Revamping of Hostel Facilities at Tamana

India is home to about 120 million people with disabilities in India. Children and young adults with disabilities face many challenges in terms of infrastructure and facilities needed by them. There are very few boarding schools for such children. They are not able to manage their own affairs due to behavioural and emotional issues as a result their families get affected. Many of the parents fall into depression and having other health issues. Secondly facilities for holistic training under one roof is not available in different parts of our country. All such affected parents were desperately contacting Tamana for starting up a boarding facility for their differently abled children. There are a lot of single parents and families who do not have extended family support for looking after their special needs child. The single parent is not able to leave the child at home unattended. Few of such parents also belong to the economically weaker section of the society. Moreover, parents from different parts of country come to Tamana for assessment and home programme which takes five to seven working days.It is very difficult on families as travelling and staying in Delhi gets expensive and difficult. Keeping all these aspects in mind ‘Tamana Home for Special Needs “Divyangs” was set up in 2004. But the Hostel can accommodate 32 children between the age group of 11-27 years. Presently there are 4 severely mentally challenged, 8 moderate & 11 mild with severe behavioural & emotional issues, 1 multiple disabled. 8 autistic children & young adults. Out of these few have other associated conditions such as Epilepsy, violent behaviours, emotional, sensory & no speech. It’s a mixed group of different age, conditions & needs. There are 10 hostellers from Delhi, 4 from NCR & 18 students from Bihar, Chennai, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Kolkata, North East, Panipat & UP-Agra, Gorakhpur, Saharanpur & Allahabad. Children come from different corners of our country.

Our aim is to attend to as many families of such children who approach us for assessment, education and rehabilitation of such children. We need to upgrade our accommodation facilities and hostel for such children. We have a large team of trained professionals like psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and special educators to give them holistic care. Getting such professional and specialised therapist incurs heavy remunerations. Admissions are not restricted by economic factors and as a result, thirty percent of the school's students, who belong to the weaker sections of society, are beneficiaries of free ships.We however wish to help many more students like them. Tamana has three centres- Tamana Skill Development Centre - Nai Disha, Tamana Special Education Centre & Tamana Autism Centre - School of Hope. We want to upgrade our existing set up and offer more facilities to the needy.

Children and young adults born with special needs unfortunately belong to the most disadvantageous section of society. They face many challenges in seeking jobs. We believe that our young adults who are faced with many challenges can be skilled and trained in many vocations so that they can gain financial independence. Given the right environment and learning skills we can enable them to live a life independently. Moreover, timely intervention can help them in many ways. The physical impairments can be corrected through occupational therapy, speech impairments can be corrected through speech therapy etc. Such children when left untreated or ignored due to caregivers lack of financial ability they lead a life of misery and pity. We have been successfully working on them so that they become enabled citizens of India who also contribute to the national GDP and live a life independently.