(By Dr. C. R. Desai, President, Navkshitij
Reading Time 6–7 mins)
REHABILITATION of Persons with Disabilities means creating a space in which the impact of the disability is mitigated and the person gets a fair chance to explore his or her abilities. In the case of physical disabilities, improving accessibility to every public facility serves the purpose to a large extent. In the case of the visually impaired, having audio instructions and creating computers that work through audio feedback have done wonders. They are now working in banks, back offices and corporates. The hearing impaired communicate with sign language and can easily learn to operate computers and find employment. The government is making all efforts to improve facilities in schools, colleges and government offices. Inclusive schools and job quotas for the disabled have helped in levelling the playing field for the disabled. They can now educate themselves, get a decent job, become self-sufficient and lead as normal a life as possible. In their case, we need to educate, empower, equip and employ them and then give them a chance to carve out their future.
How IDs are different
The problem with PwIDs (Persons with Intellectually Disabilities) is quite different and should be treated differently. The IDs (Intellectually Disabled) can see, hear, touch and feel but they process the sensory inputs differently. They perceive the world through a different pair of glasses. After processing the inputs, their reactions and responses are slow and quite different. Their body doesn’t easily keep pace with their minds. Their movements are awkward. To compound the problem, most of them also look different. Their needs are different, their aspirations and priorities are quite different than ours. In the case of IDs, we need to say, “Leave your darling 18- or 20-year-old ward with us, we will look after them for the rest of their life.” It needs a different level of courage, confidence and commitment.
In inclusive schools, even with special educators to support them, the IDs can never catch up with the rest of the children. Many of them come back with an inferiority complex and feeling traumatised. The reason is that, by and large, they are kept away from games, they are unable to understand jokes and they cannot do most of the things that the other children can. To make matters worse, they drool, trip and fall, and are often incontinent and soil their clothes. Some of them have epileptic fits. Inclusive schools, even with the best intentions and facilities, cannot make IDs normal. The IDs feel different because they are different in so many ways.
Often, parents are in denial and push their children to look and act normal, only to make them feel more frustrated time and time again. The children try their best to please their parents and cannot understand why they are never satisfied. They do not pick up social cues so their responses seem bizarre. Even when they try to do the right thing, they trip, fall, spill and break. In social scenarios, the parents are constantly found apologising for their child’s behaviour. The child knows that he or she has done something wrong; it also does not know what is right or just cannot do it right. Just imagine the trauma that ID children go through every day of their life.
As adolescents, the body has grown, the hormones are flowing and the ID does not know what is happening. Their behaviour becomes all the more incongruent. Now they have to be protected not only from others but from themselves too. People laugh; however sensitised they are, they laugh, scorn, slight, ignore or shy away from our children. Some of them laugh because they believe it lightens the tension that is there when people are interacting with IDs. People do not know how to respond; by and large, they are scared of saying or doing the wrong thing. This is the age when IDs start developing behavioural problems. Everyone around them is trying to correct them—sometimes kindly but often rudely. The IDs feel the scorn and indignity at the cellular level. They try and try their best but just don’t seem to get it right. Finally, they resort to their defence mechanism; they shout, scream, yell, throw things or become violent. They have learnt that these tantrums make people around them shut up and stop picking on them. But this behaviour makes them stand out like a sore thumb; it scares other people even further away from them.
As adults, the IDs have other problems. Even special schools do not want them. Some day-workshops do allow them but they are few and far apart. One parent, generally the mother, has to take them to school or at least to the bus stop and be there when they come back. The situation is no different when they are offered a job. Parents with female IDs never risk sending their daughters to work for obvious reasons. The main problem is that most IDs do not understand money. They wonder why Papa has to go to work every day. “He gets something called money if he goes to work; then we can enjoy a picnic, a holiday or go to a restaurant.” That’s all that money means to them.
As age advances, the situation becomes more complicated. IDs cannot live by themselves. They cannot run a house, pay bills, manage staff and look after their own health and hygiene even if the parents have a lot of money. By now, they have been isolated from society. The parents are ageing. By the age of 35–40, they lose one or both parents. Affluent parents do leave behind enough money for their darling child to be looked after; often, the guardian takes control of the money giving the child the bare minimum. Most other families just leave it to God. Many parents pray that their darling child dies before them. Society has no idea of what happens to adult and ageing IDs. They just fade into oblivion.
True rehabilitation
The IDs have suffered enough. It is our responsibility as a society to create a system that can be justified as true rehabilitation for IDs. Before that, we have to learn to see the world through the eyes of an ID. We have to understand their likes, dislikes, choices and priorities.
Rehabilitation and Inclusivity, a series of blogs, is an attempt to get us closer to understanding IDs. It will become easier if we put aside our biases, pre-conceived notions and quick fixes.
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