Family Life & Life Skills Education for Adolescents: Trivandrum Experience

Adolescence is a period of experimenting, experiencing and expanding. Adolescents need help and guidance in decision-making, problem solving, critical thinking, developing interpersonal skills, self-awareness, empathy, coping with stress and managing emotions. The rebelliousness and dislike for parental intrusion usually keeps parents at bay because teenagers do not relish the idea of help and guidance from parents. However, this may not always be so. Beneath frequent violent outbursts, sudden mood swings and related interpersonal problems of an adolescent, there may be a person crying out for professional help. All adolescents need support and guidance. When parents find it difficult to handle signs of trouble, professional help should be sought at the earliest. Extra care is needed while offering help to adolescents problems because it is not easy for teenagers to accept the fact that they need help. Attempts should be made to understand the adolescent, and to safeguard, protect and guide him/her. The Family Life & Life Skills Education Programme is a good support system for adolescents at the community level

Editorial: Optimizing school readiness for children with developmental disabilities

No abstract available

Accelerating progress on early childhood development for children under 5 years with disabilities by 2030

The likelihood of a newborn child dying before their fifth birthday (under-5 mortality rate) is universally acknowledged as a reflection of the social, economic, health, and environmental conditions in which children (and the rest of society) live, but little is known about the likelihood of a newborn child having a lifelong disability before their fifth birthday if he or she survives. Available data show that globally the likelihood of a child having a disability before their fifth birthday was ten times higher than the likelihood of dying (377·2 vs 38·2 per 1000 livebirths) in 2019. However, disability funding declined by 11·4% between 2007 and 2016, and only 2% of the estimated US$79·1 billion invested in early childhood development during this period was spent on disabilities. This funding pattern has not improved since 2016. This paper highlights the urgent need to prioritise early childhood development for the beneficiaries of global child survival initiatives who have lifelong disabilities, especially in low-income and middle-income countries, as envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goals agenda. This endeavour would entail disability-focused programming and monitoring approaches, economic analysis of interventions services, and substantial funding to redress the present inequalities among this cohort of children by 2030