BACKGROUND

CHILD stands for Caring & Helping Individuals with Learning Disabilities.

The CHILD Early Intervention Programme (EIP) centre was birthed as a result of the coming together of a group of like-minded parents who saw a great need to provide practical help to an ever increasing number of children with learning disabilities and their families in and around Taiping. Hence, a committee was set up to look into ways to help this target group. The CHILD Society was registered and its first project was to start an EIP centre. The CHILD-EIP Centre came into operation in June 2010, providing a UK-based “early intervention program” (or EIP) for children aged 6 months to 6 years old. Gradually, the program will expand to cater to those above 6 years old and ‘home-based’ children who cannot attend lessons at the centre due to various circumstances.

All services provided are offered to clients based on needs; no distinction is made based on sex, race, religion or financial background.

CHILD Society is purely a ‘not-for-profit’ service-provider NGO to children with special needs and their families which is wholly dependent on public sponsorships and donations to fund its programs. To prevent sudden stoppage of services due to a lack of incoming funds in unforeseen circumstances, CHILD Society practices prudent financial management with a healthy spread between spending and saving.

The core service of CHILD-EIP Centre is to provide the Early Intervention Program to children with learning disabilities, mostly with autistic or Downe –syndrome backgrounds. The EIP seeks to instill a broad range of skills over time : academic learning, self-help & living skills, behaviour modification, counselling for affected families, etc. Obviously, learning cannot be conducted in normal big classroom style but in small groups and one-on-one sessions. The teachers become then the backbone and are central to the success of the EIP and CHILD Society’s mission.

Mission Statement of CHILD Society:

“To empower, support and encourage children with special needs and their families through training, caring and community participation”. 

Why an IEP Centre in Taiping?

The rationale to start the centre in Taiping arose out of a great need to give hope and services to the learning disabled children and their families in Taiping and the surrounding areas. Through the Taiping Hospital’s Therapy department and some NGOs in Taiping, we estimated that the number of learning disabled children below the age of 7 years who will benefit tremendously from the EIP but who do not have access to such learning services run into several hundreds. Some of the more affluent families send their children to Ipoh or Penang once or twice a week to access these services. For those who do not have the means to travel weekly, such children are left without any opportunity to learn and better themselves. The need is great. Conservatively, there may be more than 300 young special children in Taiping and the hinterland who need the Early Intervention Program.

NEEDS

Cash contribution towards our centre for specific expenses such as staff salaries & training, learning facilities for children and purchase of teaching aids & equipment.

The funds requested are to sustain the on-going programs which provide various much-needed services to children with special needs and their families; to continue upgrading relevant skill areas of the staff through training; purchase of new teaching aids/equipment to replace defective/worn-out ones and to build up the resource centre.

CHILD Society is unable to generate income through children-involved activities or product sales since it is purely a service provider for very young children with special needs. Neither can much income be expected through collection of fees from these families as most of them are financially strained by additional expenses for the special-needs child such as speech / occupational / physio therapy, special equipment for physical impairment and medical costs.

Present and Future Needs

The CHILD-EIP Centre currently operates from a single-storey link house (20 ft x 60 ft) and has 1 Teacher catering to 15 special needs students. As at April 2012, we already have 30 children on the waiting list but cannot admit them due to space and staff constraints. We have plans to shift to a bigger premise and employ 2 more teaching staff by December 2012.

Unavoidably, teachers’ training and Teaching-aids consume a higher allocation during the initial phases of establishing an EIP centre. The main activities are based on using numerous forms of teaching aids to not only introduce concepts, facts, etc., but also to reinforce learning in an interesting and dynamic way. As the child progresses in abilities, so do the teaching tools. Hence, the variety of teaching tools has to be wide. And sadly, many of these items are imported and expensive. As the pool of teaching resources build up over time, the need to purchase them decreases. The same goes for staff training: the initial phase of acquiring needed teaching skills is more intensive and frequent. It tapers as the staff become more skilled and experienced.

CHILD Early Intervention Programme Centre