#8: Navigating the Landscape of Child Development Centers CDC in Hyderabad

Podcast
May 23, 2024
5:17 pm

Welcome to the Ananya Child Development Center podcast! I’m your host Madhavi Adimulam, founder and director of Ananya CDC, a leading child development, early intervention, and special needs therapy centre in Hyderabad. Today, we are thrilled to be joined by Lakshmi Prasanna, our experienced branch head from our Banjara Hills location.

1. Introduction

In this episode, we are diving into the landscape of child development centers, sometimes called CDCs, early intervention centers, or special needs therapy centers in Hyderabad. We understand that choosing the right center for your child’s unique needs, whether they have developmental delays, autism spectrum disorder, speech delays, or other special needs can be a daunting task. That’s why we are here to guide you through the various options available in Hyderabad and Secunderabad in the state of Telangana in India. We’ll explore different centers, their specialties, and the factors parents should consider when making this important decision. Our goal is to provide you with valuable insights and information to help you make an informed choice.

2. A Passion for Early Intervention

Madhavi: Before we dive into the specifics, Prasanna, I know you are passionate about helping children with special needs. Could you share a bit about what inspired you to work in this field and what drives your dedication to the children and families at Ananya CDC?

Prasanna: Hi Madhavi. First, thank you for calling me for this podcast. I’ve been a fan of your podcasts and I’m really excited to talk to you today. So, I started being part of this early intervention journey when I was 21 years old. I was working in a preschool, which was bringing in a lot of ideas on play way methodology, which was quite famous in those days. When I worked there, I really loved working on new ways to engage with children. I was very young, so there was a lot of fun I was having with kids.

That’s how my journey began. My interest with preschool curriculum continued. So a decade or so later, I did a project for one self development program in a community project where a few families came together and did a summer camp. The mothers were involved in it. They wanted to engage their own children in our community.

So we had a great fun summer camp for our kids. They loved it. And one of the mothers continued with the play school in a small way. That’s where I met few of these kids to begin with. They were very happy in this setup. It was a community based thing where parents were involved. These kids were very happy in this setup.

That’s where the seed was sown for me. I have to work with these kids, do something, create this happy atmosphere. Five years after that, I met you. When I came to Ananya, I really fell in love with it. The first visit itself, it was the same atmosphere I was looking at. That’s where partnership with you began. And the last five years of my journey, every day was something for me to learn and grow along with the kids. And there is no day when I sleep with a heart that is full of gratitude for working with these kids and their families. And the kind of bond we develop with the families is amazing.

3. The Evolution of Autism Therapy in Hyderabad

Madhavi: That’s so nice to hear. When you met me five years ago and you expressed your interest for starting Ananya Banjara Hills branch, I instantaneously somehow believed that you can do this. It’s been quite COVID ups and downs and so much we have seen in last five years. I think that really improved our understanding about each other. So, shall we talk about what the autism or therapy center landscape in Hyderabad is like?

Because I think I feel like a dinosaur in this space. I started Ananya almost 20 years ago. In mid 2000s, when we returned from the UK, there was absolutely no center that used to cater specifically for children who have autism or who have mild developmental delays. There were only special needs schools and they used to mix all kids with different special needs. They put them in one room and they would call it a school. I thought it was a gross injustice that’s happening to these children because every one of them has a different type of disability and need. Their individualized needs were not addressed.

It was more like a glorified daycare center where the kids would be left there in the morning and evening the parents would pick up. When my son Varun went to schools in the UK, they told me that Varun is high functioning, so he should be going to a regular school and he was given a full time support or shadow teacher. And he also used to attend some therapy sessions outside. There, it was highly individualized and they were tailor-making therapy sessions for him, for his needs.

So when I came to India, I didn’t find that. In fact, I found these kinds of places which are quite scary for me because what will Varun get from these schools? Of course, I found a school where he got admission, but the school was clueless about how to include him. And therapy centers were totally clueless about what to do with ASD. That’s when I decided that I’ll quit my job and I’ll start a center for autism in Hyderabad, which is on par with any center in the UK.

I know it’s not easy to be on that level, but at least we can try. That’s how it all started. And we have gone from strength to strength and we have five centers now in Hyderabad. So that’s the whole journey in itself.

So a lot of centers nowadays that we see in Hyderabad, they’re mushrooming like anything. In Madhapur area, every lane has one center. When parents come and bring the reports, I see, I’m clueless. I don’t know where the centers are, when they have started. And when you see the reports also, it’s quite surprising the way reports are written, who’s supervising them, who’s signing these reports, because they’re diagnosing children left, right, and center.

