Uttarayan was started in February 1986 by Dr. Sunipa Sinha (Roy) with only 3Dr. Sunipa Roy - Founder of Uttarayan children. She is a renowned psychiatrist working with special children since 1979. She is also attached to Indian Institute of Management, Joka as a medical counselor.

Uttarayan has been working with children with special needs and developmental disabilities. Uttarayan is a registered Trust set up in 1986, with the primary objective of providing support and guidance to children, as well as Adults with special needs and mental handicaps which restrict their ability to lead normal lives.
Over the past 3 decades, Uttarayan has been striving to help its students and their guardians meet life’s challenges in attempting to integrate with the mainstream of society. The emphasis at Uttarayan is to make learning and growing-up a ‘fun’ activity. As a result of which the students are always happy and cheerful. Uttarayan currently has two units: the school in SaltLake, Calcutta and Uttarayan Residential Complex (URC) at Arambagh in Hooghly district about 90 kilometers from Calcutta.
It began as a Day Care Centre in February 1986. Uttarayan caters to the needs of about 50 students in the Day Care Centre. The children are mostly from Saltlake area as well Newtown, Beliaghata, Dumdum and Lake Town areas. The children include Autism, Down’s syndrome, Attention Deficit and Learning Disabilities. Some of the children have been able to join the mainstream curriculum in regular schools. Some of the students have been able to establish themselves in the society. We have been able select two older students to work as assistants in Uttarayan.

The Residential Centre has been set up in 1998 in Arambagh to take lifelong care of 24 such residents. The parents of the residents are very grateful to Uttarayan, for taking such a bold and challenging step forward. The Commissioner Persons with Disabilities has commented on Uttarayan, saying that it can be perhaps called the ‘Ideal Home’.

Vision & Mission

We believe that every child deserves the right to lead a fruitful life, one that allows them to execute their equal rights to be integrated in regular schools, society, mainstreamed in different environments and be empowered to live a fruitful life in work environments and be able to participate in the community at large.

We firmly believe in the need for individuals with special needs to receive the earliest possible intervention by therapeutically addressing their behavioral and skills deficits and work towards a holistic development that will pave a way for improved performance.

We develop different ways of helping them learn and achieve independence developmentally appropriate levels of communication and appropriate social and leisure skills. We believe that people with Autism and related disabilities have the right to self-determination, meaningful education, personal development, social interaction and gainful employment.

Our mission is to establish an intervention center that will maximize the extent of equal rights for education from early childhood years and equal opportunities for employment in adulthood years of individuals with special needs.We dedicate ourselves to advocate for their rights and educate the public in our attempts to help build a society that will allow them to learn, to grow, to achieve, to dream and be respected as members of the communities they live in.