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ON THE WAY TO CONTINUOUS EDUCATION AND SUPPORT OF DISABLED PERSONS:
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
T. V. Lisovskaya
The modern paradigm of education and support for children with special needs in the Republic of Belarus, focused on inclusion, raises fundamentally new challenges for professionals working with adults with disabilities. These challenges require reorganization of the pedagogical support system at the present stage.
Key words: people with severe mental and physical disorders, rehabilitation facilities, continuous education standards.
Special pedagogics of the Soviet period used the term "learning-disabled children"; thereby, it was acknowledged that some children do not need education. The right to education of children with severe mental and physical disorders is connected to their right to life, excluding the lower limit of abilities required for education. Educational work is not focused on a child's disorders but on his/her development potential. In recent years, we have witnessed growing worldwide interest in the progressive Byelorussian experience of rendering special needs pedagogic aid to children with severe mental and physical disorders. Starting from 1999, new educational institutions named centers of remedial and developing training and rehabilitation (hereinafter: CRDTaR) have open throughout the Republic of Belarus. The adoption of the Law of the Republic of Belarus on Special Education stipulating the mechanism of enforcement of the right to education for all persons, irrespective of the extent and severity of their disorders in 2004 (since 2011, the Code of Education of the Republic of Belarus[2]) was a significant event. Today, there are 141 centers of remedial and developing training and rehabilitation in our Republic. Such a center can be found in virtually every population center of the country. Children with severe mental and physical disorders get psychological, medical, social and special needs pedagogic aid. Children learn at the CRDTaR until they reach the age of 18.
However, their education sets new and rather acute problems. In our view, the first such problem is the absence of a system of rehabilitation institutions for adolescents and adults with severe mental and physical disorders that they could attend upon coming of age. Such institutions would permit us to implement the idea of continuous education and to involve such persons in domestic activities accessible to them, and for some, even in labor activities.
At the stage of adulthood, the mission of education of persons with severe mental and physical disorders is formally considered as completed. The results of a poll of CRDTaR graduates' parents have shown that upon completion of education, 90% of former students (over 18 years old) live in their apartments without doing anything or attending any events. Presently, this issue causes anxiety both on part of the Republic's special educational institutions and on the part of parents for whom the issue of the future of their grown children causes the most pain. The prospects of putting them into closed psycho-neurological
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institutions does not look attractive. For such a person, one year without education is equal to the loss of the results of many years of training at a CRDTaR.
The second problem is the diagnostic (medical) approach to determining the incompetence of a disabled person. Some CRDTaR graduates who mastered special educational programs (this is especially true as regards persons with moderate and severe mental deficiency, with multiple disabilities, mainly with locomotor impairments, etc.) are unable to get a profession because of medical counterindications. Thus, they lose the chance to find employment and supplementary material security, to integrate in society, and they therefore become social outcasts.
As a step towards rejecting the diagnostic approach, we might propose repeating the step made in respect to educating such children aged under 18. Therefore, in our opinion, it would be correct to determine the extent of dependence/independence of an adult person, depending on his/her functional capacities and abilities, rather than to proclaim him or her incompetent for a lifetime just because it is much easier to do so. We attempted to give a somewhat different definition for this category of person, based not on the number and nature of their disorders, i.e. the available faults, but on the mode of their functioning and the extent of their independence. Persons with severe mental and physical disorders are a category of persons, most of whom act either jointly with a specialist or in imitation. The extent of independence in various areas of activity varies from 100% to 75% of supporting and accompanying aid on the part of a specialist, and depends directly on various specialists' understanding of such a person's vital needs and on professionals' ability to shape their vital competences.
The next problem is the absence of standards of continuous education and support similar to the standards existing in the education system, but developed for all stages of education. The development of such standards can trigger quality implementation of the Law on Social Service (2013); however, it is not focused on continuous education and support of people with special needs, but on their minding and care. The leading type of institution providing support is still a psychoneurological home for the elderly and disabled, an in-patient institution whose principal purposes are to provide care, everyday services and medical treatment to persons who were recognized as incapable [4]. However, as we set the tasks of inclusion, rather than putting an adult person with severe developmental disorders into an in-patient institution, we face new, namely educational tasks, in particular the tasks of vocational training, and preparing an adult person for independent aided habitation.
The next problem, which we consider the most acute one, is the lack of trained personnel who are ready and capable of educating persons with severe mental and physical disorders. Not all CRDTaR graduates mentioned above may always attend outpatient departments of the territorial centers. The cause for this, among other things, is that the outpatient departments lack qualified personnel that know how to work with persons having severe mental and physical disorders. Such disorders prescribe good training of social workers in the sphere of special psychology and special needs education, and above all, psychological readiness for work with persons having severe mental and physical disorders.
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We have described just a token amount of the problems connected with the issues of continuous education of persons with severe mental and physical disorders, and have shown possible ways to their solution. However, these problems mainly touch upon the category of persons residing in their families. There is also a host of problems concerning both children and adults with severe mental and physical disorders who live in asylums [1].
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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