We are delighted to announce the continuation and expansion of our new online training.  Mid May we started a 5 module online specialist cleft nursing training course for nurses in Russian – targeting Russia and neighbouring countries.  More than 70 health professionals joined the  first session on 18 May and feedback during the event was very positive.  The training  is based around our Early Care Training Programme developed with a grant from the EU Erasmus programme in 2017 www.cleftectp.com.  We have been able to redevelop this and make it available as a live online training programme thanks to a grant from Smile Train who are keen to follow the course.

Trainers are Gareth Davies, Executive Director of ECO, and Kostadinka Bojikova, specialist cleft nurse from Plovdiv Bulgaria.  Kostadinka, who we funded to attend specialist cleft nurse training in the UK in 2007, has been a key member of our training team over the past 10 years.

As a result of the pandemic we are moving more and more training online. It is a challenging, but necessary, switch moving from face to face to online training.  We are using  an online simultaneous interpretation platform (VoiceBoxer) to deliver the training in real time, ensuring sessions run smoothly and participants are able to fully engage.

On 19 May we begin our first online course for a parent group.  We are delivering this in Slovenian for the cleft parent support charity in Slovenia and topics covered over 4 weeks will  include guidance on providing constructive support to new parents, how to develop resilience in children with clefts – and in their parents – and finally looking at ways of improving effectiveness of support groups in terms of lobbying, communications and fundraising.