Rehabilitation:

Rehabilitation of mentally challenged is the most challenging job. Mentally challenged person can not take decisions. Decisions like right or wrong, yes or no, today or tomorrow, etc. Further, they do not understand intricacies of money transactions. Because of these shortcomings rehabilitation is not easy.

Rehabilitation of mentally challenged can be roughly divided in three categories. The first one could be open employment, second could be sheltered workshops, and third could be social rehabilitation. First and second can be clubbed and called as economic rehabilitation.

In case of open employment, his employer and his co-workers are to be properly counseled and briefed about the limitation of this mentally disabled employee. The compatibility with co-workers is the key in the success of open employment. It becomes very important for co-workers to understand how to behave with him. Secondly, his work responsibility should not be changed or shifted very frequently. He can not respond to changes very readily.

In sheltered workshop, the supervision is quite close and the working conditions are as per the need. Trained persons are involved and thus risk of dropout is minimized.

SSS and rehabilitation:

SSS has a bit different approach as far as rehabilitation of mentally challenged is concerned. Though we also advocate and try for open employment, our experience says that drop out rate is very high in this case. It is because consistency in positive behavior on the part of employer and the co-worker can not be maintained. In our opinion this is the major reason for the higher drop out rate.

We do have rehabilitation units under our roof. Each activity is an independent unit. It has a separate in charge. Accounts are also maintained for each unit. The profit earned by this unit is being distributed amongst members of that unit. The profit calculations are without charging for supervision and rent or infrastructure. Our institute does not use any funds from these units for paying salaries or meeting other administrative expenses.

Ones these units become commercially viable; they are supposed to be handed over to the parents of unit members. Then the unit is shifted out of our campus. Now this unit will be totally supervised and managed by the concerned parents. Thus an independent rehabilitation unit comes in to existence. Till date we have three such independent rehabilitation units running successfully. In few cases, it does happen that parents are not in the position of taking over the unit. This could be due to old age of parents or other medical problems; in such case we have to continue to run the unit on the principal of not sharing profit
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This approach is bit difficult to practice; but we feel this is more appropriate and practical. It needs lot of efforts and consistent counseling to convince parents that there ward can work and earn. It also needs extra effort to convince that parents can manage this unit successfully. The only thing is; they need to give their time and must get involved. The support given is a permanent and can not be withdrawn any time throughout the life of mentally challenged ward.

We at SSS believe that probably this approach only can rehabilitate maximum number and is sustainable in terms of finance and manpower.

Our rehab units:

1] Rakhi making unit

2] Office file making unit

3] Screen printing unit

4] Har -Toran unit

Agro based rehabilitation:

India has agro based economy and it is no surprise that in case of mentally challenged, the best and most sustainable rehabilitation module could be agro based. This has a added advantage in managing sexual behavioral problems. Sexual behavior in mentally challenged is the most difficult and socially intricated problems in our country like India. Agro based rehabilitation in adolescents can effectively help in diverting the energy or chanalizing the energy. It is true that more and more population is migrating towards urban life, but considering the reality of problems in mentally challenged, we feel agro based format is more suitable. It will not only chanalize the extra energy but will certainly have a positive effect of the natural and eco-friendly surroundings as well. The minor behavioral abnormalities are also acceptable in rural life, where as the same can be a major behavioral problem in urban settings. Rural settings have relatively less social pressures including time factor. Since it is supposed to be less polluted and calm, mentally challenged will co operate in better way. This will further help in providing employment to local people also. The only problem in this seems to be, we have very poor infrastructure in terms of power, clean drinking water, medical facility and road connectivity. If this can be ensured, in our opinion, the problem of rehabilitating more than 25 million mentally challenged in our country should not be very difficult.