With dedication and hard work, Ms. Anecita B. Amparo has served the Home for Girls, Capitol Site, Butuan City, of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office Caraga since March 2017.  Her responsiveness to the needs of the residents have always ushered a significant enhancement of the delivery of services to the clients of the Home for Girls. The helping interventions made by the nominee, are considered essential since it efficiently contributed a great deal of recovery and healing towards the clients.

In her continuing time of service, she has proven her essence in the department. There have been countless helping interventions made by the nominee that have been incorporated in the recovery and healing of the center’s clients, as well as the enhancement of services provided by the center and the department in general.

Her advocacy on psychological education, contributed an effective response on the part of the center’s staffs in dealing with their residents’ displayed behavior, which also led to the clients’ wide-ranging self-understanding. One of the specific approaches Ms. Amparo applied is allowing the client to understand the grooming process on sexual abuse. This approach stemmed a positive result on the client’s awareness on their loathing towards the perpetrator. Most importantly, this approach encouraged clients in asserting their rights in filing a case against the perpetrator by themselves alone.

With the aim of promoting awareness on child sexual abuse and exploitation, Ms. Amparo ensured the observance of the National Awareness week for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation every second week of February in the Center. Through her leadership, she mobilized the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) members to serve as co-resource person to discuss on Child Sexual Abuse towards the staff of the center prior to the conduct of the event. By this, she has provided opportunities not only the staff to be part of the advocacy but also she has promoted the rights and participation of the clients.

With her belief on the effectiveness of tiered strategic interventions in assessing the varied circumstance of the client, the nominee pioneered the application of expressive arts in the activities to be engaged by the center’s clients. The Expressive art initiated by the nominee churned out a feeling of optimism for a better future in the part of the clients. Thereby, in 2019, the clients were able to record their original song composition.

The nominee also initiated the coordination with the MDT members to provide avenue in helping the clients learn basic life skills such as problem solving, decision making and anger management. Further recommendations given by Ms. Amparo are continuously incorporated in the reviewing and updating of the Manual of Operations which includes: (1) institutionalization of pre-admission conference, (2) discussion of the role of the center while the client is under the HFG’s costudy, and (3) discussion on self determination of referred clients.

Her positive work attitude, passion to help clients and ability to handle the crisis helped her manage the program operation with minimal supervision. She managed to decide on urgent matters and provide recommendations to the center head through the involvement of other senior staff. Herewith, while Ms. Amparo was designated as a case manager, she was at the same time designated as the Senior Social Worker and the first alternate of the Center Head.

With the nominee’s acquired knowledge during trainings attended, the center was able to formulate a small-group sharing and staff discussion. With the nominee’s guidance, the staff of the center were able to review their case study report and were able to incorporate modifications on social functioning indicator.

This strategy initiated by Ms. Amparo has resulted to the accomplishment of the Office Performance Contract of the Field Office along with the rehabilitation of clients as reflected in the caseload inventory reports. The nominee also ensured consistent use of Theories of Traumagenic Dynamics, Modified Social Stress Model, Gender Responsive Case Management, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Basic Counseling and Assessment on Survivor’s Outcome depending on the clientele categories as social worker’s professional tool of HFG case managers.

Being an interventionist and an action-oriented person, Ms. Amparo regularly checks on the compliance of the agreements between the clints and house parents. By doing so, the progress on the clients is constantly monitored and positive outcomes are inevitably highlighter during sessions.

With her commitment on extending support to other stakeholders, Ms. Amparo also conducts advocacy sessions in the school nearby the center. She further amplified the importance of teaching children regarding the “Touch continuum” and “Touch Rules” by being a guest speaker on the radio program “Ikaw ug ang DSWD Kuyog sa Kabag-ohan” in some time in November 2018. By this, she was able to promote self-protective behavior of children against child sexual abuse.

Ms. Anecita’s passion extends through her family being a foster parent of a victim-survivor of violence with her biological daughter for almost two (2) years. This shows the consciousness and willingness of the nominee to support a child develop appropriately their sense of identity including their culture, language and religion. With this, she was given the opportunity as one of the resource person of Adoptive and Foster Parents Congress last November 22, 2019.

Being one of the strong mover against child abuse, she also testified in court for custody of sibling victim-survivors of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children. Further, she has been part in providing orientation to the social work students of Caraga State University highlighting the role of social workers in Case management.

Indeed, Ms. Anecita Amparo is one of the FO workers who have greatly contributed to the excellent performance of the DSWD Field Office Caraga. Her dedication and hard work for the past years has been crucial in the FO’s success.