Legal Bases for Special Home visiting services should be available
Education in the Philippines starting from the first week of life.
6. Educational opportunities should also be
Following are principles which can be adopted provided to adolescents and adults. At least on
in a country such as ours with limitedreserve of the same scale as to all others of the
materials and personnel: community.
7. Comprehensive programming for disabled
General Principles persons will require a full range of services:
health, social welfare, rehabilitation,
1. Each child has a right to an education. The employment and placement.
purpose and goals of education are essential 8. Failure to educate and train handicapped
for all children, while the techniques required to persons in proportion equal to the provision of
help individual children progress maybe services for the non-handicapped, because of
different. the problem being perceived as a lower priority
2. Educational resources for handicapped , results in later expensive programs to care for
students should be comparable to those the untreated disabled.
available for non-handicapped students and
appropriate to meet the special needs of those PREVENTION
children, since these needs have often been
long neglected or received unduly low priority. There are special preventive measures
3. Wherever handicapped students are being which can be undertaken before, during, and
educated alongside non-handicapped ones, immediately after the birth of the child.
those responsible for this educational provision Eugenics counselling before pregnancy can
must develop a clearly stated plan which help reduce t the latter, the incidence of such
specifies the steps to be taken and the precise defects as Down’s syndrome and hereditary
resources which will be required to ensure that deafness; as regards the latter, it should be
the assessed needs of the individual student remembered that about half the cases of
will be fully met. Placing a handicapped deafness are due to genetic defects. Protective
student in a normal setting is only the first step vaccination against rubella and tests to
to integration. ascertain the parent’s blood group, in particular
4. Special Education services should be : for Rh incompatibility, are extremely important.
• Individualized, that is based on the assessed
and agreed needs of the child DETECTION and ASSESSMENT
• Locally accessible, that is within reasonable
traveling distance of the pupil’s home Detection and assessment in the first year or
• Comprehensive, that is serving all persons even in the first few months of life are of
with special needs irrespective of degree of paramount importance, since programs begun
handicap, such that no child of school age is at early stage have the most intense and
excluded from educational provision on the lasting effects, not only on the primary
grounds of severity of handicap or receive handicap, but also on preventing the
educational services significantly inferior to secondary and tertiary results of this handicap.
those enjoyed by other students.
5. Educational services should be made INTERVENTION
available to children below school age and be
educationally and developmentally oriented.
• Educational help for the handicapped child needed on working with children who have
should be made available from the earliest some kind of handicap
possible moment. This early education should 2. In general, there are (4) or more different
take place whenever and wherever possible in types of special teacher training which has
the home. Trained specialists should explain to been successfully tried. They are:
the parents what they can do to encourage the o Specialized post graduate course for regular
child’s cognitive, psychomotor, social and teachers, lasting for one or two years
linguistic development in their normal and leading to a higher diploma or
environment and who can train the parents in qualifications
compensatory techniques. Measures for re- o Training in special education for the
education have to be supplied, for handicapped, which forms an integral part of
example: regular teacher training
Psychomotor training for the mentally o Short in-service training courses for
retarded infants practicing regular teachers in various aspects
Psychotherapy, occupational and physical of
therapy for the physically handicapped special education
infants o Training courses for other personnel, such as
Auditory education and speech training for social workers or district nurses who will
the hearing-impaired infants be concerned with helping parents with the
Mobility training for the visually handicapped pre- school education of their handicapped
infants children
PARENT PARTICIPATION VOCATIONAL EDUCATION TRAINING
Education is concerned with everything that -Handicapped people need sound occupational
helps the child to develop his potentials. It guidance which takes into account the
begins at birth, and the parentis at the heart of person’s interests, motivations and abilities. It
the educational process. has been found that sheltered workshops are
Parental involvement should therefore be not always the most suitable places for
considered a central component of special handicapped people to receive vocational
education. training. Better results are often obtained by
Active participation by parents in programs training them in real situations among non-
designed to help their own children. Parents handicapped fellow workers.
should have the opportunities to discuss the
problem LEGISLATION
Parents provide the main treatment
resources for the child 1. The government should legislate more laws
Parents should be encouraged to to ensure that the needs of disabled
understand their children in terms of their persons are met.
abilities as well as their disabilities 2. Handicapped children should enter school at
the pre- school level up to the stage
PERSONNEL TRAINING they are capable.
3. All aids which can help to overcome or to
1. Special teacher training has to be organized lower the consequences of handicap
to provide teachers the competencies
should be exempted from customs duties and
taxes
4. Early detection , assessment, and
intervention are indispensable prerequisites for
successful integration of many handicapped
children into regular schools.
5. Training of personnel is necessary.
