We Care

As part of a growing focus on adopting more holistic and integrated approaches to meeting the needs of adolescents living with HIV, drawing on socio-ecological perspectives, there have been efforts by Human Touch Foundation to address the contextual barriers which the ALHIVs face in coping with HIV, help reduce unmet need among adolescents living with HIV for information, guidance, and services. 

The intervention has the following components: 

• a)    Psycho-social Support: This addresses psychosocial development, including lack of future orientation, disclosure, inadequate educational attainment and limited health literacy, failure to focus on the long-term consequences of near-term risk behaviours, and coping ability. Two annual camps, i.e. Sunburst Camp and Leadership Camp introduced in 2011, aims to build leadership through various sessions covering a wide range of topics related to life skills and coping with HIV and building leadership among adolescents living with HIV.
• b)    Social Protection Support: This will include facilitating access to social and legal protection services of the government as well as the civil society organizations. The services will be provided to all the children will include the opening of bank account, PAN card services, aadhar card, late birth registration of orphans, status certificates, voter ID card, driving license, access to pension and other schemes, etc.
• c)    Advocacy Programmes: This will advocate to make quality treatment and care available for all adolescents and provide a collective voice promoting accountability in the HIV response.
• d)    Nutrition Support: Human Touch has been supporting 250 children living with HIV with nutrition support which includes a package of 10 grocery items, including immunity boosters are distributed monthly. 

The overall impact of the project will be to build resilience for 250 children and adolescents living with HIV in the state of Goa. The services of clinical psychologists will strengthen the mental health care services, which will focus on assessment and follow up to achieve maximum health outcomes. The nutrition bank will provide nutrition counselling and services to build immunity of these children and social and legal protection will achieve better economical and legal security, adding to better coping mechanisms to build the resilience of the beneficiaries.