By Aarti Nair
Ruhaan is a 15 year old, intelligent young man who has been attending regular sessions at Latika for the last 12 years. Latika is an organisation based in Dehradun since 1994 for families and children with developmental delays and disabilities. Ruhaan was diagnosed with a developmental disability, Cerebral Palsy, before his 3rd birthday. Cerebral palsy is a disorder where there is difficulty in controlling movement of the body due to which children are unable to write, walk or run, and also unable to speak clearly. They are able to hear and make sounds but their speech is usually not clear. Ruhaan and his family worked consistently with the professional staff at Latika so he could walk and talk. When he was 7 years he joined a mainstream school near his home. This inclusion into a regular school was facilitated by the teachers, Januka Bhosal and Santosh Thakur of Latika. Ruhaan continued to attend the afterschool programme at Latika while going to a mainstream school for a few years. Sachin Kumar, physiotherapist, worked consistently with Ruhaan to get him to walk and play with his friends. After 4 years of being in regular school, Ruhaan’s parents were informed about the difficulties at school, it would not be possible to manage going forward. He then started attending the morning classes at Latika once again.
Ruhaan has always been interested in learning but challenges in controlling movements in arms and legs and other parts of the body has affected his learning abilities. Lack of coordination of his body makes it difficult for him to write and interact with everyone. It is hard for him to express more than a few words making it difficult to keep up a conversation. Staff at Latika focuses on addressing each child’s individual needs and sets goals to overcome their challenges. They combine analytical precision with creative problem solving to develop a tailored program.
To enable communication, they introduced Avaz. This is an application for people who have communication difficulties. it uses pictures and helps people to communicate their thoughts, emotions, ideas, needs and wants. Modern technology offers opportunities to create, share and use means to apply methods and practices in our work and to makes it easier for parents to apply it at home.
At first the Speech Therapist, Neha Bhatt tried many modifications to use the application by making two pictures on the screen and turn off the swipe navigation, but involuntary movements were making it difficult to use the Avaz application. During a home visit, Ruhaan’s teacher Janki Singh observed him skilfully operating the TV remote with his feet. She spoke with the therapists, Ruchi Joshi and Neha Bhatt, and they decided to get Ruhaan to use his feet to navigate the buttons on the tablet. And wallah! This worked, he started using the tablet with his feet easily. Ruhaan is now operating the tablet and using the Avaz application to create his own folder and add words and phrases to increase his vocabulary. He communicates with everyone through this device. Going forward the goals are to work on increasing his vocabulary and being able to walk with ease.
We continue to evolve here at Latika with our eyes set towards a bright and inclusive future for Ruhaan and other children who have similar conditions.
(Aarti Nair is Director, Services, at Latika)
