UTSAV
Day-care: (UTSAV):
“ Celebration of life” A care and rehabilitation department for members with profound and severe disability.
This unit provides a space dedicated to care and therapies for the most vulnerable ones. Day care Unit provides various types of therapies and trainings for those members to sustain their life and grow to their potentials. In this unit members are with Severe and Profound Disabilities.
Here more than quantity, it’s the quality of life that is focussed on. Each member has something to look forward for each day.
Based on the goals activities are planned with objectives to grow in self- help skills, confidence, independence, decision making and other positive impacts. An overall holistic wellbeing. Here emphasis is given to therapies and training of ADL’s.
This program has helped many members and parents.
Tarang
Early Education/ Functional Life Skills Unit : “ Tarang” (AGES 3 TO 12YRS)
Early childhood education (ECE) programs include any type of educational program that serves children in the preschool years and is designed to improve later school performance. In ECE unit a range of early special education are provided to the members includes engage in purposeful learning activities and play, physical assistance and therapy, assistive learning devices/materials, modified learning environment, behavioral modification techniques etc This vibrant group learn better when their activities involve playing and constant change in their activities. They embrace chances exploration and their curiosity helps in learning new skills.
Aim is to prepare our young ones to join a special school if possible. All activities are given to make them independent specially in ADL’s as this becomes an important factor for them to get admission in a special school.
Early Intervention
Early intervention is an intervention through positive approach or attitude to either alleviate the problem or remediate or reduce the intensity of the problem through professional guidance and social commitment. The purpose of Sandesh introducing early intervention program is mainly to identify children with special needs at early stage so that they can be assisted in their overall development in order to reduce the deficits and secondary problems.
Sandesh works very closely with several Government hospitals, Aganwadis, Asha worker and community leader in the process of identifying children with special needs. After the child is identified, with the consent of the parents intervention program is planned by a team of professionals (therapists). Training is usually provided to both child and parents whereby more activities are encouraged to promote development and learn new skills which might not occur naturally in children with developmental delay or other intellectual disabilities.
Jashn
Pre-vocational unit: : Jashn”
Activities based on supporting skill development, that will be needed for vocational training. This time is important as it makes the individual gain skills required for work. Pre-vocational unit is considered as our important program. Here we train the members to be part of vocational unit someday hence helping in the betterment of their lives.
Pre- vocational unit consist members age between 12 and above with mild to moderate disability. The focus of this unit is to provide pre- vocational training for the members. All members go through assessment of their skills and abilities. Considering their interests, strengths exhibited through assessment and observations, individualized long term and short-term goals are set. The goals are discussed with parents for more inputs. The skills learnt in pre- vocational facilitates sets of skills required to enter vocational unit for further trainings.
Counselling for parents
&
families
A support system for the parents/families. A place for them to share their views, fears and anxiety. Counselling sessions are highly recommended by Sandesh for members, their parents, siblings and we get good feedback from everyone. These sessions take place once a week.
Garden Project: Time with the soil and the plants. This project is meant to be more in Therapeutic needs of our members. This project has grown and we can proudly say that we have eaten the fruits of our hard work many times during lunch. We have more plans to grow this unit, providing organic vegetables to all our friends, families and well- wishers. We also want to have a beautiful garden full of flowers to give a beautiful welcome to all of our friends.
Garden Project
Time with the soil and the plants. This project is meant to be more in Therapeutic needs of our members. This project has grown and we can proudly say that we have eaten the fruits of our hard work many times during lunch. We have more plans to grow this unit, providing organic vegetables to all our friends, families and well- wishers. We also want to have a beautiful garden full of flowers to give a beautiful welcome to all of our friends.
SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY
The objectives of speech and language pathology department is to detect speech and language challenges early and provide support as needed. Following the diagnosis individualized interventions are developed and therapy sessions conducted with ongoing monitoring and re-evaluation. Most of Sandesh members have a need for speech, language and communication in that case this unit plays a vital role to help members communicate and express their needs.
All members from are having one to one session of 30 minutes with a speech therapist. The focus of these sessions are not only limited to improving the member’s speech and language but also to help with their attention, pragmatic skills, use of expressive language, pre requisite behavior etc. There is a tremendous progress on speech clarity, number of vocabularies, improvement in eye contact, attention. Many members who were initially opting to communicate through gestures are communicating verbally.
PHYSICAL AND OCCUPATION THERAPY
The focus of this unit is to work with members and promote independence and easy challenges associated with day today activities. Physiotherapy works mostly on the developmental, motor and fitness aspects of the members. Some members from all the units in Sandesh benefits from the services provided in this unit
Members are receiving physiotherapy in daily basis five days a week. A session takes about 30-45 minutes per member (depends on the need). Therapy is given considering the members needs which include to reduce increased tone in upper and lower limb (passive), to maintain position in desired position for alignment and facilitate normal movement, to improve proprioception- weight bearing activity for upper and lower limbs, to work on functional reach outs, emphasizing on shoulder extension and cervical extension. We continue to see improvements. Our physiotherapy unit is well equipped with aids and appliances that has made the therapy sessions very efficient.
DIGITAL LEARNING
The Digital Learning (DL) program started in the month of August 2023 with 2 members in the Early Education (EE), 2 members from pre-vocational and 3 members from Vocational Unit. Training sessions for the trainers were held online and offline and which has helped the trainer to a great extent in guiding the members effectively.
The members who had absolutely no exposure working on digital platforms have been motivated to learn and they look forward to DL sessions. They are now able to identify the different parts of the device, they work on viz, the keyboard, mouse, screen etc. The exposure to DL added new words to their vocabulary like ‘Shutdown’ and ‘turn on’. They work on worksheets of different levels and play games and do other interesting exercises like popping bubbles, change the fonts, fill in colors, shapes etc. which they enjoy. members have excellent control of the mouse and has now progressed to holding and dragging the mouse button and drawing shapes on MS Paint. They are able to do most worksheets independently or with minimum prompts.
The DL sessions have helped members to strengthen the concepts learnt in the class. The worksheets on MS paint using shapes and colors, the coloring activities and the naming of different birds and animals and number repetition activities have all helped them reinforce the learnings that happen otherwise. The sessions have also helped enhance their communication, typing and reading skills as they express their interest to work on specific areas.
Due to the fact that the progress of members receiving digital training was overwhelming Sandesh decided to have a digital section so that more members can receive computer training in a well-organized atmosphere. The digital room is equipped with modern desk top with customized tables with the height comfortable to accommodate all including those who uses wheelchairs.
We are hoping to collaborate with an IT company for more training and work possibility for our members.
SANDESH
WELLNESS TEAM
Sandesh wellness team of doctors and counsellor continue to work closely with parents, members and staff of Sandesh through counselling intervention once a week where their personal health, emotional needs are taken care of. The parents get chance to share the challenges and their children’s medical needs whereby medical advice is provided. These sessions are individualized; each parent takes minimum one hour.
We have a well-equipped Wellness room with everything needed for any emergency.
Health workshops are conducted by doctors at least once in three months.
DANCE AND MOVEMENT THERAPY
Sandesh has considered dance to as a tool to elevate, express or relax members’ moods. As it obvious that most of our members have limitation with their mobility but that doesn’t stop them from using the platform provided to them for expression. Sandesh has implemented dance as one of the instruments to improve members muscle tone, improve balance, improve mobility and give them peace of mind. Members get one hour twice a week where by a professional dance coach extend her attention to the members.