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Our Services

Tamahar has a wide variety of programs for children with special needs and their families. The core programs focus on helping the child achieve developmental milestones and impart the foundation skills for their future personal, social, and professional lives. These range from self-help, and self-care skills to job readiness. We also work with the families of the children and provide parents with mental health services and skill development programs. Our Human Resource Development program focuses on continued formal education of staff and continued technical training. Our staff are encouraged to attend external training, seminars, conferences to further their knowledge of the sector as well.

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Children Programs

Family Services

Human Resource Development

Other Services

Children Programs

Early Intervention

Children with brain damage or special needs often struggle to progress on par with their neurotypical peers in areas such as self-care, intellectual, physical, and emotional development. Thus, they require tailored support and stimuli to nurture these skills. Early Intervention encompasses these targeted activities and therapies to benefit infants and toddlers, especially children with intellectual impairment.

At Tamahar, Early Intervention serves as a cornerstone program, aiming to create the optimal environment to elevate a child’s developmental level to that of a 4-year-old. The ultimate goal is to lay a strong foundation that empowers them to lead as autonomous a life as achievable.

Special Group

  • For Severely Affected children, it involves highly intensive stimulation-based intervention to improve all their developmental domains equally.

Regular EI Group

  • Activity and play-based intervention to improve skills in communication, understanding and memory, fine-motor, understanding self, etc.
  • To improve social skills.
  • Includes park and play-ground activities at least twice a month to enjoy the outdoors.
  • Includes ADLs ( activities of daily living) to make them independent in their daily basic activities using adaptive equipment if necessary.

One on One

  • This program is for children when they join Tamahar for the first time. It enables them to settle in to a new environment.
  • The goal is to get the child to settle down, focus on activities at least for about half an hour, listen to instructions, modify undesired behavior.
  • Activities involve intervention which is holistic in nature with goals across all developmental domains.

Nursery

This program acts as a transitional bridge between Early Intervention and Functional Academics, suited for children with developmental ages 3-4 years. It guarantees that a child is adequately prepared to transition from focused one-on-one therapy to a group environment. There is an addition of exposure visits once a week in this program to the earlier EI program.

Functional Academics

Children who are developmentally above 4 years of age start with academic training based on the Montessori method of teaching, where self-experiential learning is given importance. Focus is on learning Language, Functional Mathematics, spoken second language and Science. There is equal attention to self-expression through a number of extra-curricular activities incorporating principles of Art-based Therapy along classes in Horticulture, Culinary Arts, Theatre, Dance, and Fine Arts. In short, the children learn life-navigation and life skills – social skills and personality development.

Prevocational Training

In June 2016 we started a program to provide Pre-Vocational skills to youngsters with special needs between the ages of 15-18 years. These are the ages when children are out of school programs and not yet eligible for vocational training, making them lose out 3 important productive years. Our plan includes getting these youngsters ready to learn vocational skills by giving intensive training in socially acceptable behaviours, interpersonal skills, life skills in independent travel, finance etc. The plan is to reduce the burden on the vocational training programs, to control attrition rates and to provide more vocational options.

Sheltered Workshop

Along with the Pre-Vocational program, we started another program for young adults aged 18years and above. The program has been introduced for those having severe disability/intellectual impairment that would make it impossible for them to pursue education and independent vocational training.
Sheltered workshops are facility-based day programs attended by adults with disabilities, as an alternative to seeking work in the open-job market, and for them to earn respectably.
The advantages of sheltered workshops are that they are safer alternatives to outside employment, they are less demanding for people with severe disabilities in terms of work and social skills, they provide greater opportunities for fostering friendships, they ensure structure during the weekdays, and gives them a sense of achievement.
The program is designed to motivate and empower young adults by introducing variety of activities, which will give them the confidence and ability to work together and be as independent as possible.

Recreational Activities

At Tamahar, our philosophy centers around fostering a supportive atmosphere that empowers each child to thrive and realize their utmost potential. Our methodology extends beyond academics, emphasizing the cultivation of life skills and overall well-being. Our recreational program includes weekly activities such as Exposure Visits, Hobby Classes, Indoor Games, Park/Playground visits and more. Every summer, Summer Camps are held for children, their siblings and mothers where everyone gets to experience different and novel activities.

Auxiliary Therapy

At Tamahar, Auxiliary Therapies are available to all children in addition to intervention/educational programs and are held once or twice weekly, organized in batches. The children have access to the following auxiliary therapies :

Occupational Therapy

Aims at enabling the child to be independent by teaching Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and other everyday functions. (Safety, Self-care, Feeding) and Fine-motor skills.

Physiotherapy

Helps children who have mobility and posture issues and corrects tone, strength. Improves Gross-motor function.

Speech Therapy

Essential in the rehabilitation process, it's particularly significant when addressing and teaching kids with learning disabilities. These children often grapple with issues related to Oral Motor Development leading to difficulty in swallowing, chewing, verbal communication, and language comprehension due to underlying medical or surgical conditions. Speech Therapy is aimed at providing interventions to alleviate these issues.

