Lessening the Severity of Disability in Children with Developmental Delays through Early Intervention

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The Problem...

Every mother will eagerly be looking for the first moments her child. Seeing her first smile, first word, first sit up, first crawl, first walk are all cherishing moments of a mother. When the child does not exhibit these signs at expected months/years, it becomes a cause of concern for the parents. At the same time every child is unique in terms of physical, cognitive and communicative development.

Developmental milestones are behaviour or physical skills seen in infants and children as they grow and develop. Activities such as rolling over, crawling, walking and talking are all considered milestones and they are different for each age range. Developmental milestones consist of five major areas such as cognitive development, social and emotional development, speech and language development, fine motor skill development and gross motor skill development. Children with developmental delay denote that the child who does not achieve developmental milestones compared to other normal children. Many factors responsible for the Development Delays are Genetic, Physical, Psychological, Environmental and Social factors.

In India, there are 164.5 million children coming under the age of six year, which constitutes 14 percent of the population in India. Developmental delays are common in childhood, occurring in 10%–15% of under the age of 5 years. Developmental delays are classified mild, moderate, severe and profound with respect to intensity. Also, the developmental delay may be one domain or more than one domain which is known as global developmental delays, which are less common, occurring in 1%-3%.

Children with disabilities, particularly for the children who require early intervention services are more vulnerable when there is a lack of access to timely and early intervention. It is vital for families to have access to services that support early childhood development. Early intervention services are more crucial but the services are not affordable to all kinds of people. While the families from upper income group could get support services from privately available sources, the households from poor and downtrodden communities could not access such services from the public healthcare facilities.

Early Intervention is pivotal...

FEATHERS is working on lessening the impact of development delays among the vulnerable children under 6 years and mainstream their education. Our goals are to:

1. Identify and enroll the children under SIX years with development delays in Thirumangalam Block of Madurai District in Tamil Nadu
2. Identify and build capacity of a team of community rehabilitation workers, physio therapists, special educators, occupational and speech therapists in community based early intervention.
3. Design and implement community based early intervention programme in the entire Thirumangalam Block through home visits, counselling to parents, referral services and facilitation of supply of assistive devises to the Children with Special Needs.
4. Provide complete assistance from six months to six years of children identified with developmental delays until they are prepared for enrolling into mainstream inclusive schools.
5. Enabling the parents of the Children with Developmental Delays to handle home-based rehabilitation therapies, access governmental schemes and assistances, plan and support the children’s education.  

What is Required?

We have identified 200 children with developmental delays in this Block and each child requires Rs. 1500 per month to undergo home-based therapies. We have estaimated Rs. 36.00 lakhs for this initiative and raised Rs. 21.00 lakhs. We require Rs. 15.00 lakhs to bridge this gap.