Putting resources to good use

mothers2mothers was honoured to receive a R1 million award from the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) Rapid Fund. m2m established a formal Psychosocial Support Program, providing essential support and debriefing skills to Site Coordinators and Mentor Mothers to assist them in coping with the daily stressors in their workplace, families and communities.

Site Cordinators and Mentor Mothers must summon the courage to counsel and support mothers facing the same battles with the virus. As a result, they may find themselves emotionally overwhelmed as their clients’ issues overlap with their own. Site Coordinators can be responsible for more than 1000 patients each month…and with each they give a little bit of themselves. It is against this backdrop of incredible pressure, coupled with compassion and caring, that the mothers2mothers Psychosocial Support Program (PSS) was born.

The goal of this initiative is to first provide psychological support for the m2m field staff so that they are able to negotiate their own emotional issues. This will allow them to continue providing “best practices” PMTCT support and education within their communities. Second, the staff will be trained to offer psychosocial services, extending the reach of the psychosocial support to mothers at their sites.

The Program consists of on-going counseling as well as crisis-specific support, overseen by trained psychologists. Individual and group sessions will help the staff through a wide variety of coping skills and debriefing techniques, while also training them to provide the same kind of assistance to mothers in the m2m program.