Browsing by Subject "intellectual disability"

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    Disability Studies poster collection from Africa Day 2012
    (2012) Disability Studies Division
    This poster collection, developed by the Disability Studies Division and presented for Africa Day in May 2012, address the issue of disability from a range of social justice, inclusion and developmental perspectives. Poster 1 looks at the inclusion of disability in the University of Cape Town; Poster 2 explores residential options for intellectually disabled adults in the Western Cape; Poster 3 outlines the roles, purpose and scope of the Disability Studies Unit itself; and Poster 4 explores how the childhood experiences of community disability workers (CDWs) in rural communities in South Africa, Botswana and Malawi influenced their career choices and how their current experiences influence their work.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Asserting the right to education (Part 1)
    (2019-06-01) Wood, Tessa
    In this video, Tessa Wood, the director of the Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability, discusses the foundational work conducted by the Forum and its related support networks in advocating for and supporting the education of children with intellectual disabilities. She talks about the history of centres, organisations and networks that provided care for children with intellectual disabilities prior to the formation of the Forum, and how they cooperated to advocate for education for all children as per the South African Constitution. She discusses the long process of advocacy, negotiation and protest action undertaken by the Forum and how these resulted in legal action once all other opportunities for engagement had failed. She discusses the success of the legal action and how the current system for the education of children with disabilities has improved the educational and care landscape in both the Western Province and in the country at large.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Asserting the right to education (Part 2)
    (2019-06-01) Madikane, Lindelwa; Wood, Tessa
    In this podcast, Tessa Wood interviews Lindelwa Madikane, principal of a special care centre in Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town. In the interview, Lindelwa discusses how she became involved in disability and education and support. She further discusses the campaign and legal action undertaken in Cape Town to get government recognition of children with disabilities, and how government eventually provided financial support for her centre through grants and subsidies.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Context of Intellectual Disability
    (2019-06-01) Nseibo, Job
    In this video, Job Nseibo discusses the history and context of severe and profound intellectual disability. Job covers how individuals with severe and profound intellectual disability were historically labelled and described, and how these views continue in some countries and situations. Job discusses the stigmatisation and labelling of persons with severe to profound intellectual disability and how this impacts on the kinds of care and treatment, or lack thereof, that they receive.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Facilitating Learning as a Caregiver
    (2019-06-01) Couper, Jacqui
    In this video, Jacqui Cooper talks about the role of the carer who cares for a child with intellectual disability. She discusses the different kinds of carers (health workers, neighbours, relatives, etc.) and their role in caring and advocating for the rights of children with disabilities. She talks about how people without disabilities can provide care for children with disabilities, through feeding and physical care as well as advocacy and awareness-raisining. She also speaks about the importance of attitude and body language in providing holistic care for children with disabilities.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Understanding Intellectual Disability
    (2019-06-01) McKenzie, Judith
    In this video, Judith McKenzie discusses the definitions of intellectual disability (from the DSM5 and the AAIDD) and what this means for assessing intellectual disability, including the use of intelligence tests.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Understanding Learning in Intellectual Disability
    (2019-06-01) Wood, Tessa
    In this video, Tessa Wood, the Director of the Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability (WCFID), discusses the role and function of the WCFID in providing training, community awareness and advocacy for schools, centres and workshops that provide assistance and care for persons with intellectual disabilities. She further expands on the work that has been done to ensure that children with severe to profound intellectual disability receive equitable learning opportunities that can allow them to learn according to their ability. She describes the history of centres that provided education and care for children with intellectual ability and how they mobilised for legal recognition and support for their work.
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    TEDI 4 Week 1 - Understanding the Impact of Intellectual Disability
    (2019-06-01) McKenzie, Judith
    In this video, Judith McKenzie expands upon the understanding of intellectual disability, including how to best understand the level of disability of children with intellectual disability. The video explores the four levels of disability - mild, moderate, severe and profound - in reference to the level of function in the conceptual, social and practical domains rather than focusing on IQ, with a focus on how to support children with intellectual disability.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Attitudes to Learning
    (2019-06-01) Hansen, Anthea
    In this video, Anthea Hansen, an audioologist and lecturer at the University of Cape Town, discusses the attitudes if parents, teachers, family and community towards children with severe to profound intellectual disability and how these attitudes can influence the ability of said children to learn. She discusses how attitudes towards children with disabilities are influenced by societal and cultural factors, such as the intense shame and stigma around children with disabilities who are often seen as sick or even cursed. She mentions the structural factors that impede their learning, which includes the attitudes of educators and the processes of early childhood education. She also speaks of the importance of educating teachers on how to adapt their teaching spaces or even curriculum to incorporate children with learning disabilities. She then discusses the factors that can promote the intellectual development and learning opportunities for children with disabilities, such as the involvement of caregivers, families and community members in developing their own awareness of intellectual disability, or the importance of changing attitudes towards children with severe to profound intellectual disability to be able to provide the educational opportunities that work best for the children. She closes by discussing the importance of building skills and awareness in the family so that parents and caregivers can access the support they need and provide the care they can for their children.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Communication - Why is it so Important?
