JOIN USSoftware to track challenged kids
Dakshina Kannada district Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan known for its innovations has now developed a new software, which will help keep track of the details of the challenged children in the district.
The software, ‘Children with special needs database,’ was designed in 2010 on pilot basis and data about challenged children was collected through a census and was unloaded to the software. However, the department has now submitted a proposal of Rs 1.50 lakh under the ‘challenged fund’ in a view of developing the software.
Speaking to Deccan Herald, SSA DK District Coordinator N Shivaprakash said that each challenged child in the district has been given a card with a colour code that describes the disability.
SSA identifies 10 disabilities and so far 4,738 children in age group of 6 to 14 years have been identified in these categories in a survey conducted in August 2011. As many as, 1953 children have been identified with low vision, 33 are totally blind, 104 have impaired hearing, 350 have impaired speech, 773 have orthopaedic disabilities, 870 have mental retardation, 33 have cerebral palsy, 523 have multiple disability, 26 have learning disability and 73 have identified having autism spectrum disorder.
The software records the child’s name, age, address, disorder, various schemes the child has been enrolled for, various benefits received by the child, the education received by the child and many other details. With this software one can generate problem-wise, gender-wise, area-wise and other kinds of data.
With this, one can easily obtain the record of the child. SSA has a provision to enroll these children in the ‘Inclusive education resource centre’ present in each of the seven education blocks, which will help them to cope up with their disabilities. Each of these centres has two special teachers appointed by an NGO and three inclusive education resource teachers. The progress of the child can be charted in the software, says Shivprakash.
“This software is presently limited to SSA. By developing this software, we can easily coordinate with Women and Child Welfare department, Disabled and Senior Citizens department and other departments which provide facilities to the challenged children. The Joint Review Mission was pleased with the software and the State SSA may distribute this software to other districts too,” he said.
“Many a times, the same beneficiary may get the same disability equipment and benefits from different departments. With this software, we can avoid the overlap and distribute benefits to all beneficiaries. We can have an integrated and comprehensive data-base,” said Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat CEO Dr K N Vijayprakash.