Capacity building of adolescent girls to act as link volunteers in the
Community
The success and sustainability of the community health programmes primarily depend
on the participation of the community. The human resources available in the community,
specially the adolescent girls, should be appropriately utilized for mobilizing the
community for availing the reproductive health services in all the 385 blocks in
Tamilnadu. The adolescent training programme will empower the adolescent girls and
develop them as change agents in the community t utilize the health services effectively
and create demand for delivery of quality reproductive health services. The adolescent
girls will act as Link volunteers liaising between the community and the Village Health
Nurses / Anganwadi workers.
It is proposed to select willing adolescent girls in the villages and train them in various
reproductive health problems faced by adolescent girls. All the 42 HUDs will be covered
under this programme. In every block, there are approximately 25 Health Sub Centres
with 250 villages/hamlets/habitations. In each village / habitation, two adolescent girls
will be selected for training. In each block, around 50 adolescent girls will thus be
selected to be trained as link volunteers.
The girls will be trained at block headquarters for 5 days in batches of 50. The training
regimen will cover changes during adolescence, personal hygiene, menstrual hygiene
and other problems of the adolescents. In addition, they will be taught about conception,
antenatal care, danger signs during pregnancy, importance of postnatal care, family
welfare services, child care, immunization and given information abut availability of
emergency obstetric care in CEmONC centres, abortion services etc. The training on
maternal and child health issues will empower the adolescent girls to take care of the
pregnant women and support them to follow the advice of Village Health Nurses. Each
adolescent girl will take care of 5 to 6 pregnant women and 5 postnatal women in each
habitation. They will provide the following support services.
 Ensure regular consumption of iron and folic acid tablets by the pregnant women.
 Motivate the family members to provide one extra meal to the pregnant women.
 Facilitate the antenatal and postnatal women to take noon meal in noon meal
centres.
 Guide the family to take the mother to the CEmONC center where emergency
obstetric care facilities are available if the mother has any risk factor or the
mother develops complications during antenatal or intra-natal period.
 Get the support of SHG members and other community members to transport the
mother for obstetric emergencies.
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 Support the VHN and Anganwadi worker in providing services to the antenatal
and postnatal women.
 Encourage the mother to give colostrums and continue breastfeeding by
explaining the benefits of breast feeding.
 Organise health education sessions for the antenatal and postnatal women with
the support of VHN and SHGs.
 Support the mother for availing newborn care services in the CEmONC centers.
 Contact the district emergency Ambulance services for getting the ambulance
during any emergency in the villages.
It is proposed to organize 5 days workshop at the Institute of Public Health,
Poonamalee to finalize the curriculum and methodology of the training. The
participants will include IEC Consultant, faculties from TINP Communication training
centre, selected Public Health Nurses and Medical Officers. In all, there will be 20
participants.
Block level training teams, each team comprising 3 or 4 trainers – Medical officer,
Sector Health Nurse, Block Extension Educator and Community Nutrition Instructor
(trainers selected based on their aptitude for teaching using innovative
communication methods). The block level trainers will be trained at 6 Regional
Health Training Institutes for 2 days for each batch. Each Regional Health Training
Institute will train 250 to 260 block trainers in 4 batches and each batch will have 60
to 65 trainers.
The Medical Officers will assess the programme on the indicators given below:
 No. of adolescent girls trained.
 Monthly Review on:
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No of visits made by the adolescent girls.
No. of women consumed Iron Folic Acid
No. of cases referred to VHN/other hospitals
No. of women under their care who have delivered and assistance offered.
No. of women provided with Antenatal/Postnatal care.
No. of new born referred.
No. of infants who have fully immunized.
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