Meeting-discussion on the topic of Early Intervention

The Karin Dom Foundation, for more than a year, has been offering that innovative for Bulgaria service for supporting children with special needs and their families – Early Intervention. Early Intervention is a home-based service – provided to the family at their home by a mobile team of consultants on early child development. The main goal is the parents of children with special needs to be supported and trained to take care of their children in a way which would stimulate their development and help in the process of adaptation to the social and learning environment. Kari Dom’s model Early Intervention is applying the family-oriented approach where the necessities of the family are in the center of the service.

Here are some of the topics discussed on the meeting:

• Could the Early Intervention become a serviced financed by the government and, if yes, how could this happen?
• Would the Municipalities be able to provide their own funding for the Early intervention service and how?
• What structures will best suited to provide Early intervention services?

Karin Dom’s service Early Intervention is a subject of regular monitoring and assessment which helps improve the model and find ways to promote it among other social services for children with special needs in Bulgaria. The evaluation of the service at the current moment shows that parents are extremely satisfied with the support they have received and in many cases there is positive development of children enrolled in the programme.

At the meeting there were representatives of various institutions – Varna Municipality, Child Protection Department – Varna, Maternity Hospital – Varna, Hospital “St. Anna”, nongovernmental organizations, parents of children with special needs and others.

The meeting took place with the cooperation of Open Society Institute – London и Open Society Institute – Sofia.