    (2019-06-01) Moloto, Maurisa
    In this video, Maurisa Moloto, a community trainer, discusses the factors that help and hinder communication for and with children with intellectual disabilities. She discusses what communication is and what its function is, incorporating speech, sound, body language, touch, and physical media (photographs, videos, etc.). She emphasises the need to embrace a functional communication approach, which stresses the needs and capacity of children with disabilities, which stresses developing the children's self-determination and the development of skills for self-care such as the ability to dress, feed and bath themselves. She also stresses that communication skills are vital for children with intellectual disabilities to develop social skills and the ability to interact with others to the best of their ability. She expands upon the importance of providing choice to children with disabilities as a key component of promoting self-autonomy, encouraging decision-making to the extent that is possible, and offering people with disabilities the ability to self-direct and make meaningful choices in their lives.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Facilitating Learning
    (2019-06-01) le Roux, Marlene
    In this video, Marlene le Roux, a polio survivor from Wellington and the CEO of Artscape, talks about her son Adam who suffered from cerebral palsy. She discusses her experiences of facilitating learning for Adam. She discusses her challenges in feeding and caring for her son, navigating a difficult medical system that provided information in a fragmented and often contradictory way, and the dehumanising way children with disabilities were treated and talked about in the medical system. She discusses the ways in which caregivers need to be incorporated into the care and treatment process, and the importance of treating a child with disabilities with respect and kindness.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - How Learning Takes Place
    (2019-06-01) Spangenberg, Karlien
    In this video, Karlien Spangenberg discusses how children with disabilities are still able to learn despite their disabilities. She explains how children with severe to profound intellectual disability learn. She breaks down learning into several stages of learning; specifically, the Awareness stage (with full dependence on the caregiver); Engagement (where children learn to retain information with the assistance of the caregiver); Active Learning (where children become active participants in their own learning). While children with disabilities may not be able to progress through all phases of learning, but they can be assisted to move as far along the process as their individual capacity allows. She discusses how to determine where a child is along the learning pathway and the specific verbal and non-verbal cues that the child may make which can be used to determine how they are learning, and therefore the most appropriate learning activities that they will be able to engage in.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Learning Context
    (2019-06-01) Chikowore, Sandra
    In this video, Sandra Chikowore (a special needs educator) and a mother to a son with an intellectual disability, talks about the environmental factors that impact on children with intellectual disabilities. She discusses the internal environmental factors in the home and learning centres, as well as external environmental factors such as physical infrastructure (poor roads, lack of ramps, etc).. She discusses the role of language as a potential barrier and the need for caregivers to be able to communicate with specialists and outside experts.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Lifelong Learning
    (2019-06-01) Couper, Jacqui
    In this video, Jacqui Cooper discusses life-long learning. She discusses the roles and functions of the brain in learning, using the extended metaphor of the brain as the conductor of the body's 'orchestra'. She discusses the structure of the brain and its various learning centres. She goes into depth about the learning and emotion centres in the brain, their proximity and similarity, and therefore the importance of creating emotionally supportive learning environments to facilitate learning, and the implications this has on teachers and other learning professionals in terms of the need to develop a specific learning culture and approach that facilitates learning. She discusses brain plasticity, how it is particularly high during early childhood and how this plasticity can support learning amongst all children, particularly for children with disabilities.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - Strategies to Facilitate Communication
    (2019-06-01) Moloto, Maurisa
    In this video, Maurisa Moloto focuses on some of the practical strategies that can be employed to improve communication for children with severe to profound intellectual disabilities. She discusses using different items and symbols to determine the communicative abilities of different children, and the use of simple questions to encourage communication. She discusses the importance of analysing non-verbal and non-speech communication such as reaching, head-tilting or reaching behaviour. She also discusses the importance of using different teaching tools and techniques for reaching each child in the best way to promote their learning, and the use of a 'communication book; that can be used by the child to communicate to friends and teachers as well as to assist the educators and caregivers in documenting how each child responds to different communication techniques. She also stresses the importance of developing 'vocabulary' (which can include non-verbal symbols and actions) that can assist the child in other spaces, such as in public or at home. Lastly, she stresses the importance of giving children choice to promote their own agency, whether this is in the form of choosing clothing colours or how they want to eat or bathe.
