VEDIKA AGRAWAL

PG-20-158

About

Name of the NGO – Cheshire Homes

Year of Inception – 1955
Locality – Andheri East, Mumbai

Work Area

Cheshire Home continues to provide residential care services to men with disabilities. The organization
over the years grown and evolved into a comprehensive need based services provider through
Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) Program initiated in the year 2004-05 for the benefit of children
and adults with disabilities.

The CBR program focuses on providing services and interventions in the areas of inclusive education and
access to health for children with disabilities, and sustainable livelihood intervention for youth with
disabilities.

The need based services include providing as well as facilitating special education, inclusive education,
physiotherapy, occupational and speech therapy, provision of assistive devices/aids and appliances,
mobilizing support for corrective surgeries of children with disabilities, vocational guidance and skills
training to youth with disabilities followed by employment and self-employment assistance.

Cheshire Home works with the various stakeholders namely; the policy makers, relevant government
departments, mainstream school teachers, community health works, medical/health professionals,
NGOs, skills training organizations, industry bodies/associations, employers/corporates, families of
persons with disabilities and the community at large with the aim to address cross-sectional issues that
impact the well-being and rights of persons with disabilities.

Work during COVID

● They could not undertake major work during COVID as it was difficult for them to manage their
existing in-house patients due to lack of resources & finance crunch.
● Since the residents are persons with disabilities, it was very important to keep them safe & not
get them in contact with COVID virus. All the food, medicines were being checked & sanitized
before they reached the residents.
 VEDIKA AGRAWAL
PG-20-158
● Extra efforts were taken by the staff to keep the patients active (as visitors stopped coming)

Difficulties in functioning during COVID

● Since, Cheshire homes majorly consists of disabled & senior citizens, they were struggling to
sustain & adapt to the pandemic.
● Since people were not stepping out of their homes due to the fear, their donations were affected
highly as many of their donors were also going through financial stress.
● Well-wishers and visitors to the patients stopped visiting, making the patients unhappy and
unable to see outsiders, making them miserable and ill. Every month, certain guests would come
to spend time with the patients and make them laugh, which they would remember for the rest
of the month. This, however, came to a halt due to the pandemic.
● Since the staff at Cheshire Homes is not very tech-savvy, many staff members were finding it
difficult to work/co-ordinate remotely. Digital technology adaptation in their operations was
much needed to co-ordinate for ordering medicines, having meetings etc. & they found it
difficult to cope up with it.
● The staff also could not come regularly so the well-being of the patients was affected.
● Because these patients need doctors on a regular basis, there was a problem arranging for
doctors because all of the medical staff was serving on the frontline duty at covid hospitals.
● Their on-going programs were also severely affected due to lack of funding & also because
movement was restricted.
● Maintenance of wheelchairs, furniture, chairs, medical machines could not be undertaken &
arranging for food was very difficult for such a huge number of people.

Your learning from this project

● As a result of this study, I have a better understanding of how NGOs have suffered during the
pandemic and are adapting to these changes. I learned that we must also be dynamic and
flexible because the world is uncertain and anything may happen at any time, therefore we must
be versatile and adjust to ever-changing situations.
● We can become so engrossed in our own difficulties that we forget how others in our society are
affected, and how they may be having troubles as well. So, after working on this project, I've
learned that we should look around and observe that other people have bigger difficulties in life
than we do, and that my problem may not be as difficult to solve as we think. I should think
about it, serve society, and look at the bigger picture.