1. Why Was the Respite Care Unit Closed Down and How Were the Students Transitioned?

1. Why was the Respite Care Unit closed down and how were the students transitioned?

Respite Care Unit had children from different age groups. The younger children were integrated with the care group in the Early Intervention Unit. The older children (12+ years) were graduated. There was really nothing more to add to the skill set of these older children. These children learnt whatever Shristi could teach and it did not make sense to go on maintenance/day care kind of setup. So the unit was closed down. When we closed down, few children joined different institutions, which did similar work as Respite, care unit and few others stayed home. Shristi offered enough help for the parents of these children to start a similar unit at home since it was not hard to implement. But none took it up.
2. How many students are in the autism unit? What sort of standardized tests are being used to evaluate yearly progress?

Autism Unit has about 37 to 40 children as of academic year 2012-13. Every year assessments are done in all areas (physio, occupational, speech therapies and special education which includes assessment of behavioral skills, social skills, etc.) for all children at the end of the school year (assessments have started for all children in all departments) and middle of the school year. Additionally at the time of joining of a new student, thorough assessments are done. Appropriate therapist/special educator generates reports for each assessment for each child, which are reviewed by the program coordinator and technical directors and then handed off to parents. With the assessment results done at the end of the year or at the joining of a new student, program coordinator along with the help of appropriate special educators and therapists charts Individual E Planning. In this plan, the goals for each child for the year are written and middle/end of year assessments track the progress towards these goals.
Standardized assessments are psycho educational assessments, Behavioral skill assessments, etc
3. What is the state of the CBR program?

Currently the CBR program is not funded by anyone. So it is run in a small scale. It currently has3 special educators, one physiotherapist working part time for this program. The head of physiotherapy, technical directors and family counselor do regular visits for checking of progress of the child. CBR program works with 12 children as of now. The number has always been 10-15 children. Other than the regular children, CBR program works with govt schools to identify disability in children, give teacher training program for govt and regular schools (last year we gave 2 such programs for govt school teachers). CBR program also has helped children with disabilities other than what Shristi works with, to find suitable organizations for their rehabilitation. Few children who have been identified by the CBR program have main streamed children into Shristi also. I can give detailed stats and numbers of CBR program since its inception if needed.
4. Are we continuing to use the STAT kit for early screening? Are other institutions also using this kit? If you guys can get a sense of this kit, how easy it is to use, etc. - we are seeing application for this in other projects.

We still use STAT kit. It is used for younger children and toddlers. It is quite easy to use if you have the knowledge of Autism. No other institutions as of Shristi’s knowledge are using this kit.

Shristi got a training manual as part of the kit. Question is why there is so much interest in STAT. If the reason for interest is clear, Suchi will be able to answer these questions better. If the reason is for Asha to use this kit in other projects particularly school for normal children, it would be quite hard because one needs to have knowledge about Autism for using the kit.

5. How have we been able to improve staff retention? How much attrition in 2011-12 & 2012-13?

Staff retention is always a challenge with NGOs esp once working with disabilities like Shristi. But having said that Shristi has done fairly well in staff retention. Whoever has moved out because of personal reasons and have always left in a good note to the extent that they usually come back and help out as a volunteer or consultant or maybe even rejoin us. Staff has left for reasons like they haven gotten married and moved out or were having a child. Shristi has not given a pay hike since more than 2 years and most staff has stayed with us through the hard times even though the prices have been going up. 22 have quit in 11-12 and 12 in 12-13. Out of the 34 people, 20 have left us because of choosing to study further or get married or have children or move out of Bangalore or have come back as volunteers.

We have filled few posts but we have left few others as sis and make do with the resources esp with funding situation. It worked out very well - few staff stepped up and learnt to do more things than needed. This also helped them in building skills.

6. How successful have been teacher-training efforts last year? What are the plans for teacher training in 2012-13? How is SSA evaluating the effectiveness of these training programs?

You mean teacher training for our staff or teacher training teachers? Anyway, we do both. Every year after the assessments end in March or April, there is a teacher-training program for Shristi staff in Shristi campus for 2 weeks, which is compulsory for all staff to attend. Only after this the summer break begins. During this training, technical directors train the staff on areas that they feel the staff needs training in (after observing the staff for the entire academic year). We also get experts from outside world including doctors, specialists, special educators, therapists, psychologists, counselors, etc. Other than this, staff also attends trainings conducted by other organizations during the academic year. Other than this, the technical directors are constantly working with the staff and training them on everyday basis.
Shristi also conducts training for teachers from formal schools - private and government, special educators/therapists/etc. from other special schools. Technical directors/family counselor/social worker also give talks in their expertise area in different training programs conducted by other organizations.
The effectiveness of any of these training programs for Shristi staff training will show in the progress of the children at Shristi. There is no other way to evaluate.

Staff has learnt to be more independent of technical directors. For example, Gayathri used to do psycho educational assessments in the past but in the past 1 year, Manjula, one of the special educators at campus who has been with us for quite long now is doing it independently and also efficiently because of the training that Manjula has received. Similarly, technical directors have seen progress with staff in different areas like assessments, writing progress reports, deciding on what approach to use for imparting certain skill set for the children and directors have seen that staff have been quite innovative with methods, coming up with next goals for the children, etc.

