There have been many announcements in the news and papers that Singapore is working towards being an inclusive society. Personally, I have a strong affinity for the special needs community in Singapore. I have seen and experienced much that could be improved for children with special needs. Last month, I found the Enabling Masterplan 2012-2016 on MCYS website and decided to provide the feedback that I hope would come in handy or valuable to the steering committee as they craft the master plan in more detail.
You can view the Enabling Masterplan here. If you do have any form of positive or constructive feedback, I urge you to email those feedbacks to feedback-disability@cel.sg. It could help the committee in their decision making. Below are some of the feedbacks that I proposed. My feedback is more focused on the younger age group.
1. Train preschool teachers to aid in early intervention
My feedback/suggestion would be for more teachers to undergo training in early intervention. With Singapore promoting inclusion, it is essential to recognise that our preschools needs to be inclusive too or at least supportive of children with special needs. Teachers need to know how to identify children with special needs and meet their needs well. There is an increase in the number of children with special needs. However, most of them are not detected until they reach primary school age. We have to work harder to ensure that we meet the needs of such children at a younger age when early intervention would be most effective.
2. Hand Books for Parents
Create awareness and disseminate information to new parents on all aspects related to special needs. We need to break the social stigma on special needs and inform parents the correct information. A hand book containing important information such as traits of various special needs (especially the non physical ones), places to go for help and early intervention centres would be useful. The hand books should be given to all new parents, situated in all educational institutions and work areas. It does not have to be given only to parents with children with special needs. Making the hand book accessible is encouraged.
3. Provide more subsidies, especially to the lower income families
Each special need is different. Some children’s medical needs are costly.
4. Train more professionals and open more places for diagnosis and early intervention
The stage of diagnosis is actually a critical and crucial stage for the parent, child and school. It shows that the parent is ready to know the answer and will most likely take better steps to meet the needs of the child. The long waiting list is a killer and creates other problems too. The school (especially the teacher) also gets anxious and needs to know how to meet the needs of the child better as soon as possible. For the child, he/she faces and receives all the stress from the adults around her. Shortening the waiting time would prevent a lot of heartache and damage. Secondly, we need to train our locals in the area of special needs. Create more undergraduate and diploma programmes in our local universities and polytechnics. This would help in increasing the number of professionals. Thirdly, increase the employment intake in hospitals or any healthcare related places for these graduates to work in. The increase in number of places for diagnosis and early intervention will hopefully shorten the waiting time.
I hope for the best for our special needs community. I end this post with an extract from the website:
“Together, we can make a difference. Together, we can fully maximise the potential of every person with disability and fully embrace them in society.”
Another relevant website:
www.cel.sg
No comments:
Post a Comment