A child with disabilities faces multiple prejudices to get accepted by the family. Often, the parents are in denial when confronted about their current conditions. Thus, along with a therapeutic approach, there is a need of holistic intervention for those children to freely interact under real circumstances. Better Life Child Development Centre (Better Life CDC) is not only a complete corrective house for special children, but also provides counseling services to prepare an accepting environment to spend the rest of their life at glee.

Dr. Reshma Ratheesh (Managing Director) after returning from UAE to North Kerala, while parenting her son dealing with speech delay found a marked lack of reforms for child development centres. To tout the gap, Dr. Reshma explored every paradigm of speech therapy services and started Better Life CDC in 2014 to impart a holistic and multidisciplinary approach towards quality services for a child in need.

Multi-model Treatment Strategy
In most cases, speech delay is not detected at birth which becomes more prominent when the child starts attending their regular schools. Thus, when the parents visit the facility with set complaints, each child is first subjected to a Multilevel Screening for a root cause analysis. “On the basis of this, the conditions are discussed among the department specialists to come-up with a treatment strategy,” explains Dr. Reshma. The treatment includes combination of various

interventions such as Speech Therapy, Behaviour Therapy, Education Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Yoga Therapy. After completion of each goal, there is a periodic review to further improve the strategy. Though the services are not restricted to speech therapy, the center caters to independent therapies for voice disorders (Voice Therapy), articulation disorders (Articulation Therapy), speech disorder (Language Therapy), Auditory Rehabilitation for hearing impairment, and Swallowing Therapy.

Utilizing basic yoga principle, Better Life CDC professionals crafted interesting yoga patterns to treat autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, epilepsy and other neurological disorders

Of the multiple benefits of yoga, it is known to improve the developmental milestones for the children suffering from developmental to neurological disorders. Utilizing basic yoga principle, Better Life CDC professionals crafted interesting yoga patterns to treat autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, epilepsy and other neurological disorders.

Every child needs a supporting environment to present the scope of improvement. The rising concern is handled by arranging family counseling therapy aimed for the siblings and the grandparents of the children to balance all aspects, and to maintain motivation after the therapy. Thus, ongoing interventions undergo parallel counseling and awareness classes for parental guidance to manage and better understand these disease conditions. All thanks to Better Life CDC’s qualified and experienced team of clinical psychologist, occupational therapist, special educator, speech therapist, physiotherapist, yoga consultant and eminent neurologist, who come together to offer holistic solution rather than solo services. Each professional is registered under Rehabilitation Counseling of India and is upgraded by training programs, motivation classes and daily sessions of meditation for a more focused workforce.

Awareness Campaigns
Children with normal social IQ may suffer from problems like learning disability, which often go unnoticed with a marked deterioration of their scholastic problems. Inspired by a brave soul and parent to a child suffering from the learning disability, Better Life CDC conducts special awareness programs in various schools and ‘anganwadis’ to spread the importance of speech therapy. It has recently included a Learning Disablity(LD) clinic for psychological services under their umbrella. Likewise, it is about to launch an OT centre, speech centre and other interventions to expand its service across Kerala and Middle East.