7. How many orders in the vocational unit? Have we been able to increase the orders, employment opportunities, etc? If you folks have any inputs on how the output from the vocational training unit can be marketed better to the companies in BLR that would be interesting.

We get continuous orders for VT - most of them are small scale while few are large orders. Anyway the purpose of VT is training and as part of that we get orders. The orders have not been particularly increased. Even if we are able to increase, we need more manpower to make them and at this point that may not be possible. Shristi is currently under registered as a Society under 12A and according to this, Shristi cannot sell products to make a profit. For these 2 reasons we have started a new Trust for VT. This trust has 3 trustees - Suchi and 2 others from the Business world who run their own businesses and has an MBA degree. Shristi wants to spin off a cross disability co-op where people from different disability sector can work under one roof to produce products that are competitive in price and good in quality.

Self-sustaining co-op - income generated will go back to the individuals. Sheltered workshop may not be closed and integrated - VT will still be a part of SSA. Children from VT may have jobs in the co-op (after graduation). SSA will work on identifying what other areas (and work types) can be worked on.
8. How many children have graduated from the vocational training unit? Have we been tracking these graduates and their progress? Any success stories to share?

Shristi graduated few children 3 years ago. Usually when children graduate from VT, they either join other vocational centers or work some place (very few have done this) ormake some products with the training received and parents help (again very few ppl do this) or just stay home. Because of this we have not graduated anyone in the last 3 years. If we hit full capacity of VT and there is no space, we will graduate few children. Else it makes sense for these children to stay in VT and contribute to the delivery of the orders received.
Success storied are couple of kids are working in Shell petrol bunk, few make paper bags t home for us, few have joined other VT centers.
Once the cross disability co-op is started, we can reach out to all individuals who have graduated and give them all employment
9. How is the Team Shristi program coming along? How much fundraising in 2011, 2012?

Team Shristi has 2 parts - both run by RH.

One is the Shristi children training with RH since June 2012. We have had 11 kids and 10 staff train and run 10k at KTM 2012, 12.5k at Bangalore Ultra 2012 and 10k at Aurovil2 2013. We have additional 10 children and 7 staff train for 5k at Auroville 2013. All these children have seen tremendous benefits. Few of these 10k trainees - Ranga and Padma particularly are very fast runners. Ranga finished 10k at Auroville in less than 51 mins. All these children are much more confident, their behaviour has improved a lot, their discipline has come a long way. They do not miss a single run. Every Sunday they have to wake up at 4 or so to get to the start point by 6am and they never miss it! I will send another email that was sent out sometime in end of 2012 about the progress of these children. The staff also really enjoys the training. There is more staff interested now to train in June 2013. On the whole the benefits of RH training is a lot. We would like to make a short film of these benefits if possible. So if you folks know anyone who can do a short film, we would like to make a film of Shristi and benefits of running.
The other Team Shristi the fundraising group. Plan was to get the pages etc going for TS, however, due to bandwidth - could not find time. Now, TS is pretty much runners from RH raising money for Asha Blr. Shristi has introduced a few runners to RH for this Team Shristi. This was started in June 2012, so we are yet to receive any number raised and the funds. How many runners are raising funds? - 20 runners last year (500/km). Chandra from Contours Gym conducted a woman's day run in Marchand raised money for Shristi through RH and Asha Bangalore. We received Rs. 3 lakhs from this event – went to Chiguru.More than fundraising from the runners - there are other advantages like Chandra & Santhosh raising funds.

9. SAC program?

SAC program - website etc. is in place. During execution, realized that a lot of UNESCO funds (funds from UN) - violates some privacy clause from theUNCRC - giving out children's information (for financial gain) goes against UNCRC code.

Hi Meena/Raji,
Following on from what we were saying on the phone, here is an example of another Indian child-sponsorship scheme.

The main difference between our proposed scheme and this (as well as most other schemes) is that no individual children are identified. Donors pay to sponsor the school/scheme as a whole rather than individual children. My concern with Shristi's mandatory child sponsorship scheme is that this goes against UNCRC best practice guidelines specifically concerning the role of children to generate financial gain which is prohibited even if that financial gain is used to better aspects of the child's own life. Essentially we can only 'advertise' with children if we have full and non-pressured consent from parents and where possible the kids themselves.
I am checking this with my old legal team in Australia so should have an answer in a few days - we do need to think laterally about this though as if we are not careful we could exclude ourselves from many funding opportunities through non-compliance.
What I would suggest would be an anonymous scheme; new donors are presented with a list of children, their costs and how much is not yet funded. The donors can decide how much they want to contribute to each child without child details ever being revealed. In return for their support, donors would receive monthly newsletters, names listed on the Shristi website/facebook page, occasional gifts from the children, invitations to annual day etc.
Let me know what you think?

- Chris

10. Fundraising

New fundraising coordinator called Khusboo will start at the end of May and will be full time into fundraising.

Deepak, Meena & Suchi are on the fundraising team. Top things on the fundraising agenda are

- structure existing setup

- working on grants

- made 50 donation boxes - but need to identify and keep track of these

- Meena will share the tracker for the fundraising

9. International Volunteer program?

International Volunteer - got a lot ofinterest

- Got a recent graduate for 3 months

- Uma (Denmark) - did a lot of work with children (Independent living was her area)

- Chris

- Due to bandwidth - cannot put a lot of effort into the IVP