Six Children with Communication Challenges receive Assistive Devices

Six Families raising children with communication challenges have been trained on how to use an assistive device, Grid Pad, to enhance their children’s communication.

The families received a Grid Pad each from Smartbox Company, a UK based organization that designs assistive devices and software to help with communication challenges

The training provided by a team of Speech and Language Therapists from Columbia University in the United States of America with support from Ghana’s Special Education Division gave beneficiary families an opportunity to use the device with their children.

Mr Anthony Boateng, Deputy Director of the Ghana Education Service who received the devices from officials of Columbia University, handed the devices to Mrs Bernice Aduo Addae, Head of the Special Education Division to be given to the beneficiary families.

Mrs Addae, presenting the devices to the families, expressed happiness about the gesture, saying, “We are happy to be able to support some children with communication challenges, we pray for more of such support to enable more children benefit.”

The Special Education Boss, said the division welcomed any such support from organizations home and abroad to enable them equip and assist more children with Special Educational needs with assistive devices.

“We are also very happy that the Ghana Education Service has embraced most of the programmes that the Special Education Division intends to implement in schools throughout Ghana to ensure the proper implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy.

Professor Carol Hammer, a Speech and Language Therapist at Columbia University, who presented the devices, said, Ghana was selected to be a beneficiary of the programmes, after the Special Education Division applied for support.

She said the Columbia University was working with the Special Education Division of the Ghana Education Service to ensure efficiency in the usage of the devices.

Ms Belinda Bukari, an official in charge of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the Special Education Service said there has been an earlier training held for teachers in the various unit schools of the GES.

The unit schools are designated classrooms attached to regular schools that attends to children with special educational needs.

She said all six beneficiaries of the Grid Pad device are children with special educational needs who have been mainstreamed.