The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Training for managing `special child'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 17, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Training for managing `special child'

V.Geetanath

NIMH plans to introduce masters training programme for parents soon

HYDERABAD: The National Institute of Mentally Handicapped is soon planning to introduce a masters training programme for parents to empower them to teach other parents on managing the needs of a special child.

Other than having an abiding interest in the field and being aware of the needs of basic tenets of mental retardation, parents interested in taking up the programme should be having good communication skills.

"We are finalising the training module for the programme and aim to teach about 200 parents who are articulate," says NIMH Director L. Govinda Rao. Parents for the programme are to be selected countrywide through `Parivaar', the national federation of parents associations.

The programme is likely to be of two weeks duration and could be taken up at the institute's head office in Manovikasnagar (Secunderabad) and also at its regional centres in Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata.

Parents of children with mental retardation suffer from fatigue making them pessimistic as treatment for the child does not provide a ray of hope and the child is also unable to attend to activities of daily living, points out Dr. Rao.

Families need support in the process of developing their children and also have to be empowered to take care of their needs. "Parents know their children better than anybody else and they need to continuously do exercises and therapies beyond school hours," he explains.

Therefore, appropriate training to take care of specific needs of children at home was necessary. The institute expects such a capacity building exercise to bring education about mental retardation and training to more and more people.

Better understanding

Master trainee parents will be in a position to help other parents have better understanding on mental retardation - identification, cause and prevention, communication problems, education, health and vocational trainings.

NIMH has already trained 35,000 parents since its inception by organising group parent training programmes based in child characteristics and parent demographic features. Another Masters Training Programme - special educators, psychologist and therapists qualified under the Rehabilitation Council of India is on the anvil where also the candidates have to train parents of mentally challenged children as part of their course, said Dr. Rao.

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