Our early intervention team comprising an audiologist, speech language pathologist, remedial educator, physiotherapist, and early childhood educator, would visit schools to conduct screening programs to identify learning and developmental disorders amongst children.
12% of children drop out of school because of learning or developmental disorders.
In most cases, the neurodevelopmental disorders are left undiagnosed, especially in children with basic verbal skills. Parents and most teachers assume that a verbal kid is not a spectrum child. It is a complete myth. The same goes for ADD and ADHD diagnoses too. Unless the child checks out all the boxes in the symptoms, parents and teachers miss these problems.
The consequences arise in the later years. Between the age of 5 and 19, more than 12% of children with disorders are dropped out of the system. When a child is diagnosed at 7 or 10 years, there is very little chance of progress.
Thus, BRIGHT-The Learning Center, under its sister institute, ‘Early Intervention Service India,’ brings the screening program to your school.
According to the INCLEN Trust International, one in every eight children have neurodevelopmental disorders. Thus, 24% of the population under 10 have neurodevelopmental disorders.Â
Early Intervention Service India - The Screening Program
Autistic girls are more likely to be left undiagnosed as they usually do not fit the symptom model or stereotypes of ASD.
75% of children with disabilities are not enrolled in any school/educational institution.Â
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The child finds it difficult to cope due to the complexity of the education programs. In addition, most parents are unaware of NIOS education and the proper steps to proceed.
We are not talking about a checklist with all the symptoms that the parents and teachers fill out. Instead, we are a special service team trained and experienced in identifying mild to severe neurological disorders at an early age. We aim to identify those disorders while progress through therapy is possible.
Step 1: Creating the team
Our standard team comprises an audiologist, speech-language pathologist, remedial educator, physiotherapist, and early childhood educator. However, this is not the right fit for all types of schools. Therefore, based on the children’s population, type of school, age, and others, we might add other specialists or bring in more special trainers.
Step 2: Preparing screening materials
We create questionnaires, baseline questions, simple tests, and others customized for different age groups and all major neurodevelopmental disorders. Unfortunately, there is no singular test to identify all types of disorders at all ages. Thus, we always go with a customized tool.
Step 3: Screening process
We visit the school premises on the pre-determined day to step up the screening program. Our school screening program covers
- Hearing sensitivity evaluation
- Speech and Language evaluation – speech, language, articulation, voice, and fluency
- Test for motor reflexes
- Â Test for auditory attention, visual attention, and joint attention skills
- Pre-reading and reading fluency
- Pre-writing and writing abilities
Step 4: Screening results
Give us a couple of days to bring out a detailed report about the children and the required interventions. We share our outputs only with the school and not with any third party. Thus, you need not worry about the privacy of your wards.
Step 5: Teacher training
We offer a one-day teacher training for the school staff on “Techniques to handle a child with ADD, ADHD, and slow learners in the regular classroom.”