Parental Involvement in Inclusive education is essential

Ms Eunice Araba Turkson, an Educational Consultant in the United States has underscored the importance of parental involvement to the success of Inclusive Education

She said it is legal to have all students educated irrespective of their disability and economic background and parents are the first point of call if Ghana is to successfully implement her inclusive education policy

Ms Turkson told the Special Mothers Project that in educating children with special needs, there is no one size fits all approach, parents and the school system work collaboratively to achieve a common goal.

She said, "there are different categories of disabilities with each one having their unique characteristics. Usually, the school depends on the parents for pertinent information and effective management of a child with special needs."

Listing the different disabilities, Ms Turkson said, they are classified into 13 categories, namely: Specific Learning Disabilities which includes dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, auditory processing disability and nonverbal learning disability.

There is what is referred to as Other Health impairment, a condition that limits a child’s strength, energy or alertness, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD),

Other disability categories include the Autism Spectrum Disorder which mainly affects a child’s social and communication skills, Emotional Disturbances which may include anxiety and depression, Speech or language impairment, visual impairment which includes blindness, hearing impairment, Deaf-blindness

The rest are Orthopaedic impairment like cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, traumatic brain injury and multiple disabilities

Ms Turkson pointed out that educational systems should not lump children with disabilities together as one, the more reason, there is the need to involve parents when taking decisions on the education of their children.

“In the United States, educators sometimes take documents to parents for their review and or signature should they miss meetings, to the extent that we may find means of transportation for parents to join the meeting when the excuse for not attending is transportation and sometimes meetings are called off or rescheduled if parents cannot be there,” She said

The Special Mothers Project is an advocacy and awareness creation programme on cerebral palsy issues and issues affecting families raising children with special needs

Klicks Africa Foundation supports Special Needs Mother with Rent Advance

Klicks Africa Foundation, a non-governmental organization that trains Youth with special needs in vocation skills has paid a rent advance of 7200 cedis for Madam Asabea Otupiri Darko, a Single mother of a teen with cerebral palsy

Klicks Africa Foundation made the donation following a story aired by TV3 about the challenges Madam Asabea was facing in this Covid 19 period as a single mother raising a youth with cerebral palsy.

Mrs Mary Amoah Kuffuor, Executive Director of Klicks Africa Foundation said the amount is for two years rent advance for Madam Asabea and her son.

She expressed gratitude to all who contributed to make the donation possible.

Klicks Africa Foundation also run a resource centre that trains youth with disability with self-help skills as well as build their social and emotional skills.

Madam Asabea Otupiri Darko, who was facing ejection from her Landlord, expressed her gratitude for the gesture

The Special Mothers Project is an advocacy and awareness creation programme on cerebral palsy issues and issues affecting families raising children with special needs

Let’s begin to look into virtual teaching - Educationist

Ms Eunice Araba Turkson, an educational consultant based in the United States has called on educational authorities to begin looking into virtual teaching as an option to effectively educate all children regardless of educational status

She said, innovation and creativity were crucial as far as education, especially inclusive education was concerned. Students are more likely to synthesize the information taught them, bringing more joy and making their educational experience more meaningful.

Ms Turkson who recently participated in a webinar dubbed:" Inclusive Education: Before, during and after Covid 19," told the Special Mothers Project that all children were missing out on a lot of things during this period.

“Children all over the world are missing out on a lot of things including social and emotional interactions. This is because children are not going to school and school services are not going to them"

She suggested that for Inclusive education to be effective, classrooms could adopt a co-teaching approach where every classroom will have one general education teacher and a special educator, working collaboratively to achieve a common goal of educating all children in their classroom.

Co-teaching she said will enable the teachers to complement each other and teachers could serve as positive role models for their students.

“Children pick on the behaviours of adults around them and in co-teaching, teachers need to be intentional about modelling positive behaviours for children to emulate.

This teaching model, as well as others could be explored in an effort to achieve effective inclusive education in Ghanaian schools, Ms Turkson added

The Special Mothers Project is an advocacy and awareness creation programme on cerebral palsy issues and issues affecting families raising children with special needs