National Trust’s insurance scheme and a legal guardian programme gives hope to millions for parents who worry about the future of their mentally-disabled children.
Ammu is an autistic 10-year-old girl in Delhi excited about seeing the movie 2012 this Sunday. For her, doomsday is only in movies. She goes to a school for special children. She even performed at a recent international dance fest organised by ALPANA, an NGO. But she owes her normal life to loving parents and some NGOs.
What the government offers to her is not known to her. But what it offers through the National Trust is quite a bouquet which promises a better world for autistic children in the country.
The trust, formed for people with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities, has rolled out a number of programmes to ensure that their future is not uncertain.
The trust is an answer to prayers of millions of parents who worry about who will take care of their children when they are gone.
What does the trust, coming under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, offer for someone like Ammu?
It runs a health insurance scheme, called Niramaya, which provides cover for treatment and hospitalisation at a premium of Rs 250. This is in tie-up with ICICI Lombard.
The list of beneficiaries is impressive. About 85,000 people have taken the cover so far, says Chairperson Poonam Natarajan.
The trust has also created infrastructure for supporting people. It has a residential programme in association with an NGOs called Samarth. About 115 centres have come up under this. It is also building a network of caregivers, or sahyogis, for the disabled and provides NGOs funds to train 700 sahyogis every year.
It has also rolled out a legal guardianship programme under which a legal guardian can be appointed to take care of a disabled person’s needs.
But Poonam Natarajan, who was herself a mother of a child with multiple disabilities, said real services for the disabled were those that equipped them to be independent. She dismisses the idea of special schools and residential facilities for such people. Exclusion of the disabled is not a solution. Children have to go to normal schools and grow up with other children, she says. What is needed are trained teachers who are sensitive to disabilities. She says the trust focuses on making the disabled independent and employed. She says Gyanprabha scholarships for students and Udhyam Prabha loans for entrepreneurs are a step towards this.
But the progress is slow. NGOs are being cleared slowly. So, in Uttar Pradesh, no local-level committee to appoint legal guardians has been formed, nor is there a state nodal agency centre, which coordinates most schemes.
It has a helpline, called Abiline 26466250, but several attempts to get through this number failed this week.
Meanwhile, for the first time, the trust has taken up its awareness drive in a pro-active manner with a campaign called Badte Kadam. Its main message, says Natarajan, is: You are fit, have a normal social life.We will help you. Here is a blog from one of the four groups that left New Delhi a fortnight ago to travel through the country armed with an audio-visual programme: “The Badte Kadam programme had an incredible response at Jabalpur. The big hall was jam-packed.”
Another blog reads: “Route-II team stopped at Morena at the request of the local NGO, and the team distributed Niramaya Insurance cards to children from villages. The children and the parents were overwhelmed…”