Vision Therapy

Many children with brain damage often have visual difficulties like Cortical Visual Impairment. This affects their ability to see objects as a whole, or in poor contrast or lighting. The therapy is designed to improve and enhance functional visual abilities, including eye movement control, eye coordination, focusing, and visual processing skills.

Music Therapy

“Drawing inspiration from the principles outlined in Samaveda, our approach intertwines Carnatic Vocal Music with an understanding of the body's chakra health system”.

Music therapy is recognized for enhancing vocalization, attention, and sitting tolerance in children, especially beneficial for teaching kids with learning disabilities. Beyond just fostering music appreciation, the therapy uses music as a tool to stimulate development.

Yoga

Proven to improve balance, physical strength and concentration, it also improves coordination. Children who are hyperactive become calm and relaxed. Remarkable improvement can be seen in listening skills, attention span, and self-regulation.

Family Services

Mental Health Services

Our mental health services encompass various components: support groups tailored for both mothers, fathers, and siblings, individual counseling sessions for mothers and families, as well as awareness and advocacy programs for parents. We actively assist families in obtaining accurate diagnoses for their children and facilitate their enrollment in government-supported initiatives like the Niramaya scheme , pension scheme and UDID. Through a recent partnership, we are working to provide families with access to medicines and investigations for their children at subsidized rates.

Support Groups

Support groups for mothers, fathers, siblings, offer a secure environment for sharing experiences and fostering healthy social connections. By encouraging regular interactions, these groups aim to alleviate feelings of isolation. They provide opportunities for participants to share and confide, allowing for the emotional expression that is crucial for well-being.

Counseling

For parents, families, and caregivers of children admitted to Tamahar, as well as for our staff, the challenges of caregiving can often lead to anxieties and burnout. This exposes them to potential physical and psychological stresses. Personal, individual counseling sessions foster healthy self-image, self-esteem, self-respect, and foster positivity.

Awareness and Advocacy

Tamahar is actively committed to championing the cause of intellectual impairment through community awareness and advocacy. We engage a wide range of stakeholders by organizing lecture sessions, activities, and gatherings to promote understanding and support for this important cause. In 2022, we initiated the Parents' Movement for Inclusive Development (PMID) with the goal of raising awareness about resources and rights for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs).

Caregiver Training

Parents are the primary therapists any child can get. It is thus imperative that parents understand the development of their children. In our EI program, it is mandatory for at least one parent/caregiver to be present every day to get hands-on understanding of child development. During the sessions, we educate and train the parents/caregivers on the necessary skills that are essential to work with their children at their homes along with carrying out their housekeeping chores. Objective of the program is to empower them with knowledge to understand their child better and learn skills to impart intervention using simple household objects.

Skill Development Program

In 2019, we started our skill development program. Over the years of working with our families, we realized that we have a lot of caregivers amongst us who have a wonderful talent and are looking for an outlet to utilize it gainfully. Most of the mothers are primary caregivers with no means of earning and are hence, unpaid caregivers. With the hope of nurturing this talent, we started the program for caregivers – A skill development program that will include formal training in skill-training along with basic knowledge of business development. The Skill Development Program aims to empower them to be self-reliant and enterprising.

Human Resource Development

Our Human Resource Development program focuses on continued formal education of staff and internal staff training. We strongly believe in continued education for the staff. Every year, we conduct various trainings for staff to improve their skills and make them efficient in their work. It includes programs like MAITS training for staff, enabling them to attend external workshops, trainings and seminars. We, at Tamahar, offer courses that will be useful to parents, professionals and students to equip themselves with more knowledge about child development and intervention.

Other Services

Outreach Project

Empowering Lives, Embracing Inclusion

In the year 2022, we started outreach programs to provide services to underserved areas for children with special needs and their families in Bangalore North. Our objective is to advocate for age-appropriate developmental Interventions, focusing on Early Identification, Early Intervention and Early Education for children facing developmental delays due to intellectual disabilities from birth onwards. This involves creating awareness in the community, interacting with community health workers, establishing intervention centres to provide services and referrals to Aanganwadis, schools, etc. Additionally, we aim to train parents in both rehabilitation and the proactive prevention of disabilities through structured training programs and counselling sessions. We also strive to spread awareness about the importance of preventive health education and prenatal detection of defects/disabilities.

Research and Development

Research and Development (R&D) is the systematic process of investigation, experimentation, and innovation aimed at creating new knowledge, and processes. It involves the application of scientific, and technological principles to solve complex problems or to explore new possibilities. R&D is a critical driver of economic growth and competitiveness, as it enables organizations to stay ahead of the curve. It also plays a crucial role in advancing scientific understanding, addressing global challenges, and improving the overall quality of life. India needs to collect statistics for conditions prevalent in India; We also need to study what works best in our milieu. This needs us to spend resources on collecting relevant data which will help influence changes through advocacy and also encourage scientific research. Tamahar wants to participate in these activities in a large way to make a difference.

Assessment and Tests

At Tamahar, we offer comprehensive assessments and evaluations conducted by a certified clinical psychologist, covering IQ evaluation, learning disabilities, and behavioral disorders in children. Additionally, we provide psychoeducation sessions for parents.