4. The Importance of Rigorous Assessment and Diagnosis

Madhavi: My concern is how we work in Ananya, right?

We have a fully licensed clinical psychologist who has an RCI license to diagnose children.
We work with doctors. We have special educators, early interventionists. I myself am a special educator specializing in autism.
And so many, of course, young professionals who work with us, and we supervise them, almost fanatic about how the work is done, how the reports are written.
So many levels of reviews, heated discussions, arguments about what should be the diagnosis, why is the diagnosis like that.

We take five to six days in writing reports and giving it to parents. And the reports nowadays, people say that they just finish the assessment and by evening they get a report. I don’t know how it is possible to write reports by evening because it takes a lot of time in understanding, analyzing, and so much history taking happens and so many different assessments happen. We send so many forms to parents to get inputs from them. So, all this process takes a lot of time.

A lot of parents don’t know that reports take time to write and analyze basically. A couple of different specialized professionals have to discuss and agree upon the diagnosis. It cannot be unilateral, it cannot be decided by one person in an hour and then you write it on a piece of paper and give. It needs a lot of clinical observation and correlation to conclude.

It’s not like a blood test where I just go to a center and give my blood sample and within an hour I get a report that is positive or negative of whatever I’m testing. This is not like that. This is much more complicated; it needs a lot of clinical judgment and understanding of child development. In our Ananya Madhapur branch, our collective experience is more than a hundred years. So that much work goes into it. I’m so passionate about that, sometimes I can irritate my colleagues. I push them to the edge to justify why they’re calling whatever they’re calling a child. So I don’t see that happening nowadays.

5. Understanding the Parent's Perspective

Prasanna: You are more coming out like a parent. You wouldn’t want anyone to go through what you went through with Varun. That’s the reason I came to work with you. So you want to ease that pain for the parent, those pain points. And you want to cut short that time and the way you tell us that I lost that time, I could have done better even after doing so much for Varun all these years.

There should be, like you said to me the other day, a soul in the center. We are working with kids on the spectrum, and for understanding them, to work with them, it should go beyond professionalism. It should be parent-oriented. The therapy center should have the bandwidth and the kind of depth to deal with this kind of parent predicament.

We meet young parents. With dreams they start their lives, and suddenly they are faced with this, with a child who doesn’t speak, who doesn’t give eye contact. They’re puzzled, they need guidance, they look up to us. So there should be a mix of this personal hand-holding and also professionalism. See that your reports are right and see that your reports are explained in such a way the parent can relate to it. It’s not about the diagnosis, it’s about each aspect they relate to, how the report is explained to the parent.

The other day, we saw a report where the parent came with a puzzled look. ASD plus ADHD plus intellectual disability for a four-year-old kid. The parent was traumatized. We could see the trauma, and you were almost like in tears. I could see when you were talking to the parent. So the checklist that we can start with is that first go by your gut. The moment you step into a CDC for your child, you will know, are you able to connect to these people? Second, the checklist is, what are the credentials? Are they doing the assessment the way it is prescribed?

Are you getting a clear report?
Are they taking time to explain the report to you?
What you need to do, what are the interventions?
Are they becoming a team to work with you for your kid?

These are the checkpoints. That’s what we do at Ananya. That’s what you have taught us. The reason I was willing to work with you or looking forward to working with you, you are a stickler to the processes. Whatever you found lacking when you came back to India, you have built that here. And what I love about this is that your processes are continuously updated.

Help Your Child Thrive

6. The Power of Ongoing Training and Development

Prasanna: Today, we had a whole day training program on a Saturday. The more training we do, the better we work with the children, and the parents also are trained with whatever we learn. So that is the processes we have built.

Madhavi: We just had a few new team members joining today. When I was having tea with them, I asked them, one of them worked in the previous organization for more than 10 years. I asked her, “So what kind of training have you gone through in the last 10 years?” She said, “Not even one.” I said, “How can you work for 10 years and not have any training?” “No, ma’am, no training was done to us. We had any queries or questions. We would just call up the senior-most person who’s in the U.S., who’s not even in India. He would answer our queries and he would point us to some things that we should read and we would read and again, go back to him. That’s it.” There was no structured training happening. There was no training calendar, no training plan for a decade. She said, “In the last 10 days, I had two full-day training sessions.” She was asking me, “Ma’am, how often are those training sessions?” I said, “Every Saturday, I’ve learned so much in the last 10 days.”

