Vocational Training

Critical Aspects Of Individual's Capacity For Employment Are Parental support. A friendly and social personality and desire to work. IQ Scores, Test scores, and academic abilities are not necessarily important features of successfully employed persons with Mental Retardation. Vocational Training In The Mentally Challenged It involves 2 aspects:
1. Guidance to parents - It is of immense importance only if parents are willing to help the individual or only when parents are convinced, then only we can proceed in vocational training programme.
2. Guidance to mentally challenged persons.
What a parent can do to make their child enter some kind of vocation?
Become aware of your child's eventual need to enter in to the world of work.Emphasize Physical fitness, stamina & personal appearance. Be sure that the child's current program addresses employment awareness. Expose your child to work situation ,when you go out in the community. Give your child specific responsibilities in and around the house. Encourage school teachers to include work related concepts such as money, employer and employee relationships.

Aims of Vocational Guidance
Assist the client towards a proper choice of vocation.
To enable the client to find the general and specific abilities required for the vocation.
To develop positive attitude towards various occupations.
To prepare the client for specific services which can be rendered to society.
To help the worker to adjust himself to the occupation in which he is engaged.

Various Kinds of Vocations
Peons, Messengers, Gardeners, Water boy, Call boy, Photocopying, Screen printing, Packing, Loading, Helping in baking, Sweepers, Book binding, Coir product making, Pickle production, Envelope making and many such more options.

Jobs Options In Rural Areas

AGRICULTURE & HORTICULTURE- Planting, Sowing, Spraying, Harvesting, Storing, Basic processing of products, Keep working animals.

LIVE STOCK , POULTRY RELATED- Breeding, Raising, Tending live stock, Milking animals, Grazing, Collecting eggs.

SERICULTURE& FORESTRY- Breeding, Trimming trees, Sawing and Loading.
Vocational Training At Various Stages


Elementary Stage(For the development of work readiness skills)
Eye Hand Coordination.
Arrangement of materials.
A desire to do a better job.
A spirit of cooperative work.
Promoting dignity of labour.

Secondary Stage( For the development of abilities)
Helping the students to identify their abilities.
Giving necessary information about various jobs, skills, and opportunities.
Exposing them to various job situations.

Post School Stage
Helping to select courses.
Encourage to acquire skills.
Exposure to various jobs.
Selection of suitable vocation to start with.

Employment Models

Inclusive Employment- Includes work in formal and informal sectors (no education requirements.

Competitive Employment- It is a kind of open employment. There exists 3 per cent of job reservations for persons with disabilities.

Supported Employment- It is an employment approach for individuals with mental retardation which enables them to be placed, trained and supported in competitive jobs in integrated environment with assistance of qualified persons.

Sheltered Employment Workshops- It provides non-competitive long-term employment to persons with mental retardation. It's uniqueness lies in its ability to provide them with an opportunity to make a useful contribution to society and their own well being through productive work.

Group Employment- It is a modified version of sheltered employment. It is organised by group of parents or adult services providing agencies.

Self employment-

Psychotherapy @ Inspiration

Psychological Assessment
Inspiration undertakes psychological assessment of children belonging to Inspiration Center and outreach Cases and formulate reports for the same.The assessment profile usually constitutes the following psychological tests:
Test of Intelligence to measure the IQ (both verbal & performance).
Problem behaviour checklist.
Personality test.
Comprehensive Learning Disability Assessment of Spelling, Reading, Comprehension Auditory-Sequential Memory and Visual Motor Integration.
Test of Creativity.
Clinical Analysis for the presence of psychological illness.
The psychological assessment profile is altered as and when required according to individual testing requirements.

Case Study/Report Formulation
A detailed case record of every student belonging to the school is maintained with thorough assessment reports and other related medical/social/occupational records.
A case study generally comprises family history, medical history, prenatal-natal-post natal histories if any, developmental milestones, scholastic history, occupational history, sexual history, family relationship study and any other additional details as and when required. A report of any Psychological assessment conducted is also maintained.

Behaviour Analysis and Management
A thorough psychological assessment usually brings to light the problem behavior repertoire of the child. A cross verification interview with the parents of the child can clearly highlight the problem behavior or the behavior list that needs to be worked on. In general it is the attention seeking behavior that demands a behavior management program be implemented.A simple behavior Management program is likely to include the following tasks:
Break down the complex tasks to suit the attention span of the child.
To decide the motivation contingents - the behaviours to be reinforced.
The Discriminative stimuli need to be fixed, namely the stimuli to which we require the child to respond in a particular way. Essential features to be followed in any type of Behavior Modification program are:
Lucid, easy to comprehend instructions.
Essentially consistent stimulus situations while the Learning is going on.
The target behavior should be socially significant.

Parental Counseling
Parental Counseling is done on a periodic necessity based interval. The viewpoints of the child and parents are highlighted with the larger interest of the child forming the backbone of the Counseling session. A Nondirective method of Counseling is loosely followed with the Gestalt attitude adopted as per individual requirements. Aspects such as unconditional love and acceptance are stressed. Parental counseling also forms a path to understand the needs of the family with regard to support systems.

Student Counseling
The students of Inspiration are constantly encouraged to talk about the various problems that they face with regards to both academic and family/peer group situations. A Nondirective approach is followed generally to strengthen the decision-making abilities of the student.

Supportive Psychotherapy
Supportive Psychotherapy generally performs the function of a buffer in a stress situation. Therapies such as Relaxation Training (Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation), systematic desensitization procedure (for phobias), autogenic therapy, yogic pranayama and all supportive therapy procedures that the situation may call for, are put to use.

Future Projects
Certain new innovative techniques such as Family Therapy and Group Psychotherapies have a place in the forthcoming itineraries. Also the benefits of the Gayathri Manthra for its healing and soothing capabilities are to be looked into in future programs. Alternative therapies are being regularly used, and administered by trained professionals. It has yielded promising results, especially with Autistic children in bringing down their stress levels.