Schooling for Mentally Handicapped Children

This project has seen considerable improvements both in expansion of services and greater number of children reached. The activities we had planned to quote from our existing proposal were to “Identify children with mental handicap of primary school age, and establish a Resource Facility in our Center to prepare them for admission into normal schools and also to train staff involved in both our center and normal schools in its implementation.” However we found that the mainstream schools were far from receptive to the concept of inclusion and were unprepared to change mindsets and traditional ways of teaching going back to many years. So we have added new dimensions to our delivery of this service . The first is a survey to ascertain the readiness of mainstream schools to receive our inputs and the second was to expand our own early intervention services by adding a Preschool , a Crecche and a one to one service for the severely mentally handicapped child and the mother.

Separate write ups are added which will give a more comprehensive view of the changes made .We give the results of the survey so that the situation is more fully understood by our donors. Problems seem unsurmountable but if we motivate even a maximum of three to five schools as models replication will definitely follow. And our own liaison with the Delhi government will be that much more productive.

Please click below to read more detailed reports and updates on this project, including a success story about a child Samadhan has helped!

Attachments:

• Project update and survey results (DOC)
• Preschool in Dakshinpuri (DOC)
• Success story of Sneha! (PDF)