"If I am slow, I simply have to start earlier"- Robert La Fon

Home/ New Initiatives/Counseling

Following parental requests, this element was added in our proposal for assistance to the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. We have felt the need for concentrated parental counseling efforts since the beginning and have also tried to arrange for the same in our own, limited way.

Most of the times in earlier days, the organizational head and/or the consultant were answering parental concerns. This was not the best way to deal with the anxieties and familial issues as they are not trained counselors. Moreover, it was difficult at times to separate our roles and take the right course of actions. We were facing a lot of conflict of interest in handling our own work as well as parental interactions.

Notwithstanding the administrative concerns created due to mixing of our roles, parental health; emotional as well as physical is very important to help a child with disabilities. This is especially true in our case, where parent participation is mandatory.  Keeping this in mind, we decided to have trained professionals address this issue.

There are three main activities under parent counseling.

Therapeutic Counseling: A qualified occupational therapist with extensive experience of CBR work and parent participation looks after therapeutic counseling following assessments. He conducts case conferences of cases assessed with other team members and finalizes a plan of action, based on which parents are informed about their ward’s management programme.

Emotional & Familial Counseling: A qualified clinical psychologist with parental and child guidance & counseling experience started with group meetings where parents (mothers) attending one batch were informed about availability of regular sessions. A lot of care was taken to ensure that none of the mothers looked at the need for counseling as something to be ashamed of.

After the initial meetings in group set up for a month, it was felt that mothers are not comfortable talking about their individual problems in group setup. Hence, a decision was taken to conduct individual meetings on a weekly and group meetings on a monthly basis. Two of the mothers whose children attend the centre volunteered to spearhead the group meetings.

Group Counseling: We had a meeting with a few mothers to discuss what form the group meetings may have. Eventually, it was felt that any interaction with a group of parents needed to be handled with care as the initiative may be misunderstood if not really wanted and subsequently owned by them. Following the discussion, two mothers, Meenaben and Muraliben, whose children are attending the centre volunteered to spearhead the activity under the guidance of the counselor.

Following the initial meeting, a group of parents were invited to Muraliben’s house to find out what inputs they were looking for.  They came up with essentially one major issue which was the future development and opportunities for their children. They wanted to interact with parents of grown up children with disabilities to find out;

1. What was it like to raise a child with disabilities?

2. What problems did they face and more importantly, how did they overcome/ resolved them?

3. How did they plan their child’s education and vocational development?

4. How did they deal with behaviour problems?

5. How will our child look 10- 15 years from today? What do we expect?

It is decided to have the meetings once in 3 months on a Sunday. Setu premises are to be used for the purpose as it it a familiar place for everyone concerned.