The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Agenda for integrating autistic children in regular schools

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 24, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Agenda for integrating autistic children in regular schools

Alladi Jayasri

It will help those with the lifelong developmental disorder

One in 250 newborns has autism
Phase II will create awareness of the problem

— Photo: G. Moorthy

Needing help: Children with autism fail to develop social skills.

BANGALORE: People who are aware of autism believe it to be a very rare disorder. When the movie “Rainman”, in which Dustin Hoffman played an autistic person was released in India, few people knew about autism.

The Hindi film “Koi Mil Gaya” reinforced the false notion that autistic persons are dim-witted. Rohit, a character played by actor Hrithik Roshan, was wrongly presumed to be autistic and hence stupid.

Statistics tell another story — autism is not so rare after all. One in 250 newborns has Autism Spectrum Disorder, and India has at least four million autistic persons. Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that occurs during the first three years of life, where the child fails to develop communication and social skills.

But awareness and interventions are increasing, as Speech pathologist Prathibha Karanth’s work with Tito Mukhopadhyay, some years ago, demonstrated. The boy went on to write a book about it, the movie rights to which were bought by Hollywood actress Julia Roberts.

Soon after treating Tito, Dr. Karanth developed the Communication DEALL (Developmental Eclectic Approach to Language Learning), an early intervention programme for children with communication disorders, with the main objective of integrating these children in regular schools with intensive pre-school intervention.

Dr. Karanth, who has just received a Rs. 1 crore grant from Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai, to take the DEALL programme forward, recently completed the first phase in which many innovative initiatives were undertaken to prepare the children to integrate into regular school by the school entry age of 6 years.

Dr. Karanth told The Hindu that DEALL Phase I worked with a sample size of 360 children in the 0-6 years range, in the paediatric units of several city hospitals, and in a unique initiative. Phase II will see the production of manuals and teaching aides for large-scale implementation by creating awareness, sensitisation, providing training and assistance in the duplication of the model.

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