The DBF Blog

Chiang Mai has one of the most active volunteer and internship scenes in Southeast Asia. For people who specifically want to gain experience in developmental disability practice — as students, researchers, therapists, or professionals seeking cross-cultural exposure — finding the right pathway into a reputable organisation takes more thought than it might appear. This article explains how placements at the Dulabhatorn Foundation work, what the institutional pathway looks like

If you are reading this as a parent or family member caring for a child with a disability in Northern Thailand, this article is for you. Not for donors. Not for grant-makers. For you. Most content produced by disability organisations describes the people it serves from the outside — their conditions, their needs, the programmes available to them. Very little of it describes the experience of the families who carry the daily weight of caring for a child with a disability. This

This article is not about what the Dulabhatorn Foundation does. It is about the world families in Northern Thailand navigate before they find it — or before they find anything at all. Understanding that world matters. It explains why DBF's outreach model reaches into villages rather than waiting for families to arrive. It explains why early intervention is so consequential in a context where delayed contact with services is the norm rather than the exception. And it gives don

Dependency-based disability support — organised around ongoing provision, protection, and managed care — consistently produces worse outcomes for people with disabilities than capability-building approaches that develop agency, self-determination, and the conditions for independence. This is not a contested finding. It is the conclusion of decades of disability rights scholarship, international development research, and clinical evidence on self-determination. The question is

Artisan work in disability programmes uses the making and selling of handcrafted objects to develop skills, build self-determination, and create genuine market recognition for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It is distinct from occupational therapy, from arts and crafts as recreational activity, and from vocational training as traditionally understood. When it is well designed, it produces outcomes that none of those approaches achieve in the same way

Adaptive climbing is the application of indoor rock climbing — with modified equipment, individualised routes, and trained facilitators — to children and young people with physical, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. It builds grip strength, balance, postural control, and problem-solving simultaneously, and produces consistent improvements in self-confidence and self-efficacy that extend well beyond the climbing wall. Climbing a wall is not an obvious therapy for a chi

Equine-assisted therapy is a structured clinical intervention that uses the movement and presence of a horse to improve motor function, balance, sensory processing, and social engagement in children with disabilities. It is used with children with cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and a range of other developmental and physical conditions — and it produces outcomes that no piece of equipment, no pool, and no climbing wall can replicate. There is a momen

Early intervention is structured support for children with developmental disabilities delivered during the first years of life, when the brain is most plastic and most capable of being shaped by experience. The evidence is among the most consistent in developmental science: intervening early produces disproportionately large returns. Intervening late does not produce the same returns at greater cost — it produces different, and smaller, returns that no amount of subsequent ef

Hydrotherapy is structured therapeutic activity conducted in warm water, designed to produce specific physical and psychological outcomes in children with disabilities. It is not swimming lessons and it is not recreational pool time — it is a clinically distinct intervention with one of the longest track records in disability rehabilitation, used for musculoskeletal and neuromuscular conditions for over a century. It is also one of the most misunderstood therapies available —

Section 33 of Thailand's Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Act requires every employer with 100 or more staff to hire one person with a disability for every 100 non-disabled employees. The law has been in place since 2007. Understanding what it requires, how employers can comply, and what it actually takes to move a person with disabilities toward independence and employment is the subject of this article. Thailand has had this legislation for nearly two decades. Yet o

DohsaHou is a Japanese body movement therapy developed in the 1960s that uses guided physical movement to reduce psychological tension and support development in children and adults with disabilities. It is used with children with cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and intellectual disabilities, and it has been part of clinical practice across Asia for nearly six decades. Outside Japan and a small number of specialist centres, it remains largely unknown

Act Now Children's Fund Teams Up With The Dulabhatorn Foundation On 14 March 2026, the Dulabhatorn Foundation welcomed a delegation from Act Now Children's Fund to our campus in Sansai District. The visit included a tour of DBF's facilities, including the organic farm and vegetable garden that supply our training cafe, and concluded with the donation of essential supplies and resources for our beneficiaries and their families. Act Now Children's Fund is a Thailand-based orga