Recently we had to say farewell, though in completely different ways, to 2 beloved persons.
The first one was the small Benjamin, who sadly passed away recently.
And the other person was Sue Hatton, who came for the last time to PCC to help us caring better and better for our autistic residents.
Benjamin
As a baby Benjamin was abandoned in Techiman in 2014 and soon after he came to PCC via Social Welfare.
For years he was one of our most vulnerable children, despite the loving good care he received from our caregivers since he came to PCC.
Initially we fostered the hope that he would be able to develop more in our Community, as a result of all good care and attention, but over the years it became more and more clear that his brains were too much damaged, probably as a result of a birth trauma.
Benjamin was well able to give everyone a wonderful smile and we were always grateful for that, but he was not growing, he could not sit by himself, his eating was very slow and difficult and he also could not talk.
As a result of all this he spent most of his life sitting in a special wheelchair.
Gradually it became obvious that his condition continued to deteriorate and despite hospital admissions his situation didn’t improve.
Finally Benjamin slipped away from life and we had to let him go.
After more than 10 years his life on earth came to an end.
Benjamin was loved by our caregivers who pampered and cherished him until his very last moment.
The life of Benjamin was surely not enviable and we hope and pray that now he may find everlasting happiness with his Heavenly Father,
Farewell, Benjamin, rest in perfect peace.
Sue Hatton
The final goodbye to Sue Hatton was of a completely different order.
During the past 15 years she came as often as 11 times from Bristol in the UK to our Community.
First she came as a very interested visitor to PCC, but soon she became our appreciated authority in the field of autism.
She gave dozens of workshops about this topic to our caregivers, to help them to understand our children with autism better.
Often Sue came with some of her friends from England to Ghana, also experienced persons who supported Sue during her workshops and observations.
Later on Sue helped us also tremendously with the development of a special
PCC-training programme for our caregivers.
It offered them more background information about the causes of intellectual disabilities to our caregivers. The programme also learned them how to deal with difficult situations like epilepsy and the abnormal behaviour of many of our residents.
It helped us also to counterbalance the traditional and still widespread Ghanaian belief on the causes of intellectual disabilities.
In this way a whole generation of our caregivers has learned a lot from and via Sue Hatton and therefore it was very appropriate that we said goodbye to Sue Hatton on Caregivers Day 2024.
She then received a bundle of nice drawings, made by our children and also got a very special present from PCC for all she has done for our Community over the years.
For personal reasons Sue has now to stop coming to Ghana and PCC, but we are happy that Sue will still be available remotely as advisor on autism and member of the PCC family.
Dear Sue, thanks very much for all you have done for our Community. It was great and we are extremely grateful to you.
May God bless you!