Functional seating solutions for post-primary students
Andrew Webb
The post primary education environment poses many challenges for students with disabilities. This presentation will highlight solutions that have resulted from the collaboration of clients, teachers, integration staff, treating therapists, TADVIC project coordinators and TADVIC technical volunteers.
Challenges faced include: changing locations for subjects in small time frames; dealing with differing seating arrangements especially in specialist classrooms such as science, art and domestic science; functionally participating in the classroom for example, accessing the science bench and being able to operate equipment such as the Bunsen burner, dealing with lockers, folder and other resources.
Practical examples will be used to illustrate the ways TADVIC has assisted in solving some of these difficulties for individual clients. The emphasis will be on the outcome of the interventions, rather they dwelling on the problems that can sometimes seem overwhelming. The final 10 minutes of the presentation will be used to build of issues raised by drawing on the audience's experiences.