Nellore: Besides offering treatment to differently-abled children, Composite Regional Centre (CRC), an extended arm of National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (NIEPID) (Divyangjan) has been offering training to parents for providing therapy to their differently-abled children.
The CRC, functioning at Old Jubilee Hospital, near Madras bus stand, at Nellore is the only such centre in Andhra Pradesh and vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu was instrumental in establishing this initiative of the Union Government at Nellore when he was the union urban development minister. Though it is a resource centre for rehabilitation of persons with disabilities since almost two years, people hardly knew about its existence due to lack of publicity.
According to assistant professor of CRC Sajjuri Ram Sankar, the institute endeavours to excel in building capacities for empowering people with intellectual disabilities to access state of the art rehabilitation intervention viz., educational, therapeutic, vocational, employment, leisure and social activities, sports and cultural programmes.
Besides offering free treatment at Divyangjan, the centre also provides aids and appliances free of cost. In addition to this, the centre is also offering two years’ diploma course in special education. Ram Sankar said that they charge only '30 for registration and '50 for three months-long therapy as one time charge.
As of now, only seven to eight new cases are coming to the centre everyday, in addition to 40 odd follow up cases. The centre is manned by a multi-disciplinary team, including medical professionals, clinical psychologists, special educators, speech therapist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, orientation and mobility instructors, vocational trainers and rehabilitation officer.
Ram Sankar said that their own building at Venkatachalam, will be ready within next two months while pointing to the plans to move to the new location.
Objectives of CRC: To establish linkages with existing medical, educational and employment services following the principles of community based rehabilitation and to offer extension services in rural areas.
To train rehabilitation professionals, village-level workers, multi rehabilitation workers and other functionaries in government and non-government sector.
To undertake research and development, with specific reference to needs of diverse groups of people with disability, keeping in view the nature and severity of disability in the region.
