Chatbot communicates with users of the MURID association.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of children who have developmental difficulties. The MURID association is a rare association that gathers experts from different fields who can help such children. Parents are often confused when such a case happens to them and do not know where to start and how to help their child. If children with developmental difficulties are not helped at an early age, it may happen that later the child is left with difficulties that could have been significantly reduced.

 MURID helps parents, and especially children who have some kind of difficulties.

This problem not only affects children with developmental disabilities and their parents, but also the wider community. The price of early intervention in childhood is much cheaper than later investment in children who were not helped early enough.

Early intervention actually saves more money that should be invested in treatment later, because in many cases it enables a reduced need for further treatment when the child grows up, and in some cases this need no longer even exists.

Society as a whole, especially state institutions, are responsible for making health care available to everyone. Since our health care is burdened with many problems (lack of money, staff, long waiting time for an appointment with a doctor), and children with developmental disabilities need help IMMEDIATELY and do not have time to wait, associations like MURID are extremely important and become part of the solution of this problem.

Sometimes the parents themselves are part of the problem, when they don't want to admit to themselves that the child has difficulties, so they delay treatment.

The problem for people affected by it can be huge.

In a conversation with the employees of the MURID association, we learned that every year more and more children with developmental disabilities arrive and thus we became aware that this problem is getting bigger and bigger. As already mentioned, the problem can be even greater when children who are not given the opportunity for rehabilitation early enough grow up, then the problem spreads from the family to the school, and later there can be problems with finding employment.

Finding the right information quickly and being able to help the child as soon as the problem is recognized is of significant importance.

It would be good if the help offered by the MURID association was available in all parts of Croatia (and beyond). It would be good if such help was provided QUICKLY and REGULARLY within health institutions (children's hospitals, pediatrics...) and not to wait for the appointments for a long time, sometimes too long, in order to make a significant step forward.

Unfortunately, we learned that even such a valuable association as MURID could soon be shut down due to a lack of financial resources. Although the European Union recognized the value of this association and provided 80% of the funds for the construction of the center for early intervention in childhood, it seems that the remaining 20% will simply not be provided and that makes us sad. Without this association, children who are now making significant progress could be set back again in their recovery.

One of the members of our team had a brother who needed intervention in early childhood and he found help in that association. And our friend Lucija, who has difficulties, also found help in that association. This is exactly why we are very attached to that association, because we see how much they care that the children get the help they need and that they get it as early as possible, while it is possible to have a positive influence on the difficulty.

There will always be children who need help and that is why it is important to ensure that they receive the best possible therapy for their difficulty. Through various occupations, MURID helps children with such difficulties try to achieve new success.

Chatbot allows parents to quickly find information about the services that the association can provide them, provides them with information on how to contact the associations, and allows them to schedule appointments for the child's examination in a quick and simple way (via a Google form).

Chatbot somehow groups the information that is scattered on the Association's website and thus presents it to users in a more meaningful way.