Jamshedpur, Sept. 25: Special children need care but, unfortunately, care often turns to pity.

At a four-day workshop for special children organised by NGOs and the National Trust, teachers and parents were asked not to pity these special children but treat them normally.

Parents Association of Mentally Handicapped Jamshedpur and Madhur Muskan, an NGO in Ranchi in association with National Trust under the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, New Delhi, conducted the workshop on early intervention and school readiness of special children.

The four-day workshop that started today would focus on detecting cerebral palsy or multiple disabilities at an early age so that teachers and parents can prepare them accordingly for future.

About 30 teachers from five states — Bihar, Orissa, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand — participated at the workshop. Strategies through participatory and interactive sessions will help teachers handle students better and prepare them for the battle ahead.

“We focused on early intervention for children of 0-6 years. If children with any problem are detected early then the results are better. Proper handling of kids is all that matters. If we teachers start working from an early stage, it would not only benefit the child but also the teacher. Various talents of the children would come to the fore.

“More than sympathy, teachers should put an effort to make them all-rounder. If they are trained properly they can help the family by earning and becoming self-independent. Thus we will train the teachers to adopt a child centric approach,” said Poonam Natarajan, the chairperson of the National Trust.

“Aspiration is the name given to the workshop by National Trust that aims at parents and teachers of smaller towns who are not as aware of handling special kids compared to people in the metropolitans. It is aspiration in the true sense of the term, we aspire to make these kids self-dependant,” Reena Bhandari, the director of Voice and Vision, an organisation in Mumbai, who will act as the resource person in the four-day workshop.

Voice and Vision is an organisation that conducts training programmes, develops and disseminates information and materials on the education of children who have multiple disabilities.

“We would maximise the teacher’s potential to handle these children so that kids finds it easier to get into the normal school mould. Often we have worked on the children’s illness but we would train the teachers on building their skills and capacity in order to make a success story,” said Bhandari.

The teachers have been also given CDs that narrates some of the success stories in the country.