2-Day State Level Training on Deafblindness Held at Shishu Sarothi, Over 300 SSA Officials Participates

GUWAHATI: More than 300 SSA officials attended a 2-day State Level training on Deafblindness organized by the Deafblind Regional Centre (DbRC) at Shishu Sarothi on 5th and 6th August 2021 with support from Sense International India. The participants were District Program Officers, Inclusive Education Resource Persons (IERPs), Additional Resource Persons (ARPs).

The main purpose of this training was to build the capacity of participants to understand deafblindness and to be able to identify, assess and provide appropriate/need-based education to them in the mainstream as well as the home-based education system.

The training conducted by senior professionals from Shishu Sarothi and Sense International India's capacity building team covered topics on characteristics, causes and the impact and the modes of communication for persons with deafblindness/multi-sensory impairment; screening and functional assessment of vision and hearing for children with deafblindness/MSI; developing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), teaching strategies and curriculum adaptation for working with the children with deafblindness/MSI.

Shishu Sarothi is the Deafblind Resource Centre (DbRC) for North-East India and is supported by Sense International India. The major role of the DbRC is to create awareness about deafblindness among various stakeholders in the region. DbRC is also actively involved in screening, identifying, assessing, planning, and executing intervention strategies for children and adults with deafblindness in the region through partners and is currently providing services to 36 children with deafblindness in two districts of Kamrup Metro and Kamrup Rural.

In view of the general lack of awareness about deafblindness there is a strong need to create mass awareness to understand Deafblindness which is a combination of varying degrees of visual and hearing impairment. Educators need to identify and diagnose children at risk of deafblindness and this training was conducted with the aim of helping to screen and identify children at risk of having Deafblindness across Assam.

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