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    TEDI 4 Week 2 - TEDI Research: Lifelong Learning
    (2019-06-01) Henkeman, Thandi
    In this video, Thandi Henkeman (the project manager for the Teacher Empowerment for Disability Inclusion (TEDI) project), discusses a pilot project looking into the attitudes of people involved in teacher facilitation around disability inclusion. She discusses that despite the commitments in the South African constitution, children with disabilities are still often excluded from living a free and productive life. She discusses the role and mandate of the TEDI project, focusing on the teacher training course named the 'Education and care of learners with severe to profound intellectual disability'. The courses focuses on the theoretical and practical aspects of care and inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities in the classroom. She then shares key findings from the data collected from the course participants, including what challenges the participants identified, such as the knowledge and skills they have and their attitudes towards children with disabilities.
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    TEDI 4 Week 3 - Becoming Part of a Support Team- A Mother's Perspective
    (2019-06-01) Isaacs, Aimee; Chikowore, Sandra
    In this video, Aimee Isaacs and special needs educator Sandra Chikowore discuss Sandra's experience in empowering a team to work together to care for children with severe to profound intellectual disability. Sandra, as a mother of a child with a disability, has experience in caring for children with different kinds of disabilities, such as children with autism and fetal alcohol syndrome. She discusses the role she plays in linking the support teams, caregivers and community partners in the care process, and which community members are involved in the care of children with disabilities. She then discusses how each different member of the support team enables or supports the care for children with disability, from physicals care work to advocacy. She discusses the importance of mutual respect, collaboration and open communication between different support team members.
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    TEDI 4 Week 3 - Building Relationships of Care and Education
    (2019-06-01) Isaacs, Aimee
    In this video, Aimee Isaacs discusses how to empower the team working with children with severe to profound intellectual disability in order to support learning. Aimee speaks of the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to supporting learning, involving different specialists and caregivers in the educational process. She speaks of the importance of specialists consulting caregivers as part of their intervention, and the value of minimising the power imbalance between these groups as perceived authority and power dynamics can reduce the quality of information that the primary caregivers provide. She then speaks of the multi-disciplinary care approach as part of a holistic care approach, that brings together different skillsets and acknowledges different socio-economic and environmental factors in developing and implementing a care plan. She discusses the importance of creating mutually-empowering working relationships between the different specialists and caregivers.
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    TEDI 4 Week 3 - Creating a responsive learning environment
    (2019-06-01) Spangenberg, Karlien
    In this video, Karlien Spangenberg discusses the role of structure and routine in developing a supportive learning environment for children with severe to profound intellectual disability. She discusses how to plan a daily programme to ensure a daily routine that makes the environment familiar and predictable, which provides opportunities for children to develop their understanding of cause and effect. She also discusses the value of using the physical layout of the classroom to facilitate the different kinds of learning and facilitate smooth flow of learning activities in the learning environment, and to provide the best environment for children with different mobility, visual, and hearing needs.
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    TEDI 4 Week 3 - Developing a learning programme
    (2019-06-01) Spangenberg, Karlien
    In this video, Karlien Spangeberg talks about the development of a learning programme that meets the needs of children and adolescents with severe to profound intellectual disability. The South African Department of Basic Education recognises the support needs of children with severe to profound intellectual disability, and has policy documents which adapt the curriculum for their needs. She discusses the importance of grouping children according to their developmental stage (awareness, engagement or active learning) and learning ability. She then discusses how to adapt the curriculum in order to address children in each of the different developmental stages and what support the caregiver needs to provide at each stage. She discusses practical activities for developmental-appropriate learning, such as the appropriate use of objects, and discusses some specific learning activities in terms of the three subject areas for learning (communication-language, visual-perceptive-cognitive, and life skills).