The story of ASHIRVAD, the Christian Concern for Child Care, written by Katharine Makower from London, was published in 1998, telling the story of activities of ASHIRVAD from 1983, mainly its of the Child Development Centre at Chennai, Early Learning Centre at Nagpur and its partnership activities at St Andrews Church, Chennai to offer the day care and educational support for children with developmental needs.
The second part of the story from 1997, since ASHIRVAD through a Memorandum of Understanding with CMC,Vellore started the Developmental Paediatrics Unit, and subsequently the starting of the departments of Developmental Paediatrics and Child Neurology at PIMS, Pondicherry in 2009 and at MOSC Medical College in 2012 are yet to be published. This part is getting ready.
What brought this part of the story of ASHIRVAD into focus now is a recollection of a special experience during the last forty days or so. There were at least forty protocols for developmental screening of children and about thirty five parent education hand outs, which we developed at ASHIRVAD from 1983. Some of them are regularly used at the developmental Paediatrics unit at CMC and at the Developmental Paediatrics and Child Neurology department at MOSC, Kolencherry. All of them needed updating and editing, which has been pending.
During this stay at home order due to the COVID 19, there was an active interest to create a Manual of Observational Developmental Screening of Early childhood and a Manual of Ideas as a resource for parents for home based developmental support. All of my professional colleagues, Susan, Rainu, Liya, Shalini, Femy and Femine are at work to prepare the final drafts of these two resource manuals. They inspire me with their enthusiasm, creativity and long hours work on this project. We would not have been able to attend to this in this seriousness if we were doing our regular work of welcoming children for offering different services.
I feel moved as I go through this process because, after three decades we are still using some of those protocols and they are still relevant and useful.
I remember our former professional colleagues at Child Development Centre, Chennai, Sudha, Suchitra, Vijaylakshmi, Mellisa, and Annie who were actively involved in designing and composing the protocols. Mallika and Premila were the two in the office who typed and made them available for regular use. Each of our former colleagues, was special and contributed significantly to the evolution of the ideas and practices which since them have become guidelines for our practice.
The Child Development Centre was the first of this nature in India in 1983 and the Developmental Paediatrics unit at CMC Vellore was the first academic department in any medical school in India. The first post graduate fellowship programme for paediatricians and the Phd programme in this specialty started for the first time in India in 2006 at the Developmental Paediatrics Unit at CMC Vellore.
The friends of ASHIRVAD in Britain, Germany, Australia, USA and India were the support base for this initiative.
I have a sense that there would be something more to this story!
All beginnings have a continuity! Usually the latter is better than the former.
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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