Care for children and adults with special needs

Parents of children with special needs strive to integrate their child with the normal environment. They try to make their child with special needs as independent as possible so that they are not felt as a burden to others after their lifetime. The constant worry of who would take the responsibility of their special needs child remains in them no matter how independent the child is.A country like India does not have a good social support network like the developed countries for the special needs adult to live alone which makes the worry worse for parents living in these countries.

Please share your thoughts about the "responsibility for the care of young adults and children with special needs." You can add it as a comment on this post or as an email to bugsdr@yahoo.com. I will publish them on this blog. Thank you for participating in this.

                                               
                                                                     
         Contributed by Lakshmi P Sarma(mother of a Down's syndrome adult)                                                            
                                             
Responsibility
Every person with special need requires support for their living once the natural parents move out of their life.Every parent strives to make them independent in their day to day activities, may be some skill to earn some finance and in addition provide some funds for maintaining themselves.
Who can take over this responsibility it is the siblings who understand the person with whom they were brought up.The special needs adult may be able to look up to them as a guardian and the sibling can easily accept the person with whom he or she has grown up.
After all these the worry persists- will they provide his emotional needs the love and affection to make them feel wanted?

Facebook page

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A green light to driving from National Down Syndrome Society

http://www.ndss.org/My-Great-Story/Videos/A-Green-Light-to-Driving/

Son rise

This was the title of a film I saw about thirty years ago.
I was in despair as my third child who was around two years was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome at that time. I was clueless as to what to expect and what should I do for him. The film was a turning point which gave me the determination and courage to raise my son to achieve his best potential.
Little did I know then that this was going to be a major turning point in my life.The road was challenging with a lot of sacrifices and venturing into new careers. I took my career path to working with persons with special needs and meeting their parents. This gave way to many new stints like translating books and simplifying texts to name a few.
My work led me to do a special education course which gave me an insight into the working of the human behaviours. With a better understanding of my son’s disability I was able to create a training plan with practical goals for my son .
Today Raghuram has progressed from an infant with delayed milestones to a young man with income generating skills, a good household helper and ability to take care of his personal needs.
My focus was to train him to have good social behaviours and have economical independence. I experienced failures which gave me motivation to further my work towards his development.
Today Raghuram is an obligatory but a dynamic part of our life helping us as he works like a clock. He is instrumental in my starting a training and working unit for intellectually impaired young adults.
At Strategy & Action for Independence Trust these young persons are trained in income generating activities. This includes screen printing, file and paper bag making, weaving, post press work like numbering, sorting perforation and binding.
The Unit functions in a quiet place by the side of a lake at Rajesh Nagar, Pallikaranai.

Lakshmi P Sarma

"Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is a progress, working together is success." - Henry Ford

work order

Children completing a project of school books.

 Completed set of books being handed over to Blossom trust members.

Annual day celebrations 2008

The Annual day celebrations on April 6th, 2008 was hallmarked by the presence of an eminent singer, Mr.Srinivas. He spent a couple of hours talking with the children. Thank you, Mr.Srinivas for honoring us with your presence.

career development challenges among persons with special needs

Education leads to employment, meaning develop income generating skills either academically or vocationally. What should one expect for a person with special needs who had been to special schools.? This question is in the minds of every parent who has a special child and few have any answers for that.
My husband and I are both accountants and have three children of whom the youngest boy is a person with Downs Syndrome. The elder of the three is a software engineer and the next is a medical doctor.
What should we do for the young lad?
We along with two other parents created a Trust to help such young persons. The Trust trains persons with special needs in activities like making of paper bags, envelopes, screen printing, offset printing, weaving and tailoring .The challenges met in training are instilling work ethics like discipline, endurance of work by the special needs person, peer group interaction and developing of skills all of which requires materials, men and money.Further resources were needed to continue the hands on experience in work to tone up the skills learnt and maintain quality.
The next challenge was to find market for the work that these persons were capable of doing. Thus we had to knock at the doors of Corporates with the samples of work done for soliciting orders. Challenges never seem to end. Getting an order was a herculean task. Maintaining the quality required at a competitive price and to deliver in time for an order posed an uphill task. More time is requested to execute the orders as longer working hours are required to complete the job with special children. Team work was the key to completion of an order which enabled each person to do some part of a job as per his ability. This in turn helped in getting to the finished product in time.
To day we are proud to say that we have a few corporate clients who give us regular orders on in making of their files and hand made paper bags.
Our experience makes us confident to invite more young persons with special needs to participate in our project and benefit.