An opportunity, an unpleasant encounter with a government official at a hair salon, later gave Ayo Dalgety-Dean the opportunity to start working in children’s rights in Guyana and today she heads a non-governmental organization (NGO) known for working with children , especially those who are sexually abused.
Blossom Inc. got her name during a conversation with her young daughters as she told them she wanted to form an organization to work with children to help them blossom. One then asked her why not call the organization Blossom, and it is today.
Long before she returned to Guyana from England, Dalgety-Dean, whose background is in finance, knew that she wanted to work with children and actually gained practical experience during her early years at university. But she also knew that she did not want to follow the social worker’s path.
Today Blossom Inc employs around 26 staff across the country as it is one of the NGOs working with the Child Advocacy centers. But had it not been for that salon’s argument with that officer (whose identity she did not know at the time) on children’s issues, her work with children on local soil might not have started as soon.
“We became best friends, you know, after an hour of going back and forth…,” he told Stabroek Weekend. It was only after they left the salon that she was told who the officer was.
She later received a call from the said individual and was asked to sit on the visiting committee for children’s homes. He later agreed and voted as chairman of that committee; he subsequently became a member of the adoption board.
But the call from Child Care and Protection Agency Director Ann Greene about the one-stop centers now known as Child Advocacy centers for reporting and treating child sexual abuse confirmed the deal.
“I was like, this is my thing. And she [Greene] invited me to a meeting… ten days later, Blossom Inc became a reality… The rest is history, ”he said.
That was six years ago, and he said it had been a good trip. For her the organization needs work because there is so much child abuse, but she was quick to point out that it is no different from other countries.
For the last year alone, he said, Blossom Inc. conducted some 396 forensic interviews. It’s not the only organization that does this, there’s ChildLink who also works with advocacy centers, and as Dalgety-Dean noted, cases are under-represented.
“It’s horrible. It’s horrible. People ask me all the time [how do I keep going] and I think that’s how I know it’s called me because somebody has to do it, and everyone has their niche. I’m doing this and someone else is doing something else that’s needed too…, ”he said.
Tired of being clean
The organization has had to do so much work, especially lately, as Dalgety-Dean said that she and staff are tired at times. But they know they have to keep diving forward because there is no leaving.
“New Year’s Eve I got a call. And on New Year’s Day we got another call about two children being raped by their father …, ‘he revealed.
“At the moment I know I’m overwhelmed. I am very close to full and I know that I have to take care of myself. ”
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an increase in the outbreak, but Dalgety-Dean also believes that the more successful prosecutions there are, the more reports would be made, and kudos to the judiciary on for the Sexual Offenses Court up and running in a COVID environment.
Due to the pandemic, Blossom had to switch to mainly online therapy and this was facilitated by some funding from the British High Commission, which allowed data or phone plans for staff to call clients and receive psychosocial support sessions. In real emergencies, personal sessions also had to take place.
Last year, he said, he was forced to reorganize Blossom to have an officer in charge of victim support services to assist with clients navigating the court system. He saw the importance of identifying one person as going to court is a great commitment and a huge job.
Importantly, he said, he evaluated Blossom’s data and found that about 405 cases are not accounted for.
“Meaning that, over the years since Blossom started now, we have conducted the forensic interviews, but we don’t know where the cases are. We call the police stations, they don’t know; the CPD [Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions] don’t know, but we know. We have the causes. These things happened. Where are they in the system? ”She asked.
This situation has resulted in her now having a member of staff track the cases, and calling police stations to find out if there was insufficient evidence, only to find out what happened to those children. He said they always track cases, but because the staff conducted the forensic interviews, the therapy, and went to court, they couldn’t keep up. She has had to channel them and allow some to work in only one specific area. It will now have a victim service unit, which would involve court support, case tracking and case review.
He pointed out that years after therapy may reach the victim’s case to reach court and therefore must be checked in.
Two years ago, too, with the support of UNICEF, they were able to offer an extended service to the migrant population in Guyana and now this is being done through centers in Regions One, Two and Seven. The work involves child sexual abuse as well as gender-based violence and so both children and adults are targeted.
In her report for last year, Dalgety-Dean said, “levels of sexual and gender-based violence also saw an alarming increase that our grassroots migrant support staff saw in the field every day”.
The 2020 report noted that approximately 373 forensic interviews were conducted with child victims of child abuse, 16 extended / further forensic interviews were conducted, and 7 forensic interviews were conducted with special victims of sexual violence and exploitation.
And in the area of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Psychosocial Support, we received around 245 referrals from the Child Care and Protection Agency, provided 304 emergency sessions for people to children and families and 1,721 tele-support sessions weekly psychosocial with children and their families.
Finance
Dalgety-Dean was born in Guyana but left Queen’s College for England when his older sister went to university. She completed her A levels in that country at a Catholic girls’ school.
According to Dalgety-Dean, her background is in finance. While reading for a political degree, he worked with children in London, England, volunteering at an after school club for children.
“Every single holiday I ended up working with children. I worked with children with autism … he [working with children] kind of there in the background and kept me earning pocket money [while attending university], ”He said.
After university, Dalgety-Dean said, she was still unclear what she wanted to do, and decided to apply to a few graduate management programs; he landed in Marks & Spencer’s graduate program.
It involved doing two months of financial management, two months of commercial management and two months of personal financial management before specializing in one of the fields.
“That happened to me being really good at financial management, so I said this is what I’m good at letting me specialize in… What that meant was that if you had to move on, you had to move you do some kind of financial account or qualification, ”he recalled.
He later did a program through the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants while working at another firm as a financial analyst and later changed jobs to become a marketing financial analyst. However, at some point during her studies she stopped in her tracks when she realized she didn’t want to become an accountant.
“I stopped. I just made sure I had enough money to live on for six months and I stopped… I needed to re-group, ”he recalled.
At that point, she realized she wanted to work with children but didn’t want to be a social worker and so she registered with social work agencies as a professional and called for an interview.
The project was Building Bridges with the Family Welfare Association, now known as Family Action, an international charity in England. She was shocked to get the job and was later told she had been hired because of her financial background as they could not manage the finances effectively. They wanted someone with a financial background as well as one when working with children.
“I took that job as a duck to water. He was to manage a project for children and families affected by thought [health problems] so what it meant was managing a language and specialty therapist, doctors, nurses, paediatricians who all offered a multidisciplinary approach…, ”he said.
She managed the overall project but later became a bit intimidated by all the professionals working under her and had a “non-specialist degree in politics”. This saw her return to university where she did a postgraduate degree in systemic family therapy and there she got a call.
He later went on to run children’s centers which used a multidisciplinary approach to deal with children living in difficult circumstances.
When she later married, she decided to become a stay-at-home mom and her husband landed a job in Guyana, which also meant she returned to her country of birth. Her idea was to house her children, but she soon realized she hadn’t broken out. She joined the Inner Wheel Club and socialized with the older women, and that’s the way to go, as they help her understand so much. Their average age was 70 and she was in her early 30s, but it’s an experience she wouldn’t mind reliving.
Now that she has established Blossom, while funding remains a challenge, says Dalgety-Dean, it’s here to stay. She said Blossom is a government subsidy agency, but although there is a baseline to begin with, it is constantly under financial pressure. She has also learned to be reluctant to accept funding from privately owned family businesses because she does not want to be placed in the position where she is expected to compromise Blossom’s professionalism anyway.
The BPO Emerge Call Center provides monthly support which is used to assist in providing staff with small amounts of money to travel and provide snacks for them when out in the fields.