Ongoing Activities at Ummeed

In addition to diagnostic and follow-on care for children with developmental disabilities, Ummeed also helps build awareness, supports training of professionals, and does advocacy and research. In the area of building awareness, training and advocacy, Ummeed usually works in conjunction with other organizations. The philosophy behind this is that Ummeed has a unique level of expertise that most other organizations lack, and hence if we collaborate with them, and leverage the work they are doing, together we can create the most impact.

If you are involved in building awareness, advocacy, training or research and would like to collaborate/leverage Ummeed - please contact us at ummeedcenter@gmail.com

Building Awareness

This is done by the Ummeed team at multiple levels;

Lectures and working sessions with groups of pediatricians, school teachers, and parents

Articles in the popular press. This includes articles written by Ummeed professionals, articles on disabilities in which Ummeed professionals are quoted and articles written on Ummeed.

Publications in professional fora; national and international journals and conferences

Participation in events held by other organizations

Advocacy

Some examples of the work done in advocacy are:

Expert resource for the Rehab Council of India in the area of Autism

Expert resource for the National Trust in the area of Autism

Supported development of curricula for professionals working in developmental disabilities

Started a special interest group for professionals working with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Mumbai

Training Professionals

This includes a wide range of activities such as:

Teaching modules on developmental disabilities, e.g., to school teachers attending training at the program run by the Shapoorji Billimoria foundation

Running pre-conference workshops

Internships for students at Nair Hospital

Resources persons for DSE (Autism) offered by RCI

	Training doctors/ therapists in developmental pediatrics
	Training Therapists in Applied Behaviour Analysis to work with children with Autism.

Plans for the future

Given there are over 650,000 children with developmental disabilities in Mumbai alone, Ummeed would like to expand its diagnostic and follow-on care services to help more of these children. We would also like to increase our involvement in building awareness, advocacy, training of professionals and research. Ummeed is planning to expand its team significantly in the next few years and this will give us the resources to be more active in these areas.

Ummeed would also like to build an information platform that will help empower parents by giving them information about developmental disabilities and what can be done to help children with such disabilities as well as information about resources that are already available in the country.