Apaar
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COMMUNITY EMPLOYMENT
The plan has also been to employ those who can in factories and laundries. Two hand tool factories (Rajhans International and Hemco Ispat) had agreed to employ three of our clients in March 2015 but we have not had adequate human resources to work on that yet. It requires one person deployed in this pursuit at most times, as people are not used to employing specially abled workers.
The owners do not need persuasion once they are sensitised and educated and given examples of what is happening in other cities in India. However, the supervisors and workers need intensive sensitization and training, so we will have to adopt a community outreach method that an NGO like ours (MUSKAAN) has done in New Delhi.
We have met with their staff who place their clients in the hospitality industry . I have attended their meeting in New Delhi with families of clients interested in being placed, and requested they do similar training for us. They are more than willing.
APAAR’s founder also spoke with some representatives of Sports Industries and Nivia Sports had agreed to hire one of our clients as office boy in 2014 . However, his family could not arrange for his transportation to the premises of Nivia Sports in the Kapurthala Road area.
The Medical Superintendent also changed, and the upheaval in the department prevented pursuing this with our then limited staffing and we had to hold off for some time.
We then arranged to employ the same young man in the PIMS laundry. The PIMS Director and Medical Superintendent gave permission and the trial started in Oct 2015. However after the initial period of work, after our staff member, a special educator stopped going regularly to the laundry ,the other workers started to treat our client with kid gloves, feeding him their own food and not giving him much work.
This will be resumed as soon as we have adequate staffing. In the interim, this client who enjoys cleaning, dusting and getting tea for staff is employed at APAAR as office boy and paid Rs 500 a month, which he loves getting. He takes pride in buying his father petrol for his scooter with the money- a small but highly signicant step; a leap for the specially abled in Punjab.
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CBR (Community based Rehabilitation)
We have identified 54 young people who are intellectually disabled within Jalandhar City alone. Once funds are available, we plan to have a team comprising a special educator, an assistant and driver do home visits for instructions, advice and updates: APAAR’s outreach program, a necessity to meet the needs of persons and families unable to access our shelter workshops. We could assist groups of individuals to set up a cottage industry like enterprise for income generation if families are willing and able to assist. We have seen this model in Chennai supported by Vidyasagar.
Some identified persons have co-existing psychiatric diagnoses and we will also need to collaborate with Civil Hospital or another organization with psychiatrists to train laypersons .
Partnerships
The District legal Services Authority is mentioned under "What we do" on this website, who have provided us crucial logistic and personnel support in raising awareness of ID as well mental health in general. We aim to train workers in ashrams and disability homes with their help and continue to train Asha workers and other paramedical personnel in recognition and referral of the mentally disabled. We also hold meetings with city councillors to appraise them of our work in advocacy and awareness as well as treatment of autism and IDs.
Scottish Autism has a different approach than Applied Behavioural Analysis to autism in adults, centred more on personal circumstances and traits. We have been in touch and plan to visit them and collaborate if it is suitable to our circumstances here in Punjab.
A rural mental health NGO in Gujarat has shown great results in training lay people as mental health workers which we are trying to replicate as soon as we can. The Covid-19 pandemic has delayed that start.