Parent Relief Centre of SSS

Parent Relief Centre[ground flr.]

In the very first year of Sandnya Sanwardhan Sanstha we noticed a typical problem related to mentally challenged and their families. What we observed was, that, in the family having mentally challenged child, there was lack of proper communication amongst the parent i.e. mother and father of the child. Not only this, in many cases there prevailed a sort of tension or rift between them. We noticed many instances of even divorce due to this reason. We were trying to study and find out the reason and probable solution on this aspect. It was by and large the blame game parents were playing. We were talking to parents individually to get to the under current of this situation. Because apparently nothing felt like going wrong but we were sensing the absence of team work in the concerned parents. After giving lot of thought to the problem we came out with a idea of Parent Relief Centre. We thought of starting a temporary residential arrangement for our students. In the family, if the tension prevailed than their mentally disabled child, who is essentially our student will be put in this PRC [Parent Relief Centre] for about 10 to 15 days. We will take all his care including lodging, boarding and of course schooling as well. Thus mother and father of this mentally disabled child will get some relief by way of physical arrangements and at the same time will get an opportunity to come closer to each other emotionally also. It is a human nature that as long as the problem concerned is facing us, we can not rationally think and try to find out a place, person or situation which can be squarely blamed except us. But when the same problem is out of sight even for the temporary phase, we are likely to rationalise our approach towards other concerned part's view points also. We thus many times realise that we were extra harsh on the other person. In such a frame of mind, I might even apologise to the said person who in turn being in the same remorse or regret mode not only accepts the apology but is likely to extend the apology him self both of them being sailing in the same boat. It is likely to diffuse the tension and can eliminate the misunderstanding also. This is the original idea behind the PRC concept. We further realised that this PRC will be very useful in emergency like medical emergency in the family or sudden unexpected instances like road accidents or death of some family member.
With this idea we built the five self contained three bedded rooms at Sandnya Srushti. The construction work on this project finished about seven years back. During the same time, our land lord of Nagpur premises requested us to vacate the building for his personal use. We were under the social obligation to vacate, had to shift our school activity to Sandnya Srushti.So the plan of implementing the concept of PRC was kept in abeyance. We did expand our infrastructure at Sandnya Srushti gradually over the years but unfortunately we were not getting the desired staff for PRC. Another pressing problem was getting funds for running this PRC. We are already incurring monthly expense of about more than Rs. 2.3 laks. And since we do not take government aid the only funding source is donations from philanthropic people and organizations. For this PRC we additionally need about Rs.15000/- to 20000/- per month and that would be minimum. Getting trained special educator is a real problem. For such reasons the idea of PRC is still in abeyance. But we are hopeful to come back to it as soon possible.

By: Navin Deshpande, email: sss_mr@rediffmail.com

Website: http://www.sandnya.org/