CARING SOLUTIONS

Holt Vietnam's Da Nang staff works with local officials to find effective ways to help children and families in crisis
By Bruce Dahl, Vietnam Program Director

  Halfway down the coastline of Vietnam, near renowned China Beach and Marble Mountain, the relaxed city of Da Nang provides a backdrop for a quiet, yet truly effective program. From the Holt-Vietnam regional office in Da Nang, caring and dedicated staff bring sensitive help for children and families in crisis.

A family preservation grant allowed Ms. Hoa to purchase a sugarcane press. Her small business selling the juice from her cart has made it possible for her to parent her son.

  I recently had the opportunity to visit some of the children served by Holt-Vietnam in this area. These children come from a variety of backgrounds and living situations. But, together their stories demonstrate the variety of services that Holt provides in Vietnam.

  In the morning I got on the back of the office motorbike with Mr. Ho Dang Hoa, Holt-Vietnam's country director. Mr. Hao, the regional coordinator and Ms. Chau, a government social worker rode separately on their bikes. We easily melted into the heavy but steady moving stream of cycles and moved east across the river and north along a major thoroughfare, to the Holt operated single parents' home.

  Located in a fenced area, the home felt quiet and secure. A young mother there cared for her young baby and an expectant mother busily crocheted a long red shawl. A housemother watched over the women and the child.

  Social workers responsible for the single mothers' program spend considerable time working with the women and their families, as most of the women are young and frightened about their situation due to the cultural taboo against having children out of wedlock. Generally from poor families, the mothers usually have limited education. If they have a job, it probably requires few skills and provides a meager income. Many of the women are teenagers who have been driven away from their homes and find themselves helpless. Before the single mothers' program opened in Da Nang, some single mothers reportedly killed themselves and/or their babies.

  The local Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (DOLISA) is very supportive of Holt's single parents' program. However, when the home first opened in 1995, some local officials and community members opposed it. One official who was instrumental in providing initial support for the home, laughs now at an incident when the first pregnant mother in the program arrived at his personal residence under the cover of darkness and met his wife at the door. There was some explaining to do in the early days.

  The single parents' program provides pre-natal and post-natal care for the mothers as well as reproductive health training. The women receive financial support, if needed, for the hospital and medical costs associated with the delivery and food and clothes until three months after delivery. They also receive vocational training such as sewing or knitting to prepare for a new life after leaving the single mothers' home. The social workers have been quite successful in identifying job opportunities for many of the women who have left the home.

  As I entered the home, I noted the small garden in front of the house, and learned that one of the mothers had taken on this project. A telephone sat on a shelf in the living area, with a list which included the numbers of social workers and nearby medical services.

  The young mother took her newborn into one of the two bedrooms to feed. Meanwhile, the social worker told us about the operation of the home and the great need to help women in crisis. Though a few women will parent their babies, many will relinquish to ensure a brighter future for their children and themselves. In this case, the newborn will be adopted, however, the mother planned to stay for the first few weeks to feed and care for the baby, providing a healthy start in life.

  We rode back across the river and had lunch at a small open restaurant and enjoyed a meal of rice, greens and fish, then rode south in the city and parked in front of the home of the Ut family.

  Dr. Ut and his wife, both medical doctors, have been foster parents for the past three years and have cared for four foster children. During my visit they were caring for Ha, who is due to be reunited with her family at the end of May. A quiet, young girl, Ha smiles as we greet her and her foster father. The foster father pours tea as we talk about his experiences as a foster parent and the joy he has in having children such as Ha in the house. His birth children have grown and moved out of the house.

  As a foster family, the Uts receive approximately $25 a month to support the foster child. Of this, $14 dollars goes for food and $11 dollars for incidental expenses of the foster family. Though $25 is no small sum of money in Vietnam, it is easy to see by the care the children receive that money is not a major reason for participation in the program.

