The Hindu : New avenues for mentally challenged persons

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 10, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

New avenues for mentally challenged persons

NEW DELHI, MARCH 9. Seeing 22-year-old Neeraj meticulously doing the filing work in the export house he works, it is difficult to know that he is a mentally challenged person.

Or for instance take the case of Suraj (23) who runs a photocopying business and is independent now or Ruchi (25), who works as a teacher assistant in a primary school. They too are mentally challenged.

Gone are the days when parents of mentally challenged children were worried about the future of their children because not many avenues were available. Now, thanks to the efforts of organisations like Muskaan which are offering new fields in vocational training to these differently-abled people, the number of opportunities avilable to them are fast increasing.

``Stepping aside from the traditionally known fields like book binding, candle, diya and paperbag making, we decided to incoporate some other skills which can helps in the empowerment of these mentally challenged men and women'', says Dr Shanti Auluck, President, Muskaan, a non-profit organsiation of parents and professionals addressing the needs of mentally handicapped.

Statistics show that three per cent of all children born in India are mentally handicapped. They cannot grow like normal children, lead a healthy life or have opportunities of a career offered to others.

However, professionals working with these people say that with patience and skill, they can be trained to do things on their own; learn simple trade and become useful members of the community. They can be made to feel they 'belong' to the society and can share with others a hope for the future.

Currently Muskaan is providing training in the skills like block printing, preparation of spices and other food related items, mass mailing, teacher assistant training, office management skills, computer opertions, cooking and baking besides conventional skills like candle and diya making and decorative paper bags, folders, files and envelope making.

``Muskaan Vocational Trainning and work centre is one of its kind here and the response has been very encouraging. Our experience has shown us that it is largely due to lack of proper training and not their disability, which forces them to live a highly impoverished life and a burden on their caretakers'', Dr Auluck says.

``We concentrated on those vocations which do not require too much effort from these differently-abled people. For instance, these people after proper training can efficiently do work like photocopying, attending to phone calls, giving messages and can be integrated in the day-to-day work of any organisation,'' she says.

To train them we break each skill into small parts. We make them first learn simple steps and then move on to higher complicated steps involved in the skill, she adds.

The duration of training is two-three years depending upon the learning ability of the student.

``It is a comprehensive training programme which includes training in cognitive, social, communication skills and self care. Besides regular consulting services of speech therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapist are also orgainsed to enhance the functioning of our trainees'', explians Dr Auluck, herself a mother of a 28-year-old mentally handicap boy.

After receiving training in various vocational skills, these trained individuals are first employed in Muskaan work centre and then efforts are made to find placement for some of higher functioning students into the workplaces outside the sheltered work centre, says Dr Auluck.

With the help of American Embassy, Muskaan has also started innovative programme called `Cognitive Enrichment Programme'. This programme helps to strengthen and enhance various cognitive functions like observation, discrimination, attention, thinking and reasoning, recall and application.

``Our experience has shown that strengthening of these cognitive functions make these individuals better learners. We are experimenting with different training modules and developing educational aterials for it and plan to develop a curriculum so that other educational institutions can use this programme'', she says.

About the response of ``normal'' people towards on hiring the services of these mentally challenged people, Dr Auluck says, ``Not many companies are open to employ these mentally handicapped people. They consider them more as a liability than as a helping hand. Generally people are also not very sensitive towards them''.

``Because of such attitude out of every three people placed in different jobs only one individual is sucessfully able to adjust to the working environment'', she laments.

Regarding the government support, she says, ``Government has its limitation because it has to take care of so many issues and mental disability is a very small segment of a very large propblem of disability. So whatever help we get from government is not enough. But more than financial help these people want is the support of society to give them opportunity to get integrated into the society''.

On the future plans, Dr Auluck says, ``We plan to increase the number of trainee from 55 to up to 70 and we are also doing the survey to add more vocational skills. Besides we are also looking for more opportunities for to market our products''.

PTI

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