Challenges mount on special needs schools

TEACHING children with special needs is labelled as one of the hardest jobs in the world. These children require that their schools and teachers cater for their individual challenges.

The Covid-19 outbreak has made this task even more of an uphill battle considering that some learners are already vulnerable due to living with comorbidities.

Added to the burden are nonpharmaceutical measures put in place to curb the spread of the virus, such as social distancing, wearing of masks and reconfiguration of classes and learning in general.

“The pandemic has affected the structure of our classes. Ideally, part of our curriculum includes promoting and working on group work and social interaction. This has had to change significantly.

“Also, our therapy sessions have moved to more individual sessions, and this makes meeting social goals with our learners more difficult,” said Jackie Paterson, the principal and therapy director at the Centre for Autism Research and Education (Care).

Paterson added that during the hard lockdown, Care sessions were moved online, but this severely affected achieving learning and therapy goals, as learners struggled to cope with virtual sessions and desperately needed face-to-face support to meet their sensory needs.

Amazing Kids director Ilse KilianRoss said before the pandemic, parents and drivers were allowed in the building as some of the parents lived on the property but that has since changed.

“Covid has affected our schools in so many ways: registration, attendance registers and screening procedures have put an extra little stress on the school.

“In the classes, regular sanitising and hand washing do not come naturally to children with special needs. We have had to be patient because children get very anxious,” she said, adding that teaching behind a mask and encouraging social distancing contradicts the social skills they teach.

“Some parents have lost their jobs and were taking financial strain, leaving them no option but to take their children out of school, since they could not afford to pay the fees.

“The school had to reduce its fees to make it affordable for the families that are on half their salaries, and we had to make the unfortunate decision to retrench staff because we could not afford to keep them all on board,” said Kilian-Ross.

However, here is light at the end of the tunnel as both schools have managed to pull themselves back from the pandemic setbacks.

Paterson said Care has been able to reintroduce small groups and community activities such as shopping, swimming, baking, running, horse riding and outings.

Meanwhile, Kilian-Ross said they have brought most of the children back to school and readjusted the salaries of some of the staff members, even though it was not a 100% adjustment.