  Ha's birth father contracted tuberculosis, became paralyzed and unable to work. Her mother, who sells lottery tickets and earns less than a dollar a day, was unable to care for all of their three children. So Ha, the youngest,

A social worker looks in on one of the newborns in Holt's single parents' home in Da Nang. The program provides a safe and supportive environment for unwed mothers to live, receiving pre- and post-natal care.

  Many families who live in relative poverty request family assistance, however, Holt-Vietnam uses referrals and thorough assessments to identify families where children are at risk of being separated from their families. Poverty alone is not enough to justify intervention, though counseling and referral to other relevant programs is an option.

  Later in the afternoon, we headed further south into the countryside to visit a family preservation case. A beautiful ride, the wind felt good in the late afternoon sun. We passed through rice paddies with small houses built on the high ground and surrounded by palms and banana trees. Some areas were recently planted, others were thick with dark green waving rice stalks. Everywhere people worked the fields. Vietnam is one of the world's largest exporters of rice, grown and harvested with simple implements on small plots of land.

  As we neared the Nguyen family farm, we went off the main road onto a single track path - no place for four-wheeled vehicles here. The commune social worker accompanied us to visit Mr. Nguyen, the poorest family in the commune of some 1000 persons. But poverty was not the basis for Holt-Vietnam's intervention and assistance. Mr. Nguyen's wife had died shortly after giving birth to their fifth child. He was heartbroken but also committed to keeping his family intact. About the same time a storm severely damaged his house compounding his desperate situation.

  As in other crisis cases, Holt-Vietnam worked with the local authorities and neighbors to assist Mr. Nguyen. After the mother died, the underweight newborn daughter was admitted to the Da Nang Dong Da Child Welfare Center. And while local resources and labor helped repair his house, Holt collaborated with the local social worker to assess Mr. Nguyen's ability to sustain his family. His farming background and familiarity with animals provided a significant opportunity. For $130 Holt-Vietnam purchased a water buffalo that Mr. Nguyen could utilize to till other farmers' land. Today he earns up to five dollars a day plowing the fields in the area. With his own garden and rice plot, he can support his family. A grandmother assists with the children. In June, the child at the Dong Da Center will be reunited with her father, brothers and sisters. She will take up a life similar to other children in the countryside, where 80 percent of the Vietnamese population make their living.

  We left Mr. Nguyen and headed back to Da Nang City. As we entered town, we made our last visit to Ms. Hoa, who operates a sugar cane press, purchased by Holt-Vietnam through the family preservation program at a cost of $150. As we sipped the sweet sap of sugar cane and rested on brightly colored chairs set out for customers, we learned that Ms. Hoa, single mother of two children, is typical in many ways of other single mothers. When her first child was born out of wedlock, her parents threw her out of the house. She tried to support her son and herself with a small business, but became pregnant a second time. Life would have been much worse for Ms. Hoa if she had not come into Holt-Vietnam's single parent program. While at the single parents' home, the older child, Tai, was admitted into care at the Dong Da Center. Ms. Hoa, through counseling and after long deliberation, decided to relinquish the youngest child and decided to parent Tai. The youngest child has since been assigned for domestic adoption.

  As the sun went down that evening, Ms. Hoa served several drive-up customers on motorbikes at the curbside. Ms. Hoa told us that she cleared $2 a day selling pressed sugar cane juice - enough to support her child and herself. The two of them looked content together and have since been reconciled with Ms. Hoa's parents.

  Throughout my trip to Vietnam, I visited other cases similar to those described above. The Holt-Vietnam program in Da Nang provides an example of how integrated child welfare services can be designed to address the many needs of at risk children and their families. What impressed me most were the sincere efforts and careful consideration by all those involved in each case, whether they were the social workers, foster parents, or birth parents. Though the decisions affecting the lives of children in crisis are sometimes painful to make, Holt-Vietnam staff and their partners from the DOLISA are especially able to discern the best interest of each and every child.