Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), represented by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Department, organised an online summer camp in which 30 children between the age of 8 and 15 participated.
The workshop, held online for the first time since its inception in 2016, was aimed at children with intellectual disabilities and offered training workshops that included many entertainment and educational aspects.
Executive Director of Clinical and Service Development with HMC’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Dr. May Jassim Al Muraisi confirmed that the workshop organisers decided to go online this year with the aim of benefit children from this initiative, while preserving their health and protecting them from the COVID-19.
She said that this year’s workshop aimed to support children who suffer from low cognitive abilities and constructively address the challenges related to the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Al Muraisi added that the summer workshop initiative seeks to support children and teach them skills that will help them form their independent personalities and build self-confidence so that they can continue living their lives naturally.
The annual summer workshop is supervised by a group of multidisciplinary supportive health service cadres with expertise in therapeutic education and training methods based on scientific evidence, which include occupational therapists, speech therapists, play therapists and psychoanalysts.
Dr. Al Muraisi explained that the supervisors of the workshops are strengthening the abilities of the participating children to communicate with those around them, critical thinking, reading and writing, speaking, sharpening memory and writing notes. He said that through these workshops skills and sensory abilities are also developed through play therapy.
She pointed to the increasing demand for specialised treatment for children with intellectual disabilities, stressing the great impact that treatment has on the lives of these children and their family members.
She indicated that over the past few years, HMC has doubled the number of functional physiotherapists to meet the increasing needs of these patients’ treatment services.
