Lately, our intake of kids has not been the most encouraging news to all of us at SHELTER. While our main work is indeed to focus on kids who have gone through all sorts of abuse, we rarely receive this many kids at one time who have gone through unthinkable, painful and dark abuses. It really concerns us as it does reflect the recent sentiments that the newspapers have been highlighting on the tragic stories that we read about child abuse.

One case that we are currently engaged in involves a story of how the father who is a drug addict has been exposing pornography materials to the child. As children who would usually imitate acts of others, this child started imitating the acts of what is seen in the film. When we confronted the father, his justification was “it is something that the child will learn about anyway, so what’s the big deal?” We were really appalled with his response and we are attempting to rescue this child now.

Because of the huge influx of children with such painful backgrounds, they have brought their pain into the home as well. A lot more fights broke out which resulted in putting more pressure on the already stressed out caregivers. It was really tough for everyone and the saddest part of this change is that it is not the new intake of kids’ fault that all these are happening. They are just behaving according to the pain and exposure of life they have experienced before.

Thankfully, we are not alone in dealing with this, as we have help from two Centres that have been helping to treat the emotional trauma that our kids have gone through. The most amazing bit about their help is that they are offering counselling services to our children, totally free of charge! We know that counselling services are not cheap and it is usually charged by the hour and that is why we are so thankful to these people. However, we do not plan to stop there.

We want to hire in-house counsellors to be based in the Home. And it will not be just for Shelter 1 but for all three Homes. The counsellor to children ratio has to be at a healthy level so that both the counsellor and children can go on at a good pace. If you or someone you know is actually interested to do such work with us, please do not hesitate to contact us at “office@shelterhome.org” or at 03-79550663. Together, let’s remove the tide of darkness and replace it with the light of our hearts!