Development centre helps children and families

Dubai: Long before the opening of the Dubai Early Childhood Development Centre (DECDC), Dr Bushra Al Mulla, Director of the centre, started on a mission of filling up the gap in the care provided for children with special needs.

Medical practitioner for 11 years and mother of a special needs child herself, Bushra was an ophthalmologist at the strabismus (cross-eye) clinic in a government hospital and was treating many children with disabilities when she was offered the job of setting up and managing the centre.

"A gap analysis was conducted by Dubai Government in 2007, which showed that no facilities exist in Dubai for children from birth to the age of six years, hence the idea of the DECDC, an initiative by the Community Development Authority, was born," Bushra said.

Trans-disciplinary

DECDC is a unique early intervention programme, which provides comprehensive, family-focused trans-disciplinary assessment and intervention services to children with special needs or at risk of development delays. It also provides families and the community with the appropriate support services.

"We do not tell the parents of a special needs child what should be done. We ask them what their needs are, and work with them to fulfil those needs," Bushra said.

The services offered by DECDC include initial assessment, which is done through a meeting with the parents and the child and while taking into consideration the family's concerns, priorities and resources.

It also provides programmatic and diagnostic assessments, intervention, service coordination, family and community training, counselling and consultancy.

Services are provided in the child's natural environment - at home or at school — as well as DECDC premises. This is done through a team of highly qualified professionals in the field of early intervention based on each child's needs. The professionals include a service coordinator, special educator, speech and language pathologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist and psychologist or behavioural therapist.

The centre was officially opened in March, but it started operations since the soft opening in May, 2009, when it started receiving children with all kinds of disabilities.

"There were other special needs centres in Dubai, but they were offering limited services that do not cover all categories and most of them had long waiting lists," Bushra said.

"There are many disabilities that can be diagnosed from birth, but since there was no early intervention centres, this meant that children under the age of four were provided no care, although this is a very critical stage and children in this age group can learn a lot.

"We see a huge difference between children who received care from the early years and those who did not start until they were six years old," she said.

Best practices

"After Dubai Government directed us to set up the centre, we visited early intervention facilities in Europe and the US to learn about the best practices, and based on that we created our own programme, which is based on the best practices but modified to suit the UAE community," Bushra said.

The centre currently has 50 registered children and 50 more on the waiting list. Any Emirati child under six years old with special needs is considered for admission.