By Tanya Alag | Head - Resource Mobilization
Progress Report Child Development Unit
Girls Shelter Home
Contents
Child Development Unit (CDU): Introduction and Background.
CDU Team..
Key Activities.
Challenges.
Impact.
Child Development Unit (CDU): Introduction and Background
Salaam Baalak Trust’s Mental Health Programme started in the year 2003 with the aim to provide psychological support to children rescued from the streets and ensure their emotional and mental well-being. Presently the Mental Health Programme team comprises 10 members including counsellors designated for every children’s home/residential centre of SBT. The Programme is recognized as one of its kind due to its uniqueness and focus on professional and trained care to children rescued from streets.
Expanding its scope of work to respond to the special needs of children with disabilities, the Mental Health Programme team has initiated the Child Development Unit. In the year 2015, the Unit was set up for providing care to children with neuro-developmental difficulties. The Unit is operational at Aarushi children’s home of SBT. The interventions at the Unit hinges on an integrative and inclusive approach whereby the girls with additional support needs are housed in the same accommodation as the other girls.
Vision: The vision of the Unit is to provide children with neuro-developmental difficulties a safe and nurturing environment; protect these children from abuse and facilitate early screening of the problems and provide timely intervention. The Unit strives to provide24x7 special care and emotional support to these children.
Objective: Child development unit was started with the objective to mainstream the children with neuro-developmental disorders through an inclusive approach at Aarushi children’s home so that they can learn basic self-care and communication skills to express and meet their individual needs.
Inclusion criterion: Due to the paucity of resources and funds, it has been decided to keep maximum 10 children in CDU with mild neuro-developmental difficulties. The maximum age of the girls to be put in CDU is designated as 13 years.
CDU Team
The unit has one developmental therapist who fulfils the supervisory role. The unit has three qualified caretakers who are trained at regular intervals on various therapies.
Key Activities
All children coming to the centre are screened using a baseline assessment interview at the first point of contact. During the interview if the child presents mental health concerns, the counsellor then does a more his/her comprehensive assessment. There is a follow up discussion with the senior consultant and psychiatrist Dr. Amit Sen to confirm the diagnosis and to ascertain if the child fits in to the criterion of CDU.
The children are then provided individual and group sessions. To provide specialised therapies to these children such as sensory integration, occupational therapy, speech therapy they are sent to a private organization called Children First for these therapies because at present SBT does not have an interdisciplinary team with these specific skills. Apart from this, the individual education plan of each child is prepared and followed at children’s home. The key services provided to the children at the Unit have been listed below.
Challenges
It was initially difficult for other children to be empathetic and compassionate towards the children in CDU as they did not understand their differential needs. It was difficult for them to accept them.
Developing the infrastructure and resources is key to sustain this project. Working with special needs requires an interdisciplinary team comprising speech therapist, occupational therapist, developmental therapist and a psychiatrist. To constitute this team a lot funds are required and hence, budget remains a constraint.
Safety of these children is a key concern and since Autism has comorbidity with other medical conditions so there have been few crisis situations wherein children may hurt or harm themselves.
The aim of the development unit to rehabilitate the children into mainstream society and but finding job opportunities for these children is difficult. Since, these children vary in their skills and abilities as well as functional needs; employment should ideally involve a wide range of opportunities, from secure/sheltered settings to supported employment.
There are many existing Government schemes for people with disability but it’s a very cumbersome job to avail these facilities.
Impact
By creating Child Development Unit, the team have been able to provide a safe environment to children with neuro-developmental disorders. With regular intensive therapy and pharmacological support many children have learnt the basic self-help skills and are independent. Looking at the progress of the children, we have been able to send five children from CDU to a special needs school where the focus is on various therapies and also on vocational training.
By tanya alag | Head - resource mobilization
By tanya alag | Head Resource mobilization
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