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IYC Articles - CommentsReaders' comments on Cathryn Booth-LaForce and Jean F. Kelly's “Childcare Patterns and Issues for Families of Preschool Children With Disabilities”Dear ISEI Members, Thanks so much to all of you who participated in the Infants and Young Children Articles and Comments Page on the ISEI Website. The comments for Cathryn Booth-LaForce and Jean Kelly's article entitled “Childcare Patterns and Issues for Families of Preschool Children With Disabilities” can be found below. Please note that two new articles have been placed on the Current IYC Articles & Comments. All previous articles will continue to be available by accessing the “IYC Previous Articles (pdfs) & Comments.” Best regards Mike Guralnick COMMENTS FROM WEB PAGE: Dear Professor Booth-LaForce, I
am Assistant Professor of general psychology at the University of
Ljubljana in Slovenia and my focus has lately become the integration
and inclusion of visually impaired children. As a member of ISEI,
I’ve got an e-mail from Professor Guralnick, who provides all
members an opportunity to comment on your article. I find your work
very interesting and I would like to ask you a lot of questions.
But, I will try to be short. In Slovenia, we also have a lot of difficulties
to provide an appropriate childcare for children with special needs.
The majority of caregivers have not been receiving training and consultation
programs. One of the reasons is the rigidity of institutions for
children with special needs who don’t want to participate in
integration and inclusion of these children in regular schools. My
focus are children with severs visual impairments. I have read that
you excluded these children from your sample, but I would really
like do ask you some questions about this population as well. For
instance: - What kind of assessment difficulties did you find for
exclusion of children with severe visual or hearing impairments?
- What would be your recommendations – at what age should these
children enter the non-maternal childcare (since the specific characteristic
that separation anxiety starts later and lasts longer in these children)
- Do you think that, generally speaking, blind children need someone
who would be their personal assistant all the time that they spend
in kindergarten (safety reasons etc.) or is it more appropriate that
caregiver who works with the whole group (of 20 healthy children
approximately) take care for the blind child as well; I’ve
read very different opinions – if a child has all the time
his personal assistant he/she would develop too dependant behaviour
and he/she won’t be able to social integration; if there is
no personal assistant a child might be excluded from group because
no one would take care for him/her - What kind of logistics would
you recommend – we know that young child needs a constant surrounding
for his optimal psychosocial development (special education versus
childcare programs) I hope I was clear with my English. I would also
be very grateful to you if you could recommend me a scholar or a
group of researchers who particularly work with children with visual
impairment. In Slovenia, we have been at the beginning of processes
of integration and inclusion of visually impaired children and if
we want to proceed it properly we need to get some objective results
from research studies. Back to IYC Articles - Previously published in association with ISEI |