I’m surprised that there are centers that are running in Hyderabad for a decade, and nobody bothers to train the team members. How does it even work? I can’t even imagine. We are calling people from all over the world to come and train us. I don’t think people understand the importance of upskilling your team. And because this is science, we are working in healthcare. In healthcare, every few years, everything changes. You cannot just graduate 20 years ago and think that I’ve arrived. I don’t have to refer to any books. You’re referring every single day to books and trying to learn and upskill yourself. So that’s my agenda, basically. I think when anybody works in Ananya, when they leave, they should go back like that.

Prassana: You actually say, “Go launch your boat.”

Prasanna: Yes. Go launch your boat. A lot of them have launched. A lot of centers in Hyderabad that are running are now owned by ex-Ananya employees. If they copy anything that happens in Ananya, I’m very happy because I want them to copy. I want them to bring method. I want them to bring process. I want them to bring professionalism into this field, which is absolutely lacking even today. So we are proud to say that we have made some entrepreneurs. Most of them are women. They are women entrepreneurs. So, yeah, that’s how it is.

So that’s where we can create so much of results for the children. The way parents approach us, like, you were doing this training for the last four months. You hired a specialist for the therapists to learn oral placement therapy. So recently I got a call from the U.S., the Chicago area where one of our kids was with us for one year, and she called and said, “Sowmya’s son, who was with you for one year, is speaking so well. My son, I have done everything for the last five years. He’s seven years old. The only thing I could not do is oral placement therapy. Can you do it online?” I could see a mother desperate to do anything for the kid. Anything to go to the end of the world and find what is missing. This is the question of the parents.

So it becomes our responsibility to upgrade ourselves. So if they are searching for whatever that extra they want to do, we should also deliver in our services that extra.

7. A Checklist for Choosing a CDC

Madhavi: Parents, when you choose a center, see that are they upgrading their skills? Are they a learning organization? Are they willing to let the parents participate in that learning?

So just, you were telling you went to coffee with the set of mothers the other day. Before this, we did a gluten-free bacon session in Banjara Hills. When you are able to engage with the mothers that way and impart learning, because they are already stressed out. You can’t make the mother sit in a training session and train them, but we can do a lot of engagement activities with them where they are learning on the go and they feel they’re part of the community. They feel strong that Ananya is behind me. So that is the benchmark the parents have to set for themselves when they are looking out for a CDC.

So parents, let’s talk about how some of these centers can come up on top because of Google. Google can be easily tricked into pushing the center on top. They can run ads or do some kind of gimmicks with Google, which can push any center to the top. A lot of parents seem to think that any center that comes on top is the best center. I’m going to share some tips for you so that you can find out how to find the best center for your child, not just fall into the trap of Google listings.

Prasanna: So Madhvi, can we build a checklist that will help parents choose what is right for their child?

Madhavi:

Credentials and Qualifications: First, you need to look at the credentials and qualifications. You can see if the center is equipped with qualified staff. Ensure that the therapists have appropriate qualifications and experience in working with children with developmental delays.
Individualised Educational Plans (IEPs): Ensure that they are making individualized educational plans for your children and are very clear about what kind of goals they are targeting, strategies they are using to address the child’s unique needs.
Staff Retention: And how frequently are the staff members leaving? What is the staff turnover like? So the top three on your checklist is qualified staff, then how they are building the IEP in discussions with you, and the retention of employees so that the work they do with the children is quality based.

Madhavi: Yes. Retaining staff in this profession is difficult. Every one or two months people are changing. That kind of a thing shouldn’t happen because children will struggle. Constantly new staff is coming, then there may not be proper training happening to the staff. So that could be one thing.

So that’s the reason we have this employee training going on, and our contracts are for one year, at least one year or more.

Prasanna: Or can’t be less than that.

Madhavi: Right. They’ll ensure that they give us a commitment. Otherwise, we don’t hire. And we always have extra staff sitting literally on the bench in case if somebody is on leave or something. We ensure that there is one-to-one therapy available.

Facility and Environment: The next thing that I would recommend parents look at is facility and environment. How is the place? Is the place maintained clean? Are the play areas safe for children? Has it been well thought out? Or is it in a very dingy, dark, unhygienic, some kind of a godforsaken lane? And are the therapy rooms equipped with proper therapy equipment? Are there enough toys or equipment children need to play with? Are they taking care of different age groups of children with the kind of material that is appropriate? Do parents have a place to sit? Does it feel safe for moms especially?

That was one of the criteria when we were looking for a place, that I want this place to be absolutely safe for mothers. I don’t want any mother to feel uncomfortable waiting for the child outside while the therapy is happening for children.

