What does this mean to you and/or to the visitor to your operation or task? What is needed to create this? By: How do we and our operation act supportively with regard to what cannot be actually managed, what needs to be learnt; i.e. the cognitive conflicts than arise? How does mediation work and how do we and our operation interact in these situations? Supporting the capacity to plan, begin, carry out and end a task. What do we/the child/the visitor need to succeed with this task? Knowledge – teaching specific skills. Providing mental tools, i.e. thoughts, terms and concepts. Systematize the material and content that one is working with. Balancing stress by working with coping strategies. Practising perseverance and remaining in the task. Self-regulation by mirroring and talking about emotions and the situation help to generate understanding of one’s own behaviour and of how this can influence the situation. Focussing on and dealing with difficulties by pointing to resources and capacities of the individual and the group. Scaffolding – transferring responsibility for the task/assignment to the child/ visitor/colleague themselves. Meaningfulness (Emotional) Stimulating motivation is a matter of: Is it worthwhile to make a commitment and investment in your and other people’s time/lives? Why should you do this? Participation activates the inner engine. What does this mean to you and/or to the visitor to your operation or task? What is needed to create this? By: How do we and our operations promote participation; i.e. how do they make it possible for people to programme their own development? What do children/visitors want from their visit and from what they experience with us? Create adequate goals as well as challenges. Start with everyday notions and experiences – for example, tasks should be reminiscent of something known. Explorative strategies and behaviours. What leads on, offers discoveries and so on? Facilitate the bridging process by embracing the world of the child/working group/ visitor. How might this be achieved? Produce examples. Level of importance – based on what has been defined as important just now? What is interesting and attractive? How would you/we act then? Internalization – a process that gives an inner structure, like models and language. Providing hope and faith in the future by looking forwards/prospective approaches. Empowerment – own power.
3. RESULTS
Successes, disappointments, difficulties What worked and why? What did not work, what can we do differently?
QUALITY CRITERIA – Have the following been present? Add your own criteria UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Best-for-the-child perspective and Child’s right to life and development Salutogenic factors and mediated learning: Comprehensibility? – Experience of structure, order, clarity Accessibility: Broad, inclusive and democratic solutions Retrospective summary – new and earlier experiences What made the work/strategy doable? Which solutions worked? What can we learn from this? QUALITY CRITERIA – Have the following been present? Add your own criteria UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: The child’s right to have its rights provided, §31 and §23 Salutogenic factors and mediated learning: Manageable? – Experiences of resources and hope of managing situations Accessibility: Multifunctionality and Functional development Generalization and future perspectives? What has been meaningful? What is the challenge of the next step? What experiences and solutions generated enjoyment, interest and hope? QUALITY CRITERIA – Have the following been present? Add your own criteria UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: The child’s right to have influence Salutogenic factors and mediated learning: Meaningfulness? – Experience of participation and context Accessibility: Liberating solutions
page 60
When it’s only almost right Play invites laughter and laughter is infectious. Joy bridges over differences and through playing together children grow. But children who do not play wilt. Few things are as directly associated with the child as play. While playing together they test each other. They learn to give and take. In play children investigate the world, they learn social interaction and they prepare themselves for adult life. Regardless of whether they are taking part in spontaneous play in the nearest wood or in a more organized fashion in a public park, play is one of the foundation stones of a child’s development. Almost all children can play just about anywhere. Their own imagination sets the limits. Play teaches children how to approach and how to keep a distance and to understand the joy of community in both body and heart, “Leka för livet” [Playing for life], the 2006 annual report from RBU maintains. RBU is the Swedish association for disabled children and young people. For children with functional disabilities things are not always quite as simple. Avoidable impediments limit and exclude them and the report notes that their exclusion starts as early as playing in a sandpit. The joy of being able to play is stifled before it has even developed in that many play facilities
are designed with the focus on children with a high degree of mobility, as though children with functional limitations did not exist. Nine year-old Nicole loves her playground. It is right outside the building where she lives and it is here that she meets her friends and can play for hours. The park has a great deal to offer her – or would have if she could only use her legs. Nicole has a muscular condition and she uses a wheelchair for which the park is not adapted. Let us take an example. Nicole loves going on the swings and the local authority has recently provided a double swing for two people. There is room for a friend or for a helper if one needs one. Nicole can lie in the swing while it is in motion. But to reach the swing she needs a firm surface for her wheelchair. The parks department has fitted a soft rubber mat and this sinks down into the sand underneath. Nicole fastens in the sand. The swing is accessible to her but she cannot get to it. Another example is the playhouses that provide a never-ending source of role playing. Who has not moved into a playhouse and played a game of mother/ father/child or of shops when they were small? There is a ramp leading up to the playhouse and inside there is a cooking stove that one can use from a wheelchair for which there is space beneath the stove. Nicole can play here on the same terms as her friends; or rather she would have been able to if the door opening had been wide enough for her to get into the playhouse. Nicole just has to stay outside. All research is united in the understanding that play is of great importance to a child’s development and learning. For Nicole, limitations in accessibility have obvious detrimental consequences. Agnetha Mbuyamba, who is the chair of RBU, believes that these shortcomings are often the result of ignorance. “Decision makers say that every child has the same right to be able to play but the real world gives a different picture”, she maintains. “Decision makers do not have the necessary expertise to put themselves into the child’s place. Play enables children to develop socially and physically. Children learn about life through repetitive play. Play facilities that are not accessible to all children do not just affect those with functional impairments but also their siblings. Families choose not to visit the playground because it does not work for all of their children. Agnetha Mbuyamba exhorts everyone who has children with functional disabilities to make their voices heard. “How else are other people going to know and to understand? In all planning matters pertaining to children there is an obligation to consider what is best for every child. Financial considerations help to make children with functional disabilities invisible. I fear that children will become spectators in life and society if we fail to change our attitudes and do not make society accessible to all. At the playground we encounter yet another small detail that makes it impossible for Nicole to play. Underneath a large climbing frame they have installed a giant noughts-and-crosses board. Nicole’s wheelchair simply cannot get up to the
145