There was tendency in our
culture for families who had disabled children to hide them; as a result
children with disabilities in Indonesia often became isolated from society.
Most children with visual impairment go to special schools for the blind.
Unfortunately, it is not same for children with multiple disabilities
and visual impairment, they are not accepted in such schools because they
are considered ineducable. Because of this situation Rawinala has been
proactive in providing information about multi disabled children.
Rawinala is non profit organization that was established in 1973 in Jakarta
by the members of Javanese Christian Church. From the beginning Rawinala
provided services specifically for blind and low vision children who had
additional disabilities. Since it began the number of children served
by the centre has grown from 2 to 75. The children come from a variety
of different backgrounds and reflect a range of abilities, and most of
them are residential pupils.
At the beginning it was not easy to develop the program with very limited
resources and knowledge about this field. The staff cared for the children
without any education methods or special strategies. It was really miracle
that we could manage at all.
But brighter days were around the corner when CBM sent their expert Ms.
Nicola Jean Crews from UK and she worked with us for several years from
the end of 80-s to the middle of 90-s. She put the basic methods in place
to work with these children and expanded our services.
Rawinala today:
Since children come to us with a wide range
of abilities, we started to expand the range of our programs to cover
Early Intervention, Additional Disabilities, and established a Community
Home, a Vocational Program, a Deafblind Program and Social Support.
1. Early Intervention
In this program we work with families of
visual impaired children from 0 - 6 years old. These blind or low vision
children may be multi or singly handicapped. The main reason for developing
this program was the lack of opportunity for families' involvement in
education of the children. We had many cases where children lost ground
once they returned to stay with their family.
When children have finished this program they may go to on to join the
program in Rawinala for the Deafblind or Multiply Disabled, or the integration
programme in the public school.
2. Deaf blind Program
Although initially we didnít have
any idea about how to work with Deafblind children, we had these children
and had to deal with them. To begin with we tried to work in the way work
with children who donít have any communication problems. It was
frustrating because we didn't see much progress. Fortunately, before Nicola
left she introduced us to Hilton Perkins International Program at Boston.
In 1990 we began to develop the special programs with support from Perkins.
Almost every year they sent an expert to give in-service training for
staff in the Deafblind program and it was blessing when one of our staff
had opportunity to attended the ELP (Educational Leadership Program) at
Perkins for 9 months from 2001-2002.
Gradually we came to understand the uniqueness of these children, and
became more confident in our dealings with children and families. We put
communication as the first priority, both verbal and non verbal. It was
something new for our society, since a lot of people thought that communication
must involve speaking , so it become our other task introduce this alternative
communication to society. Behavior was our second priority - we needed
to help children avoid inappropriate behavior.
Parents and families are our partners in developing children's abilities
and skills. We give training to parents in areas such communication, sign
language, how to develop self help skills, etc.. We sometimes also organise
the family gatherings, and do practical things that involve the siblings.
The number of children with Deafblindness is increasing and, most children
who come have Congenital Rubella Syndrome.
We are glad that we will moving to the new school this year and it will
be the first Deafblind school in Indonesia. Hopefully, we can improve
our service here.
3. The School for children with Multiple Disabilities
and Visual Impairment
The school provides services for people
with visual impairment and additional disabilities from 7 - 20 years old.
We receive regular support from the Sensis International Project who have
been providing in-service training for Rawinala staff in Jakarta and more
recently in their centre in Holland. This support has proved very useful,
because since our former consultant from CBM left us, there hasn't been
any opportunity to upgrade the knowledge of our teachers. These professional
development opportunities have had a great impact on the way we work with
children.
This collaboration really helps supplement the knowledge and skills of
all our teachers and staff and maintains the development of our programs.
Most of the programs at the school are based on a functional curriculum.
We seek to improve cognitive, sensory and motor development, and focus
on leisure, living and working activities.
4. The Vocational Program
This program is provided for students who
are 20 years old and older, to prepare them for employment and independent
living. Maximum independence is our goal in this program because there
is no social security in Indonesia for people with disabilities so they
have to be able to survive by own efforts or else depend on their families.
Rawinala is trying to collaborate with some small industries/ institutions
to find employment placements. It is not easy in a country where many
able-bodied people can't find work. But from time to time we prove that
our students can find useful roles in the community, such as church musicians,
sales persons, gardeners and handymen.
This program provides transition from school to life in the community.
In most cases the program lasts between 2 to 2 and a half years, depending
on the need of the student .
5. The Community Home
Adults with visual impairment and additional
disabilities who have no family homes, live in our community home where
they have a programme of organized activities under staff supervision.
The most important part of this program is creating a family atmosphere,
so that the adults can feel a sense of belonging to a family, neighborhood
and community.
Their activities are based on the basic needs of their life, for example:
cooking, shopping,gardening, doing house hold chores and leisure activities.
In most of those activities, we are seeking to improve their quality of
life, and make them happy and acceptable to their family and community.
These last two years we have been making progress towards a better service.
We are fortunate to have a resource center and effective support. We realize
that it's also time for us to share our experience with other schools
in Indonesia, because there must be many children in the other islands
who are not receiving education or special services. Our dream is to become
the resource center for Multiple Disabilities/Deafblindnes in Indonesia.