Capacity Building of Avahan-supported State Lead Partners on STI/HIV Counselling Supported by Family Health International as part of Avahan Project

To enhance the capacity of Avahan-supported State Lead Partners (SLPs) on STI/HIV counselling in order to improve the quality and coverage of counseling and referral services. YRGCARE served as key trainers and mentors.

4 Training of trainers programs; 80 Participants; Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Mysore, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur.

Assisted in 6 training workshops in other SLPs and Mentoring visits to 9 clinics

The YRGCARE core training team along with rich inputs from the state lead partners developed a set of documents: the Counseling Guidelines and Standards, a Training Toolkit for counsellor and a Monitoring and Supervisory Handbook for Quality Assurance with Quality Indicators.

HIV Counselling and Testing Training for Laboratory Professionals (HTC)

YRGCARE now offers a short-term 2-day training course on Pre and Post-HIV Test Counselling for laboratory professionals. The training course is based on the National AIDS Control Organisations (NACO) guidelines to ensure implementation of uniformity in counselling and testing services in private laboratories across the country. This serves the requirement of the National Accreditation Board of Laboratories (NABL) to have laboratory staff trained and certified for providing Voluntary counselling and Testing (VCT) services. YRGCARE continues to offer longer term HIV counselling training with hands on experience.

Women Friendly Treatment Model

Developed a Women Friendly Treatment Model to improve ART adherence for women living with HIV Locations: Andhra Pradesh and Manipur, a grant supported by International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and Positive Women’s Network

Key highlights: Networking with healthcare providers, identifying women recently diagnosed and/or initiating ART for the first time, developing module to address key treatment issues, core issues of respect, hope, praise, being healthy and sharing with each other through women-to-women chats, providing continued support and linkages through regular meets.

Capacity Building on HIV Care, Support and Treatment for Master Trainers

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai as part of its GFATM Saksham7 Project invited YRGCARE to train a set of Master Trainers for NACO. The goal was to reorient and update knowledge and skills of Master Trainers from all over India. The Master Trainers included professionals from all over the country, involved in teaching and medical professions with a few actively involved indirect HIV public programs.

Two sets of capacity building workshops were conducted in three batches each:

> Psychosocial Issues; 58 counsellor and healthcare workers (2011) and
>> Clinical Issues; 47 physicians and counsellor (2011-12)

The training modules for Clinical and Psychosocial Issues are available on request.

Capacity Building Training on Effective Programme Implementation

Supported by DFID AIDS Technical Assistance Support Team and Futures Group International India Pvt. Ltd. for NACO Under the Short Term Technical Assistance Training to Grantees of Innovation Fund.

Locations: Mumbai, Manipur, Chennai and Kolkata.

Positive Prevention: Moving Beyond

A curriculum developed and piloted by YRGCARE st for Andhra Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (APSACS) as part of their extension on Targeted Interventions Program to work with persons with high risk behavior who are living with HIV (NACP III)

Regional Capacity Building Program on Child Centric Techniques

Strengthening Capacity of healthcare workers and students interested in working with pediatrics and adolescents: Much of HIV prevention, advocacy and support starts with training of like-minded persons to provide better care services. There are separate leadership structures, support teams, schedules and roles and responsibilities. However, in the real world, the borders blur. The same issues arise. It’s essential to merge some of these realities
with the newness of the programs that we build and expand our programs to be child-centric and adolescent friendly. We identified some key concepts in child-centric techniques to take our programs to scale. These were mainly supported by the SeriousFun Children’s Network with additional financial support from the MAC AIDS Fund.

Between April 2013-Sept 2014, over 188 key personnel from various organisations serving children directly through their HIV and other related support programs including students from leading colleges and universities were trained on child centric techniques with the additional hands on learning of a one-day camp or a 5-day residential camp experience where adult learners had the opportunity to take their learning into practice directly in a safe
environment. These adults hail from the metros of Bangalore and Chennai and neighbouring areas as well as from other large districts of Madurai, Theni and Dindigul. Current Partnerships: CHES, ASHA Foundation, SeriousFun Children’s Network.