We are a part of the research team working together with Disability Strategy Implementation team from the NSW Department of Education.
This project aims to create tools that will allow students with high-support needs to talk about their school experience.
Julie presenting at UNSW
Who do we mean by students with high-support needs?
High-support needs is a term often used in Australia, and describes:
Students who have moderate and severe intellectual disability and who need some support in their daily activities
Students with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities who need a lot of support throughout each day and who have more than one disability.
Why is this exciting?
Students with high support are usually last to be thought of and included. They usually do not have much say in their education and school experience. This is also due to their limited communication skills, with some students not using words at all.
This project is important, because people with high-support needs in schools quite often do not have their needs met in the following:
Transitioning from primary school to high school
Transitioning from high school to employment, day program, etc.
Having a say in what they want
Learning confidence skills
Having available resources that suit them individually
Having a person centred plan that they agree with
Feeling included
We are delighted that the NSW Department of Education values students with high-support needs. We are happy to see many current efforts to:
Improve school experience of students with high support needs
Give these student a voice about their school experience
What do we plan to do?
We will be working together with 22 special schools and two mainstream schools with support units from metropolitan, regional, rural and remote areas.
We will be using tools like:
An Easy Read survey
Photovoice and
Body-mapping
We have already used these tools at Chalmers Road School. The students enjoyed the process and told us what they like about their school.
We cannot wait to hear from students with high support needs from the 24 schools that we will be working with.
Our team
Our research colleagues in this adventure are:
Dr Joanne Danker (University of New South Wales)
Professor Leanne Dowse (University of New South Wales)
Dr Brydan Lenne (Disability Strategy Implementation)
Amazing school team from Chalmers Road School – Michelle Davies (school principal), Natalie Anagnostopoulos and Brooklyn Smith (relief principals)
We were frustrated – but, sadly, not surprised – to read that Abigail Talbot, a 15-year-old girl who lives with Down syndrome, had her enrolment at a Launceston Catholic school “cancelled”.
This decision happened because her parents refused to sign off on the learning plan created by the school.
Abigail, the 15-year-old girl whose enrolment was cancelled because her parents did not agree with the learning plan imposed on her.
Reading the article (https://ab.co/3jzcQDz) , we thought about so many things that went wrong.
For example, a student’s learning plan NEEDS to be created in collaboration between the student, their parents and the teacher. It was never meant to be a document created by a school and forced on a student and their parents. It just does not work that way.
There were other things that went wrong in the story. In this blog, we will focus only on one issue out of many – age-appropriateness. Including a picture of the Very Hungry Caterpillar into the learning plan of a 15-year- old student is simply not on. The Australian legislation Disability Standards for Education highlights the importance of reasonable adjustments. To us, the word “reasonable” also means that it should be relevant to the student and their age.
Being age-appropriate is important regardless of age. Adults need to be treated like adults. Yet, adults with intellectual disability get so often treated as children. This is demonstrated in Julie’s very recent experience below:
JULIE’S STORY
“As an adult with Intellectual Disability and Hearing Impairment it’s important in my life that Education and Learning is treated in the same way as people who do not have a disability.
“I want to be treated fairly and equal.
“Everyone with an Intellectual Disability wants to learn with age appropriate activities within education learning including being part of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
“Within COVID-19, between March and June this year, I had support from NDIS under social activities at home from a service provider for three hours on a weekend.
“I had one-on-one support because you could not get together in a group for social activities.
I was given a bag by the staff member and activities included:
Who am I? game for children age 6 year +
Large print colour in book with small colour pencils
Building –a-tool box for a child age three upwards
Play dough for children three years and older
Making pom poms kit
Instructions on how to make a paper airplane
20 game activity sheets on scavenger hunts – kid’s stuff
How to make bake clay in oven
Having a sheet to draw myself
Making an activity jar with adding water and pictures – three year old
Blob tree to colour in how you feel today
Hop Scotch drawing on path – kid’s stuff
Template to create a plane
And the list goes on.
Examples from Julie’s kit
“My point is, I would rather play adult games and have fun with seeing how many games I could win and lose.
“Many people with Intellectual Disability like to have fun, be challenged to learn new things as adults do.
“Services for people with a disability need to review the following:
How things are done so that people can learn in way that suits their needs
Activities and event they offer are age appropriate
All they do need to be based in person centred planning.”
Do you have similar experiences that you would like to share with us? Please let us know.
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