By Pravir Lal | Project Leader
Dear Kind Hearts
Greetings from SANKALP team.
New session for the year 2015-2016 started after summer break on 9th June. Though last year we had decided to restrict total strength of children at Sankalp to 36, we had many requests for admission in the new session. After considering the fact that there is a considerable incident of absenteeism in such children (which is normally 15% and goes as high as 30%), we felt that we could increase our strength to 42 children so that the effective strength at any given time will be around 36. 40 have already been confirmed admission and 2 are under observation. 36 of them have multiple disabilities. 12 of them are girls and 28 are boys. All except one of them are mentally challenged. 14 of them are suffering from cerebral palsy, 5 from autism, 1 from Down's syndrome, 8 from ADHD, 1 from Prader vili syndrome, 1 from Asperger's syndrome, 1 is 90% blind, 2 are severely hearing impaired and 23 have speech impairment in varying degree.
Annual Psychological assessment has been completed last month to record the status with respect to their disability level and also to compare the same with last session to check the progress for old children and also to design the IEP (Individual Education Plan) for each child for the current session. Orthopedic checkup of three children who needed it has also been completed. Pediatric, ENT, Dental & Ophthalmic checkups for all the children has been planned during the month of August. They are also being provided with medicines as per their needs.
Festival of Eid was celebrated on 17th of July at Sankalp and all the girl children were treated with Henna (Mehndi) application on hands. Special lunch was served to all children on the occasion.
A new set of uniform, a school bag, water bottle and stationery has been given to all children free of cost.
As a security measure, we have installed fire extinguishers at the centre and all the staff has also been given training about types of fires, precautions to be taken to prevent fire and what measures are required to be taken in case of fire including use of extinguishers.
A parent counseling session is also being organized on 2nd of August. This session is a part of Sankalp’s curriculum to guide and educate each parent to understand the status of their child and ways to handle them at home. This is essential because many parents are not adequately educated or even literate and therefore, are not able to understand the behavior of their child and how to handle them. In order to provide a sustained and systematic guidance to parents, we have appointed a professional counselor also. From this session disability wise groups of parents have been formed and specific guidance for each group shall be given. This methodology shall focus on providing disability specific solutions and guidance to the parents and is expected to yield better results.
Though the progress has been noted in all children in varying degree, a specific case of Sudhir is worth mentioning. Sudhir is Bilateral Moderate to Moderately severe(Mixed type) hearing impaired and therefore, was unable to speak. He has been provided hearing aids in both ears in March this year. Since then he is being provided auditory training and speech therapy. He has shown considerable improvements. He has now become aware of different sounds and is also able to produce various (Phonems) sounds which he was unable to hear earlier & therefore, was not able to produce. We now expect that his speech, language communication skill will develop faster. This will empower him not only to get integrated in to the mainstream of the society but also become a productive human being.
Remarks of the Special educators and Therapists for Sudhir in his annual report:
Academics: His score of 90.69% of target achieved in academics indicate that he has made excellent progress. He has very good potential to improve if he continues regular training.
Hearing & Speech: Considering his severe speech impairment, progress made in all areas like recognition, sound production, speaking, writing and linguistic skills is quite good. His behaviour problem is reduced & he grasps very fast.
Physio Therapy: His improvement is very good within the limits of his condition. He can get much better improvement only after the surgery.
His father has given following remarks in the feedback form:
“In this center, there has been lot of change in Sudhir. His hyper activity has decreased considerably. After getting hearing aids, improvement has been noticed. Thank you Sankalp”
Observing positive improvements in the life of children at SANKALP motivates every member of our team and gives us confidence to continue moving towards bringing meaningful change in the lives of these children.
Until the next report a big THANK YOU for your support to our project. We assure you that YOU will be updated on what impact YOUR donation has made & what accomplishments we have achieved from time to time.
Photographs of various activities are being updated at our website www.mpctrust.org you can also follow us at Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/SankalpVadodara
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