Children of Vietnam’s Hope System of Care for Children with Disabilities improves the health and quality of life for children with disabilities who are living in poverty and who have congenital impairments, received permanent injury, or may have been negatively impacted by exposure to Agent Orange/dioxin.

Children in poor communities of Vietnam receive wrap-around care that is based on their unique needs and can include one or more health and education services which is facilitated by an interdisciplinary team of experts evaluating each child’s needs. Each child may receive one or more services such as schooling, handicapped accessible housing, counseling, surgery and prosthetics, business micro-loans, nutrition, and medicine. Hope System of Care is a program that provides comprehensive services directly to disabled children and their families and gives hope and dignity through improved health and quality of life.

Children of Vietnam’s Hope System of Care impacts children with disabilities and their families, are poor, are homeless or living in unstable housing, live in either the urban or rural areas of Danang City. If living in the urban areas of Danang, a family is often in housing with a leaky roof, sometimes without access to water, and without handicapped accessibility. If living in the rural areas of Danang, a family is often living without bathroom facilities, a mud floor, unstable walls, and a leaky roof. Disabling condition of the children include:

• Difficulty moving • Difficulty hearing and speaking
• Difficulty in learning • Difficulty seeing
• Mental illness • Epilepsy
• Heart disease • Significant skin difficulty
• Physical deformity • Excretory system and other basic living skills difficulty

Lastly, in order to ensure girls have equal access to services, approximately 50% or more of the children selected for inclusion are girls.

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Direct Impact of Your Project

By supporting Children of Vietnam’s Hope System of Care you provide the means to empower the child, the parents and local expertise, all of whom care deeply about the child’s well-being and are intimately familiar with the child’s situation, to determine as a team, what is the best care plan that will improve health and quality of life. The average cost to provide three to four different yet much needed services to one child is approximately $800.

Here are a few examples of the range of services that benefit a child with disabilities and living in very poor circumstances.

• $40 supports children’s holiday events, parent education materials, and monthly parent group meetings.
• $50 ensures medical exams and emergency care.
• $100 provides medicine, nutritional supplements such as milk rice, or clothes and household items such beds and mosquito nets.
• $155 provides yearly school fees, school materials, transportation, and tutoring.
• $200 buys wheelchairs, rehabilitation & adaptive equipment, hearing aides, and prosthetics for the disabled.
• $375 provides stable housing, hygienic in-door latrine, potable water and electric installment.
• $500 supports vocational training fees, lunch, transportation, and speech and physical therapy practice.

Extended Impact on Your Partner Community

Direct services to each child with disabilities will indirectly impact his/her family (household average of four members) by improved quality of live through reduced isolations by attending parent support groups, increased understanding of their child’s disability, and reduced stress about their child’s future. Additionally, Hope System of Care (HSC) serves as a model for future humanitarian safety net systems and for long-term sustainability:

• HSC develops individualized plans and tailored services that build sustainable, wrap-around solutions based upon the strengths and needs of each child and the family.
• HSC increases family motivation and engagement by working with families from a strengths-based approach.
• HSC gives local communities a sense of investment in the child’s wellbeing and the ability to provide long-term support for families with disabled children, including those affected by Agent Orange.
• HSC provides local government and other service organizations with the mechanism to respond to the unique needs of disabled children - including those affected by Agent Orange - and helps to build a locally responsive service system.