UOB designs centre for treatment of autistic children

A student at University of Bahrain (UBO) designed a graduation project on establishing a center for the treatment of autistic children, aiming at bringing up an autistic child in a way that ensures their integration with harmony considering their health condition, where they can show their abilities in one place, that has multi-facilities. The student, Kawthar Hussain Al Ghasra, who studies Interior Designing at College of Engineering, said "The idea emanated from reporting about a case of a child at their early joining of the center, then integrate them in the programme that best suits their condition, and mental and psychological capabilities, highlighting that such process is done through working with specialists, and providing concern to the challenges facing those children." Al-Ghasra added that the center aims at knowing about the difficulties faced by the parents of the autistic child, through holding psychological treatment sessions, where their parents, based on the outcomes of those sessions, are informed of the suitable diagnosis of each case, and are informed of how they can deal with it. Al-Ghasra pointed out that through this project, she aims at shedding light on this category and providing it with the worthy concern, where there is only one center, which is Aliya Center for Early Intervention, which highlights that the Kingdom hardly needs to establish a specialized center for treating children suffering autism. Al-Ghasra also highlighted that when establishing the project, the center will consist of two floors, each floor is about 1500 square meters, and it will be equipped with various facilities such as: classrooms, rooms for speech therapy, rooms for developing the child’s skills, a gym, and rooms to assess and diagnose the child's condition. "The center will not only be for children, but will also hold awareness seminars for the parents in special rooms to help them overcome their problem," Al-Ghasra said. It is worth mentioning that the project is one of the projects presented by the end of the academic year 2012 – 2013, in an exhibition within the graduation projects of the students of college of Engineering at (UBO).