After all the archaeology, it was nice to have something a little different and so I jumped on two planes up to Piura in the north of Peru, a town which is not a huge distance from Ecuador. I was there to visit the Anita Goulden Home which is one of the seven organisations that we support in the Market Harborough Third World Group.
I always adopt a critical eye when I visit any charity or organisation for the simple reason that there are so many places to which charitable funds can be assigned that they have to be used well. I am pleased to say that even with the critical approach I adopt, I was very impressed with what I saw at the Anita Goulden Home,
The home was founded in memory of Anita Goulden who was a British philanthropist. She famously refused to come to London for decoration by the Queen saying that the money could be better used to support the projects she ran. She was decorated by the British Ambassador instead. I hope they did send a donation as it would be a far more worthy project than most currently supported by the British government. The home now bearing her name is not the one she founded but one in her memory.
It currently houses 19 children with severe mental and physical disabilities. Only two can talk and then in a very limited way and the vast majority are confined to wheelchairs. The home is officially for children under 20 but due to there being no other facility for them, some do stay on further. It is quite simple – you cannot give massive amounts of care for the first years of their life and then kick them out after that because basically there is virtually nowhere else for them to go. There are a couple of places in Lima that can care for older people with severe disabilities but provision is very limited. The concept of the welfare state is not really one that Peru has subscribed to. What is particularly scary is that this is the only example of a home for such children in the North of Peru. There are schools and some other facilities but there are no other homes and that is quite scary.
The quality of care that the home provides is excellent and although I am no expert on this, I think it is probably better than many organisations in the UK with a similar objective. One of my colleagues commented that this is not difficult which may be the case but in reply you could say that the care provided is probably considerably better. I observed quite a lot of the care being provided, particularly the therapy and there was a lot of emphasis on trying to make the children better where it is possible. The therapists and nurses really looked like they knew what they were doing and most importantly really valued the children that they were working with. One of the biggest success stories that I saw while at the home was that of Diego who arrived in the home about nine months ago unable to walk and now he can barely stop thanks to the support and therapy he has received. The next challenge is to get him to learn to climb stairs and having seen him try, I think it is a challenge that the home will be able to succeed in. There are of course some children that the home cannot improve their medical condition but then it is about creating as much pleasure for them as possible. The accommodation was very decent and many of the children, particularly the girls, had their own toys. The food that was being cooked at lunchtime would have beaten the quality of many Peruvian restaurants and obviously lunchtime is one of the busiest times in the house as the vast majority of the children cannot feed themselves.
The house is not the most beautiful in terms of surroundings and some coloured paint might help in this but it is spotlessly clean and the welcome I received was outstanding. The most important thing is the care the children receive. The only thing I did think was that the salaries of the staff were just a little low compared to other places I had observed in Peru. Although exceeding the legal minimum, I did feel that a nurse’s salary should exceed what I saw a sewing lady get in Lima but here it didn’t. it is a difficult challenge to resolve but I do feel it should be addressed. Perhaps this will be a possibility once dear Theresa stops causing chaos with the value of our currency by her rather peculiar Brexit policy!
Hugo Goodson