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Sandnya Sanwardhan Sanstha provides service to 87 children who fall under 5 levels of mental disability - ranging from borderline to profound. Children with severe disablities need 1-on-1 attention for them to do their daily tasks (like brushing their teeth, eating, etc.). More than 13 children in SSS fall under this category.

The Institute provides a range of services to the children, depending on their needs. These are:
Special Education, Speech Therapy, Physiotherapy, Music Therapy, Parents and Sibling Training, Learning through cultural programs, Sports and Yoga, Home-based training, Public Awareness, Vocational Training Rehabilitation, Parent Relief Center. The institute has a full time staff of over 30 making the staff to student ration higher than 1:3. Higher number of teaching & non-teaching staff is needed as lot of students need one on one attention. Also, many children have physical disabilities which makes it necessary for the institute to have more non-teaching staff (helpers) who take care of every detailed need of the child while the child is at the institute.

Social challenges:

Making people aware about the various dimensions of mental disability and its impact on the society at large. We undertake public awareness meetings in rural and urban areas on large scale to disseminate information in this regard.

Operational challenges:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get qualified persons like special educators, physiotherapist, speech therapist, social worker etc. One of the reasons is we cannot pay as per the existing market rate. Secondly, there is shortage of these professionals.

Resource constraints:

Monetary constraints are always there since mentally challenged cannot compete with the normal work force and thus cannot become self reliant. This is the reason SSS like organizations will always depend on philanthropic support.

The project has taken steps to rehabilitate & find a source of income for some of its mentally challenged students who would've been unable to find jobs otherwise. Each unit has one or more supervisor who monitors and helps the students with their work. The supervisor is a paid non-teaching staff member of the institute.

a. Star Clip unit

M/s Star Circlip Engineering Co. P.Ltd. is a industrial unit in MIDC, Butibori. They manufacture all types circlips used in industry. It is an export unit and the whole production is exported to Germany. It is a fully automated unit. One of the steps in making a circlip is to heat it up. Before putting these cirlips in to oven, they are to be put in to a flexible wire in a certain and fixed manner. And this is the precise job work we got for our mentally challenged students. This work is on piece work basis. The work is done in our campus. Company provides us circlips by weight and after finishing the job we return this by weight. The money is paid per kg. of finished work.

After giving training for about 3 months, now 7 mentally challenged students are regularly working and their average monthly income is about Rs.700/-. There is one non-teaching staff supervisor for this unit. This is likely to go up substantially in the coming financial year because of consistent practice. Sandnya Sanwardhan Sanstha does not keep any income earned from this unit.

b. Rakhee making unit

The Rakhi unit is operated by 5 mentally challenged girls and supervised by 2 non-teaching staff. They make rakes through out the year. In three weeks time prior to Rakshabandhan, these are being sold by putting up stalls in different regular schools in the city. Management of these schools is quite dynamic and tries to involve their students in different social activities. Some of these schools also bring their students on a field trip to Sandnya campus annually.

This rakhi rehab is a financially independent unit. They have their own bank account and the whole transaction is being done through this account the profit earned through this goes to the girl students of this unit. Sandnya Sanwardhan Sanstha does not keep any income earned from this unit.

c. Screen Printing unit

The institute has a small screen printing unit which produces printed stationary like file, folders, visiting cards, wedding invitation cards, greeting cards etc. About 4 students and one supervisor operate this unit.

Quantitative Growth

The number of students & staff has increased steadily over the years. There have been periods of stagnancy when we were bound by resource constraints. This year the student strength increased from 82 to 87. Currently we have a wait list of 60 students but we were able to admit only 5 new students since we do not have enough classrooms and need additional school bus since our existing school buses are running over capacity.

Qualitative Growth

One of the areas of progress is improvement in mentally challenged students even in severely and profoundly retarded categories. Secondly it is in the number of rehabilitated children in terms social and economic rehabilitation. Thirdly, improvement in its infrastructure over the years. In case of mentally challenged, the growth cannot be measured in terms of number like percentage of marks earned or grades earned, but whether their quality of life improved or not.

To rehabilitate more and more number of elder students in industrial work so that we do not need marketing of the products. To improve infrastructure in a way where we can provide lodging and boarding facility to our students when he/she becomes orphan (there are few takers for orphaned mentally challenge children in the society). For this we need trained staff and additional building.