See our News and Blog pages to keep up-to-date with the latest information. Our Children's Home, The House of Blessings cares for some of Haiti's most at risk and vulnerable children. It is a respite centre that provides support to children with physical and mental special needs.
‘We were impressed by the care provided to these special needs patients and the specialized training of local nursing students.’
Nuzhat Ahmad, Head of Regional Office, MINUSTAH North, United Nations in response to HHA spinal unit
Respite Centre
Maison de Benediction is a respite centre for children with physical and mental special needs founded in 2009. It has over 70 children on it’s programme but regularly supports about 40 families each week, offering them and their children the love and care they require. We provide health care, physiotherapy, food, music, crafts, sports and other related activities to enhance the children’s standards of life.
Central to the ethos of this centre is the desire to empower families to include and care for their children with special needs. Through caring for a few, we seek to transform whole communities in their understanding and response to disabled people.
Family first
Culturally in Haiti there is an unfortunate trend where children even with parents are handed over to institutions, orphanages or other families. Sometimes these children never see their real families again, and become isolated from the heart of where they came from.
Maison de Benediction was founded with the attitude of ‘family first’ at the centre of its work. We believe the best environment where at all possible for a child to grow up in, is within the loving security of their family.
We work closely with each family we support, establishing a specific individual program for their child, based on their needs. Some children come to us for a few days a week, others for 3 or 4 days, but all spend at least 2 days at home with their families. We draw alongside these families offering pastoral support, physiotherapy training, and educational skills and lessons in caring for their children.
Every Child Matters
Once we’ve worked with our medical team to establish the specific disability of each child, we establish a unique program for their specific needs. Foreign physiotherapists help train our staff and the families to provide transformational support to the children. Thanks to our supporters we’ve seen children’s lives transformed watching as they learn to walk, talk and acquire life skills like feeding themselves.
We value our centre more like a home, only ever having 15 children per day, so we can offer them individual love, care and attention. All our full time staff are Haitian, regularly being trained in play therapy, child protection and other appropriate skills.
Where we can, we offer our children the medical support available. Sometimes this includes simple trips to our health centre; other times more specialist care and operations by foreign medical teams.
We love each of our children dearly, and take their personal physical, emotional and spiritual development very seriously, seeking to offer them the best chance in life possible.
Educational Program
Children with disabilities are denied basic education in Haiti as classrooms are not inclusive. In August 2010 we hired a school teacher to provide education sessions for the children. She does one-to-one sessions with the children to teach them basic communication, pre-writing skills and letters. It’s great that the children seem to really enjoy these sessions too.
If you’d like to help transform the lives of some of these children please make a donation towards this project today.