Communication and Transparency: And is the senior team, how is the communication, how transparent is the place? We have three times minimum, we have parent contacts, like we initiate the contact from our side. We also arrange for regular CCTV sessions for parents where parents can sit and watch the full session of their child as it is happening. We are always available for parents to answer their questions or any issues, we are always available to talk.
Fee Structure and Payment Policy: We have very crystal clear fee payment, fee structure, and fee payment policy. From the date they join, we get everything over to them, so there is no confusion at all about fee payment. Sudden increases of the fees don’t happen. People know exactly how much is the fee, when they need to pay, how much is the validity. Everything is clearly explained. The best, I think, timeline will be four, every four months is a decent time to pay.
Therapy Approach: Perhaps the most important thing that parents need to think about is what is the therapy approach? Are they just giving cookie-cutter solutions or are they giving customized solutions for your child? Are they thinking about your child while they’re making the therapy plan for the child? Is the emphasis on just rote learning or teaching some things to children to learn by heart? Or whether they are thinking about the underlying concerns and the long-term outcomes for the child? Or they’re just trying to please parents and show some quick results which may not really be of any use to the child in the long term.

For example, they might teach a few words to children like parroting the words. The child really doesn’t understand the context, doesn’t understand the word at all, but the child is just able to say a few words like nouns, pointing and saying, “This is car.” I wouldn’t focus on gimmicks like that. I would like to work on comprehension. I would like to build the receptive language of the child before I would push the child to do expressive language. I would say, okay, 100 to 500 words of receptive language before the child starts expressing. Research has proven that without receptive language, there is no expressive language that’s going to come for children.

But parents don’t understand. They just want to hear their child speak. It’s not just making them parrot words, but actually meaningfully communicate. Even if they speak fewer words, they talk in the right context. That is more important to me. That’s a long-term goal for me.

Google Reviews: That brings to my favorite topic: the reviews given on Google listings. So they keep on asking me, “Why don’t you have five stars out of a five-star rating?” It’s highly impossible to get five out of five rating anywhere in real life, okay? Unless you’re paying somebody to give you five-star ratings. I think anything above four is reasonable, humanly possible because we cannot please every single person who comes to us.

And a Google review can be returned by anybody. I don’t even know sometimes when I read the review, who are these people? They never came to us. I look up my records and I see, “Who is this person? He never came. You have written a bad review. We are sorry that you had a bad experience. Can you please share your child’s details so that we can go and check what has happened?” But I don’t get any reply from them. So who’s writing these bad reviews about us? No idea. And if you see some of the centers, you’ll have stellar reviews, all five-star, and some SEO keywords are being used in the review. So it’s clearly doctored reviews. I don’t think that it’s written by humans. It’s written probably by some SEO expert who has generated the text to write the reviews.

So be careful as to what you are believing. I would say, go meet the person who is running the center. Look at the environment, just get the vibe of the place and then take a call. Just don’t fall for the reviews. Just go and experience it firsthand. For example, I’ll give you my personal experience. I have a very good physician. You won’t get appointments for less than a week. His clinic is overflowing with patients. If you see his Google rating, it is less than two stars. And he’s an amazing doctor. I’m going to him for the last 22 years and I can never give him one star, two stars, but most of his ratings are one star. Who the hell is giving those ratings to him? I would never worry about his ratings. I would still go to him because he’s the best. A lot of parents don’t understand that Google ratings cannot be entirely believed. Be careful about these traps.

8. Conclusion

Well, parents that wraps up another insightful episode of our podcast on child development centers in Hyderabad. Remember, choosing the right center for your child is a crucial decision. It’s about finding the perfect fit for your child’s individual needs and your family’s values. Remember these key takeaways as you embark on your search:

Do your homework: Thoroughly research each center’s credentials, approach, and parent reviews.
Look for red flags: Be mindful of warning signs like unqualified staff, poor communication, and a one-size-fits-all approach.
Trust your instincts: If something doesn’t feel right, don’t hesitate to look elsewhere.
Focus on individualised goals: Focus on finding a center that prioritises your child’s individualised goals and holistic development.

Madhavi: And a special thanks to Prasanna for her valuable contribution to this episode.

Thank you for tuning in. We’ll see you next time with more insightful discussions on parenting and child development. Until then, take care, stay informed, and empower your child to thrive!

Find more resources at wordpress-1511319-5804593.cloudwaysapps.com or get in touch by calling +91 98485 13192.