Education and training
With our partners nationwide, Sense International (India) provides:
- specialist education for children
- vocational training for adults
- training for teachers
- awareness visits for professionals and service providers.
Specialist education for children
Most special schools in India serve children with a single disability, such as blindness or deafness; children with multiple disabilities are often left out. So Sense International (India) has helped to establish specialist education units within schools for blind children, which serve children aged 4–14 years who have multiple disabilities.
The units provide pre-school training and education in daily living skills, as well as more intensive training in motor development, personal activities, social and communication skills, academic areas and pre-vocational subjects.
After intensive training in a specialist education unit, children are admitted to non-specialist schools alongside their sighted peers, through a programme called Integrated Education for Disabled Children. This allows deafblind children to gain independence and become part of mainstream life.
Vocational training for adults
Sense International (India) supported the creation of the first vocational programme for deafblind young adults in 1998, at the Helen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Deafblind, in Mumbai. The programme helps deafblind young adults to learn a specific trade or skill, so they can work and gain a measure of social and economic independence.
We are currently offering vocational training through 6 partner organisations
- Clarke School for the Deaf and Mentally Retarded - Chennai
- Blind People's Assocation - Ahmedabad
- Helen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Deafblind - Mumbai
- Holy Cross Society - Thiruchirapally
- Bethany Society - Shillong
- National Association for the Blind - Bangalore Karnataka
Teacher training
A one-year Diploma in Special Education (Deafblindness) was approved by the Government in March 2000, and began training its first ten teachers at the Helen Keller Institute in Mumbai in July of 2000. This was followed by a similar programme hosted by the Clarke School for the Deaf in Chennai, which helps to build a pool of qualified teachers for the deafblind in southern India. The total number of teachers trained is now more than 250.
Teachers who complete the courses use their skills to provide specialist deafblind education within existing programmes for deafblind people, or they establish new deafblind units in schools, child care centres, home-based care programmes or vocational training programmes.
The development and government approval of the teacher training programmes has significantly increased recognition and understanding of deafblindness within the Government of India, increasing support for deafblind services nationwide.
Professional awareness visits
Sense International (India) hosts deafblind awareness visits for organisations which provide services to deafblind people, and those interested in expanding their services and programmes to include deafblind people.
Interested organisations are able to visit well-established deafblind programmes and service providers to learn what it takes to deliver services, spend time with experienced practitioners, and assess their own potential to offer services.
