june, 2019 | The Health
Issue: Autism
The place for
kids with autism
Genius@Kurnia helps children with autism to excel and
join their peers at school
G
enius@Kurnia is an early interven-
tion centre for children with autism.
Started of as Permata Kurnia in 2015,
the centre has had hundreds of children
and families coming through its doors.
Intervention strategies in GENIUS@
Kurnia incorporate evidence-based practice and
naturalistic teaching with the cooperation between
the trans-disciplinary groups and active participation
of parents.
As one would know, the key to have children with
autism to become a contributing member of society
and to have better quality of life is early intervention.
This is what the centre is built upon, and so far, it has
helped many to rejoin society in a meaningful way.
Associate Professor Dr Hasnah Toran, Director of
Genius@Kurnia explains the centre’s core function.
Complete program for kids and parents
“We were placed under the Prime Minister’s office
at start, but have now being placed under the Ministry
of Education. The placement aligns better with our
values. This is because we provide early intervention
and early childhood special education, and our main
goal is to get our kids into mainstream year one classes
rather the into special education,” Dr Hasnah says.
“We try our best to do so, however for kids that are
unable to go into mainstream schools, we want to have
them excel in the special education classes rather than
being there for the sake of being there.”
For early intervention, the sessions aim to enhance
basic skills of children aged 6 and below and prepare
them for the pre-school programme. During the ses-
Parents are encourage to join the intervention
sessions as it is way more effective for the child.
sions, parents are trained by interventionists to carry
out the intervention on children.
Children with autism needs a lot of support to
improve their inabilities to socialise and excel in
school. This is why the centre also provides support
for the parents.
“We strongly encourage the parents to come in with
their children for early intervention in our centre.
This is because the best people to teach and train the
children are the parents themselves.”
Because of the inclusion of the parents, Genius@
Kurnia also provides classes and training for parents
to manage their children better, and to have a clinical
psychologist coming in once a week to provide psycho-
logical counselling for parents facing immense stress
managing their children.
“Even after the kids have grown and are joining
school, we provide support in the form of shadow
aides. These aides are usually employed by the parents
to monitor the child in school and see whether any
adjustments should be made.”
“The reason for the aides is because going to school
can be a very daunting task for the children. Even
though we have trained them to read, write and do
math, the socialising aspect of being in school can
sometimes be a problem for our kids. The aides are
there to see whether there are things that can be done
to soften the difficulty for our kids.”
Teachers are welcome as well
The centre have gone over and beyond its main func-
tion as an early intervention centre for children with
autism over the course of its existence. As the children
joins mainstream schools, the ones to also carry the
weight of educating them are the teachers.
“We understand the difficulty of teachers where
they may not be familiar with managing and teaching
children with autism. This is why we also provide teach-
ers with training in our centre as well.”
Other than that, the public also have access to
online courses about autism that is available on
Genius@Kurnia’s website.
“We have done a lot within the short time span since
we started,” Dr Hasnah comments.
Spearheading the research on autism
Genius@Kurnia offers children with autism better prospects in school once they have reached the
age to enrol in Year 1 classes.
house so soon, why don’t we build rooms in the
meantime.” It is safe to say that research on autism in Malaysia
has been lacking in terms of data and prevalence. Dr
Hasnah is aiming to work on researching the preva-
lence of autism in Malaysia through the centre and
its members.
The centre also wants to become a place for profes-
sionals to receive training on identifying and managing
children with autism. “As the need for more profes-
sionals to be capable of diagnosing autism increases,
we feel that there is a place in our centre to have such
a program.”
The calming room to develop Going strong
A sensory room is a special room designed to
develop a person’s sense, usually through special
lighting, music, and objects. It can be used as a
therapy for children with limited communication
skills, ergo children with autism.
“It would be safe to say that we have built
sensory rooms in every state in Malaysia, all in
hospitals with ample unused space.”
Besides sensory rooms, there is so much more
RMHC has been doing over the course of its
existence. The Health will continue to talk about
RMHC in our upcoming issues. Stay tuned! – The
Health Genius@Kurnia is barely four years old, and already it
has provided the public with a lot of knowledge and
training for children with autism. The centre currently
have 400 children training to join their peers in school
later on.
Parents who have children with autism may enrol
in Genius@Kurnia for RM500 a month, and the fee are
used to solely provide the children with ample facility.
And for parents with a combined income lower than
RM5000, enrolment will be free of charge.
Dr Hasnah, having two children with autism herself,
pledge to educate and promote the awareness of autism
among Malaysians. — The Health
Nasri Nordin says that RMHC provides all the
furniture, accessories, general upgrading
as well as basic maintenance like lightbulb
changes for the sensory rooms. Further use and
maintenance are managed by the healthcare
centre themselves.
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