VivaCell-MTS, Armenia’s leading telecommunications operator, has joined the SOURCE Foundation in the implementation of projects aimed at helping alleviate the concerns of children with special needs and their families.

Kids with special needs tend to isolate themselves from the society, limiting their social contacts to family members and becoming dependent on parents' constant care. This situation not only impedes the children’s acquisition of social skills, but also considerably changes the daily life of the family members. The parents have to quit their jobs, sacrificing the opportunity to make a career and add to the well-being of the family.

To provide efficient help to children with disabilities, the SOURCE Foundation, established three years ago, has also included the children's families in its target group.

For the first time in Armenia, 51 separate courses aimed at preparing individual tutors have been organized by leading organizations and professionals in this sphere throughout 2016. As a result, 15 out of 50 specialists have started working as permanent and 5 others as temporary tutors in 32 families. They provide 8-hour care to children, organize their entertainment and treatment.

In a short period of time, the five-member team of tutors and coordinators has succeeded in reaching tangible results, improving the life quality of the families, creating opportunities for the development of the children, and, last but not least, making it possible for mothers to work full time. The individual tutors, in addition to professional competence, also have basic literacy in medicine, which allows them to provide necessary care to children. The tutors take care of the children at home, at school and in rehabilitation centers. A special mechanism has been elaborated to control the efficiency of the tutors. Once a week a group of 3 specialists visit the beneficiary families to make an individual development plan for the children and to receive feedback about the relations between the tutors, children and the parents.

Marina Parazyan, the director of “SOURCE” Foundation, notes that they have managed to achieve the key objectives of the program. In particular, the Foundation has succeeded in uniting various organizations providing specialized care to children with disabilities, as well as in creating jobs for young specialists in this sphere, supporting the families in the target group and helping the children.