Our news and views
Staff Profile - Bisser Spirov - Lumos Bulgaria
21 December 2011
We meet with Bisser Spirov, Training Officer at our Lumos Bulgaria office. Bisser tells us about the direct impact of Lumos' work and the deinstitutionalisation process on the lives of individual children in Bulgarian institutions.
1. When did you start working for Lumos and what were you doing before?
I have been working for Lumos since December 2010. What attracted me to the organisation was its clear commitment to deinstitutionalisation and this is not only a cause I believe in, but also my professional vocation. I worked for 13 years in a children's home in Sofia and there we managed to change the old institutionalisation model and to offer a new, alternative model and a vision for working with children, based on small residential groups, planning of care and work with families. After that I was a Training Manager for an organisation called FICE Bulgaria, which works in the field of children's welfare. There we trained, supervised and supported different professionals, who work with children at risk and their families and the focus of these trainings was always deinstitutionalisation and provision of alternative services.
2. What does your role entail?
I am responsible for organising and carrying out training in the key elements of the deinstitutionalisation process. This includes training on how to work with families, specific techniques for working with different children - for example, methods of improving the eating and drinking of children with disabilities who are at risk. At the moment I am preparing training modules for working with children and young people with challenging behaviour. I also spend a lot of time on supervision and support to the people who work directly with children and families. I believe that training and supervision are interrelated.
3. What are the biggest achievements of Lumos?
Looking back over the past twelve months, I feel satisfied with the really busy and dynamic year we have had. We worked on helping to improve the eating and drinking of children with profound disabilities in several Bulgarian institutions and the results were amazing. Not only did a lot of children gain weight and grow in height, but also in many of them you could see changes in their facial expression, willingness to communicate and positive change in their behaviour. At the moment Lumos Bulgaria is involved in another significant project - we are doing an analysis of the biological families of children living in institutions and their willingness to maintain contact with their children. Although we are at the very beginning of this process, we have already had several cases where parents, who for various reasons had not seen their children for years, went to the institutions to meet with them.
4. What do you think are the challenges to deinstitutionalisation?
I have always believed that when working with people, you should focus on the people, not the problem. In the same way, when you work with children with disabilities the child should be your focus, not their disability. Unfortunately some people still see the disability, not the individual and their personality.
Another serious challenge to deinstitutionalisation is the work with children's families. The total breakdown of the connection between parents and their children is a sign of institutionalisation. As part of the deinstitutionalisation process we work hard to restore these bonds where possible and appropriate.
Last but not least, the changing of people's mindsets. In spite of significant evidence to the contrary, a lot of people, including professionals in the social work field, still believe that institutions are the best possible form of care for children with disabilities. They still think that placing of children in institutions works for everybody - for the children, their families and the community as a whole - and this is a challenge for the deinstitutionalisation process, which Lumos is working hard to overcome.
5. What changes can you see in the children with whom Lumos consultants have been working?
Individual attention, communication, physical contact and showing affection to children can have a tremendous impact.
As an example: we worked with one boy who was 17 years old and was self-harming most of the time. He was unusually small and slim for his age. He did not seem to notice either the adults or the children around him. After Lumos consultants starting working with him and gave him more individual attention and encouraged the staff in the institution to be more creative while working with him, we were all amazed to see the changes in him. He gained weight, was not hurting himself as much, was making contact with the adults, started laughing and smiling at the staff who communicated with him.
These positive changes with the children we're working with are the result of the work and the attitude not only of everybody working for Lumos, but also the staff in the institutions who believed in us and were motivated to change their working practice.
6. What are your ambitions for your work in 2012?
I would like for us all to have enough energy to prepare each of the 1800 children, with whom we have been working, for a smooth and risk free transition from institutions to the new services; making sure that we overcome any challenges and risks to the deinstitutionalisation process in Bulgaria.
7. What is your Christmas wish for the children in Bulgarian institutions?
For each institutionalised child to have somebody who cares for them. We must all work to make this possible. As we approach Christmas, into 2012 and beyond.
