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Early
Intervention Programs
A mother’s story
Early intervention forms the core strategy for rehabilitating visually impaired infants and their parents. This constitutes individual assessment, followed by a plan designed to provide a comprehensive range of services to visually impaired children, to reduce the debilitating effects of their disability.
The early intervention programme includes a combination of services:
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Parental counselling: This enables the parents to rebuild their own confidence in the process of bringing up their child with his or her special needs and challenges.
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Assessment: Infants are assessed with reference to designated developmental milestones, such as residual vision, motor skills, language and communication skills, cognitive skills, and self help.
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Referral: Based on the developmental assessment the child is referred to a multidisciplinary team of professionals, such as physiotherapists, speech therapists, and doctors.
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Training: Parental involvement is a critical factor in the child's development. The parents or caregivers and the child are trained and guided, keeping in mind the essential developmental milestones.
At LVPEI's rehabilitation centres several training and educational aids have been developed for the early intervention programme.
Small changes make a big difference
Sometimes the visual impairment may be very slight, and yet seriously affect both the capability and confidence of a student in the classroom. In such cases the Children's Rehabilitation Centre assesses the problems of the student in the classroom and examines whether making simple changes, like allowing the student to sit close to the blackboard can solve some of them. The centre interacts with teachers, friends, and parents, asking the school authorities to notify them of the problem and requests them to make the necessary changes.
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