Director’s Message
We are standing at the threshold of another year full of hope and opportunities; when we look back, 2022 shaped up to be an incredible year for CADRRE as we continued to make a difference in the lives of individuals with autism and their families. My sincere thanks goes out to the team members of CADRRE, our Advisory Board and all our well-wishers.
As we reflect on the past year, we see an increased demand for our programs. With the pandemic restrictions behind us, all our programs are at full capacity, and our waitlists for programs are getting longer. What consistently challenges us is how do we reach out to and meet the needs of more people in the Autism community. We depend on support through donations to help us stretch our services to reach more people and design programs that are relevant to their evolving needs. In this season of giving, we ask that you consider supporting CADRRE in its journey of transforming the lives of individuals on the spectrum. We are also making some functional changes to ensure optimum utilization of space in all our centers and bringing students of similar age groups together for a better learning experience for our students. These changes have come into effect from January 2023.
We are ready to ring in 2023! We wish you and your family health and prosperity in 2023 and thank you for your continued support.
– G. Vijaya Raghavan, Hon. Director CADRRE
CADRRE OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY WEEK
As part of World Occupational Therapy Day on the 27th of October 2022, CADRRE celebrated Occupational Therapy (OT) Week with talks by field experts and a lot of OT related activities for students. The goal of occupational therapy is to improve the skills that are needed to live life as independently as possible. Occupational therapy can help you to cope with a physical limitation and manage better in everyday life. This can improve your quality of life and health. Occupational therapists can help, for instance, if you have limited use of your hand or arm due to a medical condition. They may recommend various exercises or activities, offer you advice, or suggest changing certain things in your everyday life.
Now, why is occupational therapy so important for children on the autism spectrum? An occupational therapist ensures a student with sensory processing differences has the right sensory opportunities and
environmental adaptations throughout his day, removes barriers to learning and this goes a long way in improving their wellbeing. Providing interventions to target each sense helps the child’s nervous system become more organised and regulated. This can reduce the child’s anxiety and exhaustion and improve their attention and
performance.
We had talks by four field experts on different topics. CADRRE is planning to bring about similar talks and webinars in Speech Language Pathology, Psychology and Special Education.
CHILDREN’S DAY CELEBRATIONS AT CADRRE
We had a lovely celebration on the 14th of November 2022 for our children who came dressed as little chachajis on Children’s Day. With a beautiful rose pinned on to their pristine white shirts they looked nothing less than amazing; they read together about Children’s Day, played some fun games, exchanged hand-made cards which they made for each other, spent some time in the pool – they spent the day playing, sharing and learning together.
Trainees of the Employability Program also joined the children’s day celebrations. They formed small teams and played some exciting games with the children of teen and pre-teen group. For the trainees of the employability training program, it was a beautiful way to rekindle their childhood memories. You can catch a glimpse into our children’s day celebrations here
WHEN 2021 BATCH OF IAS OFFICERS VISITED CADRRE
Eight IAS officers of batch 2021 who would be taking charge as assistant collectors in various districts of Kerala visited CADRRE, as part of their training at Institute of Management in Government. The trainees went through in detail the programs and interventions provided at CADRRE and interacted with the children and the teachers at CADRRE. They also had a detailed conversation with Mr. G. Vijaya Raghavan, Hon. Director CADRRE, on the challenges and bottlenecks that the autism community faces in Kerala and what steps can be taken to help them.
Top: 8 IAS officers from batch 2021 along with Dr. Mini B Nair, Associate Professor and Course Director IMG, Hon. Director CADRRE, G. Vijaya Raghavan, Pricipal Co-Ordinator and Head, Malini G Unnithan, Principal Advisory Member, Lekshmi Nair Middle :The team having a discussion with Hon. Director CADRRE, The team visiting the classrooms and interacting with teachers and students Down: Team going through the occupational therapy tools
WHEN STUDENTS OF CADRRE HAD A FUN OUTING TO LULU FUNTURA
CADRRE gives a lot of emphasis to field trips as we believe that a lot of learning happens outside of classrooms and need not be within their familiar spaces. Field trips provide students with a lot of opportunity to observe new things, respond to new situations and exercise their reflexes. Students who are on the autism spectrum rarely get such opportunities to experience various social settings because their family and caregivers might be worried about how others will perceive their varied ways of interactions and mannerisms. Because of the restrictions that came with the pandemic we had to put a long break to our field trips, but as soon as the restrictions were behind us, we planned a field trip for our students to Funtura, Lulu Mall.
We wanted our children to have a very natural experience in taking a bus to a destination and hence we chose to book KSRTC buses for our students to go to Lulu. All of our staff also travelled with them, one staff accompanying each child. All of them were excited to take the bus ride on the sunny morning to Lulu Mall. With a gentle breeze and city-sights, the ride was indeed a memorable one for not only the students but also for the staff to see the children enjoy the ride and adapt well to new experiences.
The children watched a 7-D movie at Funtura. On request, a few lights were kept switched on; some children did
not find it comfortable to wear their 3D glasses but all of them watched the short movie for the whole duration.
Students tried out a lot many different rides, carousel, soft play, video racing games, wall climbing, drop and
twist tower, bumper cars and top dancer – an exciting ride that takes you upward and downward in clockwise
and anti-clockwise directions, with surprising changes in speed and unexpected drops from heights. The children
turned out to be braver than their teachers when trying out these new things!
They also spent a lot of time on the trampoline bouncing away their sensory discomforts and worries. We left Lulu wanting to come back for more fun. You can catch a glimpse of the beautiful day we had here.
AUTISM AWARENESS SESSION FOR TATA POWER VOLUNTEERS
Pay Autention is India’s first bridge digital Autism Support network by Tata Power in collaboration with CADRRE. Members from Team CADRRE, Anuja Sudheer, Head of Early Years Program and Speech Language Pathologist with CADRRE, supported by Vrinda Vijay, Head of Juniors Program and Psychologist with CADRRE and Jeslin, Occupational Therapist with CADRRE, conducted an interactive online session for Tata Power volunteers to learn basic identification marks and behavior patterns for early identification of the Autism Spectrum and related learning diversities.
The program is aimed at strengthening of Autism Support network through the exchange of experience, partnership building, and reaching out to grassroot communities. It is aimed to create a network of champions who would spot the early signs of autism in toddlers, explain the need for a diagnosis to parents sensitively and professionally and help them to understand the importance of early diagnosis and intervention as well as inter-disciplinary intervention.
The Pay Autention website also features a lot of informative videos on the various aspects of Autism such as communication challenges and strategies to develop better communication, introducing pre- number concepts to children with Autism, activities to improve attention in children with Autism, and more such topics. The content of these videos is curated by the team at CADRRE after much thought and discussion. You can watch these videos here.
CADRRE JOURNAL CLUB
Every child’s autism journey is different. One needs to be aware of the latest developments in the field to cater to the evolving needs of the students. Hence, we introduced a Journal Club that meets once a month. The team is divided into four groups and each group should choose a recent article with innovative research from any renowned journal and make a presentation on it. The team meets virtually, and the presentation is followed by a Q&A session.
The first in the series was on the topic ‘Problem Solving Performance of Students with ASD’ by authors Gulnoza Yakubova and Teresa Doughty.
UP TO SPEED
This section gives you the latest updates regarding various interventions, activities/ progress of our students
Pre- Schoolers
More than half the schoolyear behind them, the children of the preschool were more settled and found to be accustomed with the school routines. They showed subtle but remarkable progress in all areas. They became familiar in using communication boards and a few of them started requesting independently for toilet, food etc. The parent training sessions continued through this period. The most exciting days were the functional Fridays where they were familiarized with daily chores like washing, moping, dusting etc. Children’s day, Diwali and Christmas were celebrated with great enthusiasm. The children started recognizing their classmates and interact with each other by looking and holding hands.
Juniors
Every Friday is a Functional Friday when activities are held on different themes to expose the children to new things. Visits to the grocery store, restaurant, and hospital were among the activities that were carried out. The purpose of this was to teach the children appropriate behavior and what to expect in these settings.
We also held academic Term 2 exams in December, using the same question
and answer pattern as regular schools. This was well received by the children.
We are constantly working to make them independent in feeding and toileting.
We are also working on transitioning children older than 10 years to prepare
them for moving to higher classes.
In October, we celebrated Diwali; a social story helped to ease the children into
the celebrations.
Children dressed in traditional best attires and enjoyed a sadya in traditional
setting in banana leaves as part of our Kerala Piravi celebration.
All the kids dressed as Chachaji for Children’s Day celebrations that were
facilitated with the aid of a social story.
Christmas festivities took place in December. All the children came dressed in red. A Christmas tree was put up, and a play about the life of Jesus was performed. One of them, dressed as Santa, distributed candy
We also focused on life skills such as gardening, home maintenance etc. The activities that are prerequisite to these skills have been given through graded exposure to different sensory stimuli such as tactile, proprioceptive and vestibular.
Once the children can tolerate these stimuli, they can be expected to incorporate that into functional activities.Eg: Touching sand or mud gives them a tactile sensory input and the odour of the soil is an olfactory stimuli.Overall, it is a great sensory experience for the children.
Pre-Teens and Schoolers
The highlight of the term was the perfectly planned out theme-based activities that went hand in hand with Functional Fridays. The students were excited to travel by public transport to go and explore the planetarium and again take a bus back to their school. Even more exciting was their auto ride to CADRRE The Artism Studio, to have a perfect café experience. They got to order from a menu, wait for their food, eat at a table, pay for their food- all in the comfort of an environment that understood their challenges, equipped to meet their special needs. For those who used Avaz, the entire menu was created visually in a folder in Avaz, soft white music calmed down their sensory overload and the staff gently guided them at each step. The afternoon after the hearty meal was spent in singing and dancing. You can catch a sneak peek into the day here.
Each Functional Friday activity is carefully chosen to include a social situation that could be challenging for the autistic individual. The same scenario- visit to a hospital, supermarket, movie theatre, restaurant- is recreated with accommodations to make it less intimidating for the child. The movie watching at the centre was a similar activity. The entire experience- with ticket counters, dark room for screening the movie, a popcorn counter- were
all set up and the students got a feel of a visit to the cinema.
The end of the term was marked by the students spending time making decorations and practicing for their Christmas celebration performances. The school was decked with Santa, reindeer, snow man, sleigh, mistletoes and bells to ring in the spirit of the season. The students participated in group dance and singing. They also exchanged gifts with their friends. The backyard of the Sasthamangalam centre was cleared and the students enjoyed creating a vegetable patch. The process of digging up the soil, sowing the seeds, watering, tending to the saplings- all of it contributed to a meaningful sensory experience. They also actively participated in the harvesting. Several bunches of green amaranthus were prepped and cooked into delicious and healthy Palak parathas.
Clockwise: Children working at the vegetable patch, Planting saplings, Buying vegetables, Daily living skills like crossing the road
The ArtismStudio
The trainees at the Artism Studio focussed on a whole set of skills- culinary, decoupage, stamping, canvas stitching, bottle upcycling, candle making- for the months of October, November and December. Culinary skills sessions also brought all the 3 centres of CADRRE together to pre-order for food items- pasta, multi grain bread, sandwich, fruit jam, muffins, cookies and so on. This gave ample skills training opportunities for the trainees who prepped, cooked and packed the food at the state-of-theart training kitchen at The Artism Studio.
From left: Scented candles and drinking glasses made from upcycled beer bottles, Christmas hamper carefully curated by the trainees
The trainees also got an opportunity to turn the products that they had worked on, to be curated and be part
of a gift hamper – around 80 gift hampers were assembled and packed by the trainees, the contents of which were the result of several hours of training.
From left: Christmas tree at The Artism Studio,, X’mas hampers getting ready for deliveries
Employability Training Program
The third batch of the Employability Training Program commenced in November 2022 with 5 young energetic minds on board.Level 1 of the training is spread out in domains like social skills, life skills, communication skills, motor skills and so on.
The second batch and the third batch of ETP trainees work separately in two timings from 10 am to 1pm and from 1:30 to 4:30. A lot of the training happens through experiential learning in simulated environments, which helps them in learning how toact or react in a public setting besides helping them to put in place clear boundaries and guidelines. As part of this the trainees set up a café, hospital and grocery store at the Sasthamangalam centre where children from pre -teen and teen students also participated.
Due to the difficulty in social communications, forming new friendships can be hard for young adults on the spectrum unlike their neurotypical peers, but it was very rewarding to see some deep friendships being made within the group with the help of various team building exercises for trainees. Now they enjoy travelling together, having snacks together. They all had a great time on their trip To Lulu Funtura.
The month of December included a lot of preparations and practice for the elaborate Christmas celebrations planned and conducted together by both batch of trainees. It gave them a chance to get to know each other better, taking initiatives, event planning, practicing together, they had a very joyous time. They invited their parents over to watch their performances and they had prepared snacks and refreshments along with the trainees at the Artism Studio for the parents and members of Team CADRRE.
Left: Trainees dressed and ready for the Christmas fun, Right: Trainees at The Artism Studio training kitchen
To get know more about The Artism Studio you can follow us here.
2 of the trainees from the first batch had got placed as paid interns in Ernst and Young Trivandrum. It gives us great pride and happiness to know that their contracts got extended and they are doing well in their jobs
Kanthari Spread the Spice Festival at CADRRE The Artism Studio
Spread the Spice festival by Kanthari was hosted at The Artism Studio on the 15th of October 2022. Kanthari in Trivandrum, Kerala, offers a 12-month leadership program for visionaries who have overcome adversity and who
are keen to drive ethical social change. Kanthari equips participants with tools that are required to start and run an NGO, an organisation or social venture.
Spread the Spice 2022 was a one-day exhibition on ideas of social change. 21 change makers from 12 countries showcased socially relevant issues and the solutions they will implement soon after they complete their training
at Kanthari.
The Artism Studio was bustling with energy on the day with lot of young volunteers from Sree Chitra College of Engineering and lot of walk-ins who came to see the exhibition. There were more than 25 stalls which dealt
with topics such as agriculture and environment, women empowerment, alternative education, LGBTQI rights, cultural taboos, disability rights and more.
The event was made fun with lot of games to try out, a brain cycle, song and dance performances. You can catch a glimpse of the beautiful event here.
The Artism Studio, first ever concept studio in Trivandrum catering to the individuals on the Autism spectrum provides you with an opportunity to celebrate your special and intimate events here.
