A child suffering from behavioral or psychological difficulties are often tagged as a trouble maker; they are punished, ignored and are deported by the society for their inabilities. Chandra Lata Sharma, CEO & Speech Therapist, Aakaar Child Development & Learning Center (ACDLC), affirms, “Being emotionally, intellectually or physically challenged, they may not lead a normal life but are able enough to create their own identity in the existing society”. To bust the myth that a special child is unfit to behave as a normal peer, ACDLC is here to shape their challenges and help them to utilize their vigor for constructive goals.

Chandra worked along with eminent clinicians and professionals as a certified speech therapist for a decade in various organizations around Mumbai. She acquired an all-round expertise including ABA and PEX therapy, to cook up the best solution to empower parents to allow a disabled child towards a guilt-free life. Obtained skills and promising efforts further ripened the situation when she started her own multi-disciplinary clinic, ACDLC, in 2009 with a set of trained occupational therapist and educators.

Unique Application of Combination Therapy
Autism is the most prominent developmental disorder in India, affecting communication and behaviour of the children, where the parents find it stressful to manage the difficult behavioral symptoms. ACDLC specializes in dealing with major difficulties like learning disability, ADHD and Autism with combination of prime interventions of speech therapy, ABA therapy, PEX therapy and Play Therapy (for small children). For each child, the center designs a unique therapeutic approach assisted by a shadow teacher, starting from their childhood till they start attending inclusive schools and develop reading-writing skills. This approach is found to remove all the red flags of autism with a success rate where three out of five children have achieved their normal milestones. Other than spectrum disorders, ACDLC also provides separate programs to treat behavioral issues (ABA Therapy) or to induce

speech (PEX therapy) along with other services like Special Education, Psychological Assessment Counseling and Phonetics Grammar Program.

With an approach to create a better impact on the young minds, ACDLC encourages the teachers and the special educators to attend educational programs provided by the Anubhuti Centre of Child Psychology. To engage the parents, the centre holds workshops by developmental pediatricians and occupational therapists to educate them to understand the child’s state of mind. Apart from that, the facility is RPI certified and each occupational therapist is recognized by their state government boards.

ACDLC specializes in dealing with major difficulties like learning disability, ADHD and Autism with combination of prime interventions of speech therapy, ABA therapy, PEX therapy and Play Therapy

Outreach Programs & Consultancy Services
The low awareness of autism among the Indians is often reflected when the parents refuse to believe that their child suffers from Autism, can ‘outgrow’ the conditions. Hence, in every autism day, ACDLC holds awareness camps, distributes pamphlets among the special schools of Mumbai to help them with Speech Therapy and teach them the importance of the therapies. In addition, to deal with the behavioral problems or emotional issues under the age group of 14, Chandra also extends her expertise by scheduling programs for these schools. For her benevolent efforts, she was honored with Women Empowerment Award for 2019 and Young Entrepreneur of 2015.

ACDLC has recently introduced ETL Learning Program (from Singapore) along with the special education program, which would stimulate a visual to auditory receptors to help the special children to achieve a better perception. Going forward, walking on its vision of creating positive results, the center plans expanding and including more modalities to upgrade its services to the next level.