CADET opens non-profit centre for autism

Its Dewdrops Community Centre for Special Needs and Vulnerable Children is concerned about children with special needs unable to get best-practice care and parents or caregivers reluctant to enroll their children in special-needs centres because of financial considerations.Tuition fee for one special-needs student could get as high as N945,000.Dewdrops scholarships targets children in need of […]

Its Dewdrops Community Centre for Special Needs and Vulnerable Children is concerned about children with special needs unable to get best-practice care and parents or caregivers reluctant to enroll their children in special-needs centres because of financial considerations.
Tuition fee for one special-needs student could get as high as N945,000.
Dewdrops scholarships targets children in need of care but whose parents lack financial backing to pay for care or their own training to deal with special-needs children, said Lola Aneke, director of the Abuja-based CADET.
“A lot of parents receive our services because we adopt research-based best practice, and when they come around, they love what they see and, unfortunately, because of financial constraints most of them cannot continue to receive the services,” said Aneke.
Dewdrops scholarships will also pay for the services of specialists—psychologists, paediatricians, speech and occupational therapists, special educators—working with affected children.
“It is quite tasking emotionally to take care of these children,” said Moses Ntuen, father of a seven-year-old daughter with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the disorders on the autism spectrum. “An autistic child will need to watched every single minute except he or she is sleeping.”