Counselling Embedding Systems Project (CERP IV)

AVEGA Telephone Based Counselling supported by CERP IV
AVEGA Telephone Based Counselling supported by CERP IV

Continuing our series of articles from our Annual Report 2024/25, we outline here our work on our Counselling Embedding Systems Project (CERP IV).

CERP IV is a one-year follow on project to our Counselling Enhanced Reach Project (CERP III) to ensure that specifically training and sensitisation of Community Health Officers (CHOs) and Community Health Workers (CHWs) can be extended across Rwanda to ensure that an awareness of the specific mental health needs of survivors and how to treat and refer relevant cases is embedded in the public health system. It runs from December 2024 to December 2025.

To address the need to sensitise and improve the skills of workers from mainstream services to more sensitively and appropriately provide counselling support to survivors, and related vulnerable persons, CERP IV will extend the training sessions we have developed and delivered in CERP III to more CHOs who are responsible for managing the CHWs in districts, so that they can better understand to whom to refer and how best to sensitively treat cases of survivors.

Due to the numbers, and budget required, it was not possible to coordinate this across all Rwanda as part of CERP III, which focused that work in the Western and Southern Provinces, where there are the greatest number of survivors. Through CERP IV we plan to extend the work to the Eastern and Northern Provinces of Rwanda, and in Kigali, as well as additional sectors in the Western and Southern Provinces not yet reached, so that the training is made available to CHOs, and in turn CHWs, across all of Rwanda.  

The project will deliver two training sessions to a new target of a further 200 CHOs who are operational across these areas – which will be delivered by the counsellors of Survivors Fund (SURF) and our partners on the project. The CHOs will in turn be expected and supported to convey the training and learning to the CHWs that they manage, so in turn that will then help inform and educate a further 1,500 CHWs as well.

Through the training that will be provided directly to the CHOs (and through them, indirectly to CHWs) this will extend the capacity that we are building beyond the individuals directly involved with, and funded by, the earlier phases of CERP – which will be critical in extending the reach, and ultimately access to, counselling services in the community for survivors, and related vulnerable persons.

As with CERP III, we will aim to engage a far greater network of local actors through the training we will deliver to CHOs so that they are better aware and equipped to inform and educate their CHWs to provide the support required by survivors, and related vulnerable persons, in the community as well as in local health centres and clinics. Critically the additional training that will be provided to CHOs will transfer knowledge to a far greater network of people across Rwanda on how to effectively extend, and ensure access to, the mental health support still required by survivors, and related vulnerable persons

Success will be determined by the number survivors accessing mainstream mental health support and their satisfaction levels and effectiveness scores given in addressing their related issues and needs. 

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