Jamshedpur, April 7: If they cannot go to school, education will come home to them.

The state government is all set to provide home-based education to children suffering from multiple disabilities.

Under this inclusive education project — a part of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan launched by the government in October 2010 — about 1,600 caregivers will be trained to take care of differently-abled children, aged from six to 14 years, at their home and thus enable them to join the mainstream.

The first batch of the 15-day training began on March 1. The state has already trained 373 caregivers.

According to officials of the Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC), there are 80,210 mentally challenged children in the state. Of them, 12,000 are affected with multiple disabilities. “The main job of the caregivers will be to groom the special students for schools. The first batch of trainees have already been taken for a field visit during which they interacted with the multiple-challenged kids,” said Abhinav Kumar, state in-charge of inclusive education, JEPC.

Each caregiver will handle a minimum of six children and visit them twice a week. The “handling” might begin with normal self-dependent daily chores, but the caregivers would have to try and enrol the children to the nearest schools.

They will also have to make the parents aware of various governmental schemes.

“Though anybody can be a caregiver, the minimum qualification will be intermediate. However, the parents of the beneficiaries would need to be matriculates. We had prepared the training module in January this year,” Kumar said.

The state has selected eight NGOs to conduct the training in various areas. Some of them are Parents’ Association for the Mentally Handicapped, Jamshedpur; Ashalata, Bokaro; and Madhur Muskan in Ranchi.

East district will get 60-70 caregivers, who will be paid a stipend of Rs 500 per child.