In El Salvador, Supporting Child Caregivers partners with Mi Casa Kids children’s home and its Director, Bob McDonell, to support the child caregivers at Mi Casa. El Salvador struggles with chronic poverty, the trauma of a recent civil war, and the presence of gangs. In keeping with the 2015 law LEPINA, all children must be removed from “institutional care” and reunited with their families. This is made extremely difficult by the fact that most children in institutions come from families that are unable to care for them because of extreme poverty, mental illness, incarceration, or severe family dysfunction.

In this system, when children are abandoned or neglected and in need of protective care, they require transitional care until appropriate family members can be identified. Mi Casa Kids has accepted the challenge of providing temporary enriched care for these infants. Since 2020, Supporting Child Caregivers has provided the caregivers at Mi Casa with information about early development and about how to care for high-risk infants, in the form of monthly mentoring workshops and educational videos. The videos are dialogues created for two fictional friends discussing the Mi Casa babies. The two friends, “Majo” and “Henry”, are actually child psychiatrists on the El Salvador team. In their conversations, Maria Jose Lisotto and Henry Rafael Marquez Castro talk about how to comfort crying babies, the importance of playing with babies, the benefits of family mealtime, and other subjects. These dialogues, while engaging and easy to listen to, contain sophisticated scientific information. In addition, Mi Casa Kids continued its outreach program for teenage mothers with Supporting Child Caregivers’ help and in collaboration with the MESA of the first lady of El Salvador and the El Salvadorian ministry of health.

In 2021, Supporting Child Caregivers created a consultation and educational program for the Mi Casa caregivers. Maria Jose Lisotto conducts workshops for the Mi Casa caregivers, at their request, on such topics as “Building Self Esteem in Toddlers” and “Mistakes in Disciplining.” In addition to their informational content, the workshops address the emotional dilemma faced by the caregivers, who are being asked to take care of abandoned infants and then after a few months let them go. When Mi Casa first began receiving infants, Bob McDonnell was counseled by another agency to avoid allowing the caregivers to make an attachment to the infants, in order to ease their separation when it was time for them to leave. In consultation with Supporting Child Caregivers, and realizing the foundational importance of the relationship in infant development, Bob McDonnell did the opposite and encouraged the caregivers to allow the infants to attach. In the context of talking to the child protective agency about the unification of the infants with families, Bob McDonnell was able to explain to them Attachment Theory and the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.

Meanwhile, the Mi Casa team has started a monthly support group for the families of the children who have transitioned out of Mi Casa, which Supporting Child Caregivers consults on. A welcome addition to our team is Yvette Blanchard, a skilled physical therapist, and early intervention practitioner. Supporting Child Caregivers has also prepared educational dialogues for El Salvadorian mothers and fathers and is working on other ways to encourage parental involvement in caregiving. Lastly, Dr. Ana Lainez presented the newborn behavioral observation [NBO] toll at the 4th National Congress of Neonatology in Honduras.

The El Salvador team also presented its work at many renowned global conferences in 2021; for more details click here.