Psychosocial Support & Counseling

This service envisions reducing number of people living with psycho social problems by providing counselling guidance. The service is segmented to two approaches, which is face-to-face counseling sessions to clients and telephone-counselling services through a help-line Play therapy is another modality utilized by counselors to help traumatized children. The counselors also provide psychosocial support to the traumatized victims of natural disasters and accidents, when required.

 

During the past eighteen years SHE had introduced a number of services to the Maldivian Society. Among them counseling is one that has gained popular acceptance and formal integration in to social services and education establishments. When SHE introduced Counseling Support Services in 1988, nuisance calls to its help line was not uncommon. However, frequency of such intrusions had reduced gradually and this service is now popularly recognized as one of the most dependable and credible counseling service in the country.

Counseling support services comprises face to face counseling, telephone help-line and play therapy for young children. Currently, counseling services are provided for around 500 clients annually. Existence of a significant un-met need in the area of counseling has been confirmed by a number of assessments and interactions with the community. However the country’s unique geography and developing public administration system are not conducive to the expansion of this service. In particular public perception of services provided by NGO’s as intermediary interventions still remains a challenge to be addressed effectively.

In addition to regular counseling services provided, the Society is often required to attend to psychosocial support tasks related to accidents and emergencies. South Asia Tsunami of 2004, for example, created a major challenge for the counseling team. During the relief phase, the counselors work both at the central and periphery levels. The counsellors were stationed at the hospital from the initial stage when the survivors of the disaster were brought in. Ppsychosocial help was provided to the survivors of tsunami, their families as well as to the families of the deceased. Support was provided round the clock for the first seven days.  Similar support was provided to the evacuated population who resided in the relief camps in Male’.  Meanwhile, SHE counselling unit also collaborated with the Psycho-Social Unit of the National Disaster Management Task Force to provide timely support to the people affected by the tsunami.