House visits at the villages

It is essential for us to know the social situation and background of all our children. Some years ago we used to do more house visits so that we could reach out to the villages, because we thought it would be the best way to do community-based rehabilitation. Soon we came to the conclusion that we had not achieved as much as we would have liked to. Often we went on bad roads to far out villages just to find out that the child was sick, locked alone in the house, or the family had left to visit relatives. Family members and neighbours would gather around us and distract us, the child would not be washed, and there would not be any adequate place to work with the child and no material was available. Our conclusion was that we are able to do much more when the child same to Deepam with a family member, where team members who have different trainings are able to collaborate. Also the children love to come and are stimulated by the materials, as well as by the other children. It is also important that parents can share with other parents and can support each other.
Nowadays we make sure that we know the family situation of our students but do house visits only if multiple disabled children cannot come to Deepam.