’s Dream Fund and The Promise (Great Britain) came to Elatma in 2008. 14 children from the Miloserdie department of the children’s home were involved in a joint project with the Federal Bureau of sociomedical assessment ‘Verticalization’. Miraculous changes began to happen to these children. Then Maria heard about Portage project. It turned out that there was a long-established, simple and effective method of working with ‘hopeless’ children, who after many years of ‘hopeless’ existence began to show interest in the world around them and learn to socialize. Surely, Maria was one of the first certified specialist in the Portage method in Russia. And she began to perform small miracles with her own hands every day.
In the last few years life in the facility has measurably improved. The example of Maria was followed by many employees of the Elatomsky children’s home, and they have achieved great results using the Portage method. The children start to move, learn basic self-service skills, the older ones start to speak, show interest in learning, playing. In 2019, when their unique experience caught attention of the representatives of the regional Ministry of Health, the officials visited the Elatomsky children’s home, and with the allocated funding the facility was renovated to make children feel like home.
Maria, now 72, continues to work, provides consultations to experts and parents within the joint project ‘Practice Portage’ with the Diema’s Dream Fund and works miracles every day – for example, the children’s home finally hired a massage therapist.
Congratulations to all employees of the Elatomsky children’s home, our colleagues, friends and partners, on the Social Worker’s Day! We wish you good health, joy, and happiness! Let miracles come true!