Closed doors, open hearts: Deepam in the time of Corona

On 18th March 2020 Deepam closed. Deepam is the day care centre in Kuilapalayam for children with special needs where I work as an occupational therapist (OT). 

I moved to Auroville in October 2019 with my partner, Allan, and I threw myself happily into my work at Deepam. It was a joy to work in a place which isn’t governed by fear or money-driven policies (as I was used to from the UK), but rather by kindness, care and a heartfelt desire to do everything we can for the children in our care. Deepam very quickly became my work, my anchor, my integration, my social network and my purpose here in Auroville, so the temporary closure of Deepam has been quite a change for me.

Normally, Deepam offers day care, vocational and outreach programmes which are tailored to the needs of the individual students. Our students have a wide range of diagnoses from cerebral palsy and hemiplegia to learning disabilities and autism to sensory integration issues and childhood trauma. As an occupational therapist, I was mainly providing individual therapy for the outreach and day care students. 

Over the last four months however, the team has been taking turns to go to Deepam to do a deep clean, sort and repair games and toys, do assessments, catch up on paperwork, update the website and share our collective knowledge and experience with each other, and do our own personal training. We are able to provide those families in need with food, medicines and a little money to help them through this hard time, but many children are sitting at home doing very little and losing the progress they had made through their therapy. Many of the parents have lost work and home life is not always easy, comfortable or pleasant for our children and their families. Deepam has never closed before for longer than ten days in its 28-year history because the negative impact on our students is too high. There are a few that have very supportive parents who are providing therapy for them at home and this is heart-warming to see (via WhatsApp videos), but many of our students are facing neglect, aggression and extensive boredom. We’re doing what we can, but it just breaks all of our hearts to not be able to open Deepam for them. 

‘Doing’ is so important for our health and wellbeing; engaging in occupation is fundamental to our sense of self and our relationship with the world. It is hard, as an occupational therapist, to see our children not having access to occupational engagement and to be able to do very little about it. I have therefore put energy into developing individualized homework packs with English, maths, puzzles and games to develop skills required by that child (e.g. education, fine motor, attention, focus, hand/eye coordination, problem solving, spatial awareness, visual acuity, memory etc). I am having regular phone calls with our kids to provide them with social contact, prompt them to do their homework and engage in tasks at home (many household tasks hold a lot of therapeutic potential, but many of our children are not supported or encouraged to do these). And I have been trying to help parents understand why and how to help their children. 

But there is only so much that we can do when the children do not have the resources, like phones, stationary and games (what we provide quickly disappears into the family network or is sold)), support systems (family or friends with the time and/or will to help), or the ability to engage in healthy and beneficial activities independently due to learning disabilities. Alongside Deepam work and my own professional development, I have been able to help Thamarai develop some educational resource material for their students and I have been working at AuroOrchard farm for a few hours, six mornings a week. There is something incredibly humbling about growing good organic healthy food that provides nutrition and sustenance for Auroville. 

We do not know when Deepam will be able to open again. But despite the disruption, particularly to our students, it’s a luxury not to be stuck in a work or professional box, but to be able to be flexible as the situation requires. I am endlessly grateful that we are in Auroville during this lockdown; in a place of learning, exploration and nature. I can’t imagine a better place to be.