Supporting Life Skills for Young Children with Vision Impairment and Other Disabilities: An Early Years Habilitation Handbook / Edition 1

by Fiona Broadley

Overview

This practical resource is designed to help professionals, parents and carers as they support children with vision impairments to develop independence in everyday tasks. Using the Early Years Foundation Stage framework as a basis, it provides a wealth of strategies and activities to develop key skills, including dressing, maintaining personal hygiene, eating and drinking and road safety.

This is an invaluable tool that can be dipped in and out of to help make learning fun, boosting the child’s confi dence and helping create a positive ‘can- do’ attitude when faced with new challenges.

This book:

◆ Addresses the main problem areas for babies and young visually impaired children and their families, by providing simple explanations of skills and offering strategies and techniques to support progression onto the next stage.

◆ Is written in a fully accessible style, with photocopiable pages and additional downloadable resources.

◆ Provides a variety of documentation to chart the child’s development and show progress over time.

Research shows strong indicators that early intervention can reduce or eliminate developmental delays in children with a vision impairment. The supporting strategies in this book help busy professionals and carers to make every opportunity a learning opportunity, allowing children with a vision impairment to become confi dent and independent individuals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367513122
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/18/2020
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 11.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Fiona Broadley has worked for the last 30 years, exclusively teaching mobility and independent living skills to children and young people with vision impairments, many of whom have additional needs.

As the Chair of Habilitation VIUK (formerly MISE), she assisted in the gathering of research for the Mobility21 Project, which ultimately led to the creation of the National Quality Standards for the delivery of habilitation training and the creation of the new profession of habilitation specialist.

She heads a team of registered qualifi ed habilitation specialists, all of whom have contributed to the ideas and practice found within this book. She now also lectures to student habilitation specialists at Birmingham City University, and with her team delivers the habilitation elements of the training for specialist teachers of the visually impaired at the University of Birmingham.

She lives in (not so) rural Warwickshire with her family and the school buddy dog, Griff.

Table of Contents

Common Terms Introduction Habilitation Skills: Foundation Early Years Foundation Curriculum Section: 1.00-2.00 Dressing, Undressing & fastenings 3.00 Personal Hygiene -toileting, hand washing 4.00 Feeding Eating and drinking 5.00 Movement 6.00 Concept development 7.00 Listening and Looking 8.00 Road safety 9.00 Personal safety 10.00 Starting school or nursery Appendices Glossary References

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Miranda L Virone, OTD (Slippery Rock University)
Description: This first edition handbook explores various supports and strategies for occupation-based life skills of young children with vision impairments and various other related disabilities. The objectives of the handbook aim to provide readers with foundational knowledge in problem areas for young children with visual impairment, their families, and their caregivers. It also provides numerous detailed activities, documents, and downloadable resources to support care, intervention, and progress monitoring of the visually impaired child. The book utilizes a crisp format with bulleted lists, reproducible pages, and brightly colored photos for easy visual referencing and learning among the intended audience.
Purpose: This book intends to provide guided support for families, caregivers, and interventionists of visually impaired children regardless of their previous experience. It further aims to improve comfort and confidence for the audience as they interact and provide services to children. It suggests every visually impaired child should be met and supported at their present level of skill, regardless of chronological age, then moved through progression with activities and interventions that support individual development. The handbook objectives are clearly met and provide a much-needed resource for the audience.
Audience: This book is clearly aimed to support an audience consisting of families, caregivers, and interventionists of visually impaired children. It dives deep into the challenges of visual impairment related specifically to the occupations of childhood. Further consideration is offered for children with multiple disabilities and vision impairment. These in-depth explorations provide the audience with invaluable resources for interaction, care, and intervention among this unique and complex population. The author's 30+ years as a habilitation specialist specializing in children with multiple disabilities and vision impairment in the U.K. creates substantial credibility as a content expert. The author channels this experience to provide the audience with three decades worth of knowledge and resources in one content-rich handbook.
Features: The book provides an organized resource for families, caregivers, and interventionists of visually impaired children. It is structured so that the audience is not required to read it cover to cover to glean information, but rather to dip in and out of it for information as needed. The book is structured with an introduction that explores U.K. policy for disabled children, skills required of the audience, developmental skills of the child, and fundamental activities that foster skill development. The author then offers a robust, occupation-based curriculum with various self-care activities that can be adapted, graded, and modified for a child-centered approach. The book pages are filled with colorful action photos to demonstrate the activities and additional resources to support the skills. The final pages of the handbook offer a glossary that defines, explains, and provides examples of bolded terms throughout the text. This feature is an excellent learning tool for the audience that uses a visual strategy to cue readers into exploring the terminology further. One would expect no less from a vision habilitation specialist!
Assessment: This handbook delivers its intended content and much more for the identified audience. It is sure to be a go-to resource for families, caregivers, and interventionists among children with visual impairment. The clear organization, immediately usable and reproducible content, and numerous additional resources provide an invaluable tool for the audience that will support many facets of interaction with visually impaired children who may have been previously challenged. To date, no other resource has been identified that intends to offer supports for life skill development for this population to such a comprehensive audience. The author has tailored this handbook to educate and support a broad audience that includes parents, extended family, caregivers, habilitation specialists, nurses, teachers, and occupational and physical therapists regardless of their experience with visually impaired children.

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