Awareness Of Parents Of Differently-Abled Babies

 No. of beneficiaries 100

 Program duration 6 months
 Total budget ₹ 26 Lac
 Program Tagline Parents' awareness
 NGO Kalyani Life Institute
 Target beneficiaries Adults
 Cause area Education
 Project Status New Program
About the program
We provide training and create a skilled workforce of care associates for adequate and
nurturing care for Person with Disabilities (PwDs) and their families who require it. It also
provides parents an opportunity to get trained in caregiving if they so desire, a choice of
training through two levels of courses primary and advanced. This scheme aims at setting up
Care Associate Cells (CACs) to provide training and create a skilled workforce of care
associates to provide adequate and nurturing care for Person with Disabilities (PwD) and
their families who require it. It also seeks to provide parents an opportunity to get trained in
caregiving if they so desire. This scheme will provide a choice of training through two levels
of courses to allow it to create care associates suited to work both with families of persons
with Disabilities (PwDs) and other institutions catering to the needs of PwDs

Primary Activities
 Parent Training on Special Children
 Introduction to Early Intervention
 Caregiver Cell Creation

Additional Information
Kalyani Life Institute has successfully completed the three months Primary Level Training
Course with recognized syllabus of Rehabilitation Council of India, as Care Associate under
Sahyogi Scheme of the National Trust from 02.04.2017 to 30.06.2017
Introduction
According to UN Enable, around 10% of the world's populations, 650 million people, live
with disabilities. Women and girls with disabilities are particularly at a risk of abuse.
According to a UNICEF survey, 30% of street youth are disabled. Some countries where IMR
rates are high, mortality rates for children with disabilities is as high as 80%.

Some suspect that children with disabilities are being purposely weeded out. 90% of
children with disabilities worldwide do not attend school. Conflict areas find that for every
one child that is killed, three are injured and permanently disabled. Children with disabilities
are at a 1.7 times greater risk of being subjected to some form of violence.

India
In India children with disabilities mainly comes under the purview of the Ministry of Social
Justice & Empowerment. Some of the issues are dealt with by the health ministry. But no
single ministry has been assigned the protection of these children, which leads to varying
data about occurrence of disability amongst children. In India 1.67% of the 0-19 population
has a disability. 35.29% of all people living with disabilities are children. Other estimates say
that India has 12 million children living with disabilities. Only 1% of children with disabilities
have access to school and one third of most disabilities are preventable. Under-nutrition is a
severe problem with children who suffer from cerebral palsy. In India 80% of children with
disabilities will not survive past age forty.

Causes of Disability
Many of the causes of disability are preventable by providing expecting mothers will better
prenatal and post natal care as well as proper nutrition for infants and mothers.

The main causes of disability in children are

 Communicable disease
 Infection in early childhood
 Early motherhood
 Nutritional deficiencies
 Insufficient or inaccessible health care services
 Inadequate sanitation
 Inter-family marriages

Assisting the disabled - Social welfare or equal opportunity?

Disability in India is still functioning in the realm of social welfare instead of a rights
perspective. Teachers are not trained and schools don't have the infrastructure to deal with
children with disabilities. Neither are paediatric wards of hospitals equipped to deal with
them. There is not enough data on the number of children living with disabilities to allow
the government to provide the necessary services. Mental health disorders account for one
sixth of all health disorders yet India spends 0.83% of its health budget on mental health.
Child labourers are also at a higher risk of becoming disabled especially in hazardous
industries.
 Snapshot
Item of information Census 2001 NSS Survey 2002
Proportion of disabled
2.10% 1.80%
persons in population
Estimated size of disabled
21 million 18.5 million
population
Sex ratio among the
disabled (no. of females per 738 698
1000 males)
Location of the disabled Rural: 75% Rural: 76%
persons
Urban: 25% Urban: 24%
Composition of disabled
49% in seeing 15% in seeing
population by type of
disability 7% in speech 12% in speech
6% in hearing 17% in hearing
28% in movement 57% in movement
10% mental 11% mental
More than 50% have age less
Composition of disabled 44% have age less than 30 and 35% were of
than 30 and 25% were of age 50
population by age-group age 50 or more
or more
Literacy and completed
educational level of disabled 51% not literate 55% not literate
population
26% literate up to primary 25% literate up to primary
6% completed middle level 11% completed middle level
13% secondary level or above 9% secondary level or above
In age-group 6-10 years: 56% In age-group 5-18 years: 48% (rural) & 55%
Percentage of disabled
(rural) & 64%(urban) (urban)
children attending schools
In age-group 11-14 years: 64%
(rural) & 69%(urban)
Of households reporting disability of one or
more of its members
Level of Living of
60% in rural areas
households reporting -
and more than 25% in urban areas had
disability
monthly per capita consumption
expenditure of Rs. 300.
60% could take self-care without
aid/appliance
Extent of disability - 17% could take self-care only with
aid/appliance
9% had not tried appliance
13% could not take self-care even with the
help of aid/appliance
Government Mandate
The Persons with Disabilities Act,1995, has placed responsibility on the government to
ensure that every child with a disability has access to free education in an appropriate
environment till he attains the age of 18 years. Recently the programme of Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan(SSA) has been approved with the aim that all the children in the age group of 6-14
are able to complete 8 years of schooling by 2010. Its aim can be achieved only when all the
children with special needs also get into the mainstream of schooling.

Realising the fact that the management of children with disabilities is complex and needs
various approaches, the Government of India has been implementing various schemes to
bring children with disabilities into the mainstream of the education system, involve them in
to social activities and provide them an opportunity for complete participation.

Education
The proportion of disabled children currently enrolled was found to be low (less than 50%)
in general, and among mentally disabled and blind children in particular in both rural and
urban sector. Proportion of disabled females (age 5-18 years) enrolled in either ordinary or
special schools were invariably lower than that of their male counterpart. Regarding reason
for non-enrolment in special school, 32% identified disability itself as the main reason,
another 15% were not aware of special schools and for another 14% parents were not
interested.

Level of Living and Type of Assistance

In the NSSO Survey information was collected on the average monthly consumer
expenditure of the households reporting one or more cases of disability. In both rural and
urban areas, about 25% of the households belonging to the lowest MPCE class reported
disability although less than 3% of general households belonged to this poorest class. More
than 50% of households reporting one or more disabled members were below poverty line
in both rural and the urban sector. These households were put into disadvantage in respect
of both disability and poor level of living. Also the proportion of households reporting
disability decreased steadily as one moves up along the higher MPCE classes.

Parents and school teachers have a key role in this vital process of early identification and
correct remedial action. There are various programmes for the disabled which are sponsored
by the central and state government, and union territories. These cater to their complex
educational and vocational training requirements, provide various kinds of concessions and
economic assistance besides provision of appropriate aids and appliances for daily living. All
of these benefits are also applicable to such children.

However, the available data shows that only 5 to 10 per cent of the disabled children in the
age group of 6 to 14 years avail any benefit from these government-sponsored programmes.
In general, most of the parents are unaware of the facilities available to their disabled
children, and further lack the required information to access them. An important starting
point is getting a disability certificate and/or an identity card. Both of them are required for
various important purposes. There are separate legal provisions, which apply to the disabled
during different circumstances. The issue of guardianship has profound implications, and the
parents should understand it fully.