FACE is committed to ensuring practical and continuous training for all staff working on its projects. All training courses are designed to meet the specific needs of each project. Each member of staff is interviewed in order to reinforce their confidence and to improve their skills on an ongoing basis. FACE's training courses are continuously adapted.


a. IN THE ORPHANAGES

The paediatric nurses and psychomotricity specialists who come to FACE have usually never received any training before and do not have any of the necessary skills or experience. Most of them are unemployed. It is an enormously important challenge to ensure that the training courses are of a high standard. FACE is committed to paying for a whole year of training to any Egyptian woman that it employs. After the 3 month trial period, they receive a FACE training certificate and then go on to follow the remaining 9 months of training whilst in full-time employment.


* Training of care staff (nurses, doctors, care assistants) and paediatric nurses

Staff working in the FACE orphanages receives job-specific training. This training has been entirely designed and developed by FACE. Our Training Manager in Cairo works closely with the orphanage directors of Maadi, Hegazy and Benha. Together they ensure a close monitoring of the current vocational training and improvement in the orphanages. Training at FACE is continuous and perpetually evolving. In order to support this work, we also have professionals specialised in fields such as first aid, site safety, psycho motility...   

The training programme is designed to be interactive and positive, using a range of methods including practical sessions, role play, DVDs, and filmed practice sessions. This interactive training is important for the motivation and commitment of the paediatric nurses.

The first level of the training course consists of 18 modules and relates to children from 0 -2 years :

1.     Care of special babies

2.     Working in a team

3.     Bathing the babies

4.     How to prepare and administer medication

5.     Food and nutrition

6.     The stages of physical development

7.     Variations in physical development

8.     Mental development

9.     Social development

10.   How to communicate well and interact with the baby

11.   Safety

12.   Indoor and outdoor entertainment

13.   Health and hygiene of the paediatric nurses

14.   How to recognise a healthy child 

15.   Medical care and first aid

16.   Baby massage

17.   Fire procedure

18.   Preparation of the baby for transfer

After each module there are additional sessions to update and consolidate the training. Most adaptations are made based on the feedback given after each session. The emphasis is placed on the practical application of the theory. Those members of staff who pass the training course receive a certificate.


* Psychomotricity Training

FACE trained 2 Egyptian paediatric nurses in psycho motility for one year. Now that they have become specialists, these psycho motility therapists establish individual therapy sessions which include a programme of personal exercises, which meet the specific needs of each baby. These Egyptian therapists will in turn train other future psycho motility therapists within FACE.


* Training of Orphanage Directors

FACE has developed training programmes for the orphanage directors and for the team leaders of the orphanages and the Street Children project

This training includes but is not limited to:

  • Introduction to FACE - ethics, structure, rules regarding accounts and reporting
  • Human Resources processes - Disciplinary procedure, welcoming new staff, questions about contracts, job descriptions
  • How to assess members of staff's work and conduct the appraisal interviews
  • Communication, management, project management



b. IN THE STREEET CHILDREN PROJECT

* Social Work  related to the street children via the Outreach programme 

The training courses start with a definition of the target group : children living on the streets, working on the streets, children at risk and families living on the streets.

The FACE social workers are trained to know how to work effectively with these children and to establish a relationship of trust. They also undergo orientation training so that they can move around the immense city of Cairo to find as many children as possible whilst always ensuring a high standard of work.

* Informal Training
This consists of learning to use one's imagination to invent games and exercises adapted to the children's level of knowledge and to apply them on the streets as well as in the centre. The idea is to incite in the child a desire to learn by using entertaining methods.

A specialist from Friends International gave 2 training sessions to FACE's Street Children team. The objective was to educate the street children in an informal way in subjects such as human biology, geography, mathematics and literature.

* Child Protection
The training course also provides an understanding of the rights of the child, what must or must not be done, the FACE Code of conduct and the management of family problems whenever they arise. The 2 people 'Child Protection' workers are trained in welcoming new members and volunteers to the team.

Recently, 3 social work assistants from the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) were trained by the El Salam Street Children project in the FACE methodology.