Parents of slow learners get counselling by British psychiatrists

RAWALPINDI

The Centre for Profound Education (CPE) on Monday organized an Open Day to provide an opportunity to the parents of students with special needs to seek counselling with the consultant psychiatrists and physicians visiting from the United Kingdom.
A team of British consultants, including Dr Shakil J Malik, Dr Connie Meyer, Dr Andy Charlie, Dr Ann Newmark and Dr Jim Newmark, provided free consultation to the parents of children, studying at the Centre.
The Centre for Profound Education that works in collaboration with UK’s Innovative Medical and Development Services, caters to the special educational needs of the students with varying degrees of learning difficulties, slow learners and autistic spectrum conditions.
“We facilitate the students’ learning through the latest educational techniques backed by professional consultation, diagnosis, treatment, therapy and counselling by highly qualified psychiatrists and educationists from the United Kingdom,” Samina Iqbal, the Coordinator Academics and Administrator of the Centre, said.
She said every child’s needs were different requiring `Individual Educational Plans’ (IEPs) aimed at enhancing individual skills to enable independent living and where possible working towards mainstream schooling.
She said the Centre followed UK’s national curriculum as a framework guided by Glyne Gap School for special education in Sussex.
The curriculum is organized into blocks of years called `key stages’ she said, adding, at the end of every key stage each child was formally assessed to monitor progress.
Dr Shakil J Malik, Senior Clinical Director and Consultant Psychiatrist Sussex Partnership, at UK’s National Health Services Foundation Trust, urged the parents to be aware of their child’s special needs and provide him an environment that is tailored to his current level of mental capacity.
He said the counselling of parents could help them discover, accept and respect the unique abilities of their child and enable them to develop these further.