February 1st, 2006
Dear Friends,
With great sorrow the world heard about the ferry accident at the Red Sea. We are grieving with our friends in Egypt about all the casualties and feel with their families and friends.
A new year has started and Egypt is going through many political changes since Hosni Mobarak and his National Democratic Party won the elections end of December 2005 again. We hope that we will find strong support within the ministries of health and social affairs for our project.
For me the new year started with a change of work and home. I moved to Switzerland to be the head of a new occupational therapy education programme at a university of applied science. The email address stays the same, while the postal address and phone numbers have changed.
Please,send your next news by April 15th, 06 to my email address: chmentrup@aol.com
Greetings from a lovely sunny day in Zurich / Switzerland.
Christiane Mentrup
2nd Vice President
World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT)
CDOT Members
As you know from our former newsletters Cindy Hahn, associate professor of occupational therapy at A. T. Still University in Mesa, Arizona, attended the World Congress for the World Federation for Mental Health in September in Cairo and heard about our project through the CDOT Newsletter. She took the opportunity to meet with CDOT members and will return to Cairo with six of her students in August 2006. I am sure that Cindy will use her time to further suppport the development of the profession in Egypt.
She writes: “We are in the beginning stages of creating this clinical experience for my students and are thrilled about the opportunity. Our plan is take 5-6 students and at least 2 other clinicians besides myself. We hope to have OT students paired with medical students in Cairo, to help educate each other and build new relationships. We may also have an opportunity offered by Maha Helali to have students involved with one of her August camps at the ADVANCE school.Our greatet desire is to support the development of OT in Egypt and to continue to build close and long lasting relationships with our friends there.
ADVANCE & LRC
Advance
From Maha Helali we received the following information: “Dear Colleague, the Egyptian Society for Developing Skills of Children with Special Needs, "ADVANCE", held its annual educational conferences in the Spring for the last five years, and they were all hosted by the British International School in Cairo(BISC), and four of them were sponsored by UNESCO. The Conferences wereentitled:1. "Living & Learning: Building School Success" - 20012. “Interventions That Work”- 20023. "Merging Efforts" - 20034. "Circle of Inclusion" - 20045. "Embracing Diversity" - 2005This year we are planning to hold our conference the week-end of 9th to 11thMarch 2006, and it will be once again hosted by BISC and sponsored by UNESCO. The conference this year is entitled: "Learning to Learn …. from theory to practice".The conference will cover the following five streams:1. Managing Behavior (to enhance learning),2. Learning Strategies & Learning Skills in(a) Early years and (b) Older years 3. Learning styles (also covers classroom management or and/or classrooms' settings), 4. Tools serving education (includes IT, accommodations, architectural designing etc), 5. Learning for Life (includes social skills, life skills, adaptive PE, recreational skills).Please note that the deadline for abstracts was January 15th, but we would appreciate receiving your input at your earliest convenience.Best regards,Maha HelaliChairmanADVANCE Society
OT staff reports
The German occupational therapist Angelika Roschka reports from her work at the ADVANCE school in Cairo:
“Since September 2005 I am working halftime at ADVANCE school. The school hosts about 45 students with specials needs, especially autistc children. About 70 teachers and specialists do their best to serve the children's needs. Because my involvement in ADVANCE school is time limited ( 18 hours per week) my job responsibilities had to be choosen carefully and we had to set priorities. Doing just a halftime job over there allows me to do only a gross job. I have to set the limits all the time to be able to concentrate on my responsibilities which are the following:
1. OT implementantion with 2 staff from ADVANCE. I train them to do observations/ scrennings with the students, how plan a therapy process and how to do structured documentation. I supervise their work which mainly involves simple gross, fine motor and sensory activities and self help issues.
2. classroom, department & environmental observation at ADVANCE school to give recommendations to teachers and specialists about room structure/ playground design and how to create a calm learning supportive environment in a very tight building.
monthly seminars for teachres and specialists about general and specific OT topics, e.g. positioning, sensory integration, feeding, dressing, handwriting with handouts, role plays, follow up ( disscussions). Monthly seminars for the parents about OT topics that can be appiled at home, e.g. positioning, toy adaptation, sensory issues, feeding, dressing, toiletting.
My main goal at ADVANCE is to share knowledge and to document all my work with structure for the future. I spend a lot of time writing, writing, writing....
For the future at least one fulltime arabic speaking OT is urgently needed ( two would be better) to facilitate communication with the ADVANCE staff.
22 hours per week I am working at LRC. I am involved in student assessments, report writing, OT sessions (1:1), parent counselling. I have a tight schedule. Mostly I am serving kids with sensory needs, attentions problems, dyspraxia, handwriting problems. The work is satisfying when a good multidisciplinar exchange takes place with the LRC collegues and when the parents cooperate.
Overall the two jobs keep me very busy. The job combination forces my ability to switch from "one world to the other" very fast, because my functions as an OT are so different in ADVANCE and LRC.
It is a great energy taking challenge.
Best wishes Angelika“
CAIRO UNIVERSITY
The faculty of physical therapy at the Cairo University is announcing its 9th International Scientific Conference on the theme of:
"Physical Therapy is a Safe Cure"
2-3 March, 2006
Rehab Dubai Congress
From March 7th to 9th the Rehab Dubai will take place at the Dubai International Exhibition Place. The abstract of Maha Helali and Christiane Mentrup to present the OT Egypt Project got accepted accepted but at present no funding was granted.
OT in Oman
During Christiane Mentrup’s recent teachings in Northern England the opportunity arose to meet with Majida Albalushi, an OT bachelor degree student in her third year at Teesside University. Majida, a nurse with a strong interest in mental health, has been sent on a scholarship through the Ministry of Health in Oman to study OT and to consequently set up the profession in her country. At this point there are only very few colleagues working in the country. There aren’t any plans to set up an educational programme.
You can contact her through her mail address: sarab020@hotmail.com
Abbassiya Hospital
Professor Moneim Ashour of the Abbassiya Hospital Ward 18 reports: “We have a new Health Minister, who is a very liberal politician and a believer of market forces politics. His background experience is in private sector medicine. We are not sure yet of the priority and policy he gives to chronic illnesses and disablities. His name is Hatem EI-Gabaly.
The new minister replaced our project supporter Dr Mohamed Ghanem with Dr Nasser Loza, whose back ground is also private psychiatry. Ward 18 and myself survived this landslide.
We hope the new policies are more productive and we are checking how to work with the new regime. We appreciate your suggestions.
The Minstery of social welfare gave place to a new minstry of Social Solidarit, which will take care of the very needy people within society. policies. The minister’s name is Elmesailhy.
Political priorities seem to be job creation for the unemployed youth.” Professor Ashour is confident that the time is right to start the introduction of OT education and practice now.
Ain Shams University
Following her initial visit in summer 2005 Sue Hartshorne returned to Cairo in January 2006 to support the establishment of an occupational therapy education programme at the Ain Shams University. She was invited by Dr Ahmed El Kahky at the Institute of Postgraduate Childhood Studies to run some short courses at the university. In addition she assisted in finalising the proposed graduate entry occupational therapy curriculum. Besides, she met with representatives of other universities about their ideas for occupational therapy education.Her head of School in Adelaide (and WFOT Delegate for Australia), Professor Esther May has been very supportive to make the visit possible.
October 6th University
Negotiations with October 6 university about an undergraduate occupational therapy program are underway with discussions between Dr Ahmed Hassan , Dr Naiema Hussein, Professor Talaat Rihan and Mrs Sue Hartshorne from